Blood of the Birds
by Fib1123581321
Summary: Rose Weasley, Scorpius Malfoy, and Albus Potter are about to enter their fifth year at Hogwarts. Though the trio is as close as ever, tension is rising in the wizarding world. The Pure-blood front is surfacing again, but will love be enough this time?
1. The Weasley House

_**Note:** Hi! The following is a 2nd generation Harry Potter fanfiction, with main characters being Rose Weasley, Scorpius Malfoy, and Albus Potter. It will be comprised of four parts, the first of which will follow Rose. There will also be seven one-shots (or side-alongs) following other characters at points throughout the series, each uploaded separately. I've also taken the liberty to include a few re-quotes, courtesy of JK Rowling and Steve Kloves of course, to pay homage to the original books and films. So without further ado, here is Chapter 1. Happy reading!  
_

_-Hailey_

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**Part 1 - The Rose Unfolds**

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**1 - The Weasley House**

One beautiful, sunny morning in late August, Rose Weasley woke to the sound of birds chirping. It had been nearly two months since she had heard the cardinals that sang their melodious song every morning, just outside her window in the small English town of Ottery St. Catchpole. She smiled at the familiar sound, slowly pulling herself out of bed to get ready for the day ahead of her.

Today, Rose, her little brother Hugo, and their parents would be traveling to Diagon Alley, where they would buy their new schoolbooks and robes for their upcoming year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It was a day that Rose looked forward to every year, as she loved nothing more than the smell of new parchment. She was, after all, her mother's daughter.

This year in particular, though, was extra special. First, Rose had been away on vacation with her family all summer, and so she hadn't see either of her two best friends, Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy, for quite some time. She was very eager to meet up with them again, as she knew the Potters would be meeting them there, most likely along with Scorpius, who often spent a large portion of the summer at the Potters'.

Second, Rose was secretly hoping that this year she would be getting a new broomstick. Last year, she had joined the Gryffindor Quidditch team as their new Keeper, though she had had to use an old broom from the school, because she hadn't known originally that she would make it on the team. Once her father found out, he had apparently wanted to buy a new broom right away, but Rose's mother insisted that he wait until the summer, when Rose could pick it out herself. Neither of her parents had mentioned it since then, but Rose was sure that they hadn't forgotten.

At this thought, Rose began to get dressed even more quickly, and before she knew it, was on her way downstairs to the kitchen, where she was sure her mother would be, either cooking breakfast or reading the Daily Prophet.

Sure enough, Hermione Granger-Weasley was there, sipping coffee and reading the paper just like any other day, with freshly made pancake mix sitting by the stove, ready when needed.

"Good morning," Rose called as she made her way into the kitchen.

"Good morning," Hermione replied, looking up from her seat at her soon-to-be fifteen year-old daughter, finding it difficult to believe, as it was every morning, that she could possibly have two teenage children already. Albeit, Hugo was just barely a teenager, at only thirteen, but it still made her feel a little old.

"Why did you wake up so early? You know we're not to be at Diagon Alley for a few hours from now," Hermione asked Rose. Rose was normally never up this early, but of course today was no normal morning.

"I know, but I just wanted to make sure that I was ready on time. Plus, I have to get all of my school lists organized. Do you know where they are?" Rose replied. She knew that she didn't owe any explanation for her promptness to her mother, whom she had inherited this habit from in the first place, but provided it for her nonetheless.

"Yes, of course. An owl dropped them off last night. They're right here," Hermione answered, taking the top letter from Hogwarts off the table and handing it to Rose.

As Rose ripped open the envelope, excited yet gentile, Hermione couldn't help but notice just how much Rose reminded her of herself. With her enormous intellect and logic, Rose had taken all of Hermione's best traits. The ones that Rose hadn't inherited from Hermione only made her that much better in Hermione's eyes. Though Rose had long, semi-curly, thick hair like herself, it was a stunning fire red: the spitting image of Ron's. She had also inherited Ron's beautiful blue eyes, along with his bravery, loyalty, and Quidditch skills (though admittedly, Rose was much better at the wizard sport than Ron had ever been). These traits were slightly less obvious than the others, but they were there. They must have been, after all. Otherwise, Rose would have been sorted into Ravenclaw instead of Gryffindor. In fact, Hermione used to think that Rose would have fit in better in Ravenclaw, but as the years went on, she realized, just as she had for herself when she was at Hogwarts, that Rose was a Gryffindor through and through.

In her first year at Hogwarts, Rose had formed a trio very much like the trio that Hermione had been a part of, with her cousin, Albus, and Albus's fellow Slytherin, Scorpius. Before long, they were the best of friends, despite the fact that Scorpius's family was very much against it, the Malfoys having always disliked both the Weasleys and the Potters. In the end, it had been Rose who refused to listen to Scorpius's father, and encouraged Scorpius to do the same. Her unflagging loyalty displayed toward Scorpius always reminded Hermione of the way that Ron used to defend her and Harry when they were persecuted for not being of pure blood. Ron's loyalty had given him the label of 'blood-traitor', though he hadn't cared. Rose was the same way.

The sound of large, lazy footsteps coming from the stairs woke Hermione from her reverie. When she looked up, Rose was still buried in her lists, completely unaware of her father, who was about to walk in behind her.

"Go-od morning," Ron said with a yawn as he stepped into the kitchen, grabbed a Redvine for his morning snack, and sat down next to Hermione, giving her a kiss on the way there. He was still in his pajamas and looked like a zombie, but Hermione was used to it at this point. She had spent all too many years waking up next to him, ever since long before they had become an official couple.

It took a few minutes for Ron to notice that Rose hadn't even looked up from her papers to greet him, but when he did, he merely looked at Hermione for an explanation.

"They're her supply lists. They got in yesterday," Hermione answered, knowing exactly what Ron wanted to ask just by the look on his face.

Ron nodded in acknowledgment. This was also something _Ron_ had gotten used to, after many years spent with Hermione, and now knowing that Rose was no different when it came to schoolwork.

For the next half hour or so, the three Weasleys sat around the kitchen table in silence, Rose still going over her lists, Hermione reading the paper, and Ron falling asleep on Hermione's shoulder, after having given up trying to read along with her. She read much too quickly for him. Plus, it was morning.

They were interrupted, however, by the hurricane of noise that was Hugo, the loudest and most energetic by far in the family. Although he tended to be the last to wake up, he made sure that it was known when he did, storming down the stairs at lightning speed and running into the kitchen, barely able to contain himself with the thought of pancakes on his mind. He had an enormous love of all food, and was _always _hungry. Hermione suspected that often times he could even eat more than Ron, something that she had once thought was impossible.

Luckily, Hermione heard Hugo in time to get the pancakes on the stove before he made it to the kitchen, so that his would be ready the second he sat down. If they weren't, there would be hell to pay, most likely involving an incredible amount of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes products, all given to Hugo as birthday gifts from his favorite uncle, George.

"Good morning family," said Hugo matter-of-factly as he stepped into the kitchen. Before allowing any time for Ron or Hermione to respond, however, he stomped over to Rose, placed a slightly crumpled letter in front of her, and then sat down, smirking at his sister from across the table.

This gesture actually did manage to gain Rose's attention, who slowly looked up from her sheets to view the letter. As she noticed that it was addressed to her, and that it had obviously been opened and read by her fellow ginger-haired little brother, her eyes widened with fury.

"You read a letter that was addressed to _me_?" She screamed at Hugo, now standing and holding the letter in front of his face, making sure that he could see that it did in fact have _her_ name on it.

Hugo merely chuckled in his seat and said, "Well, of course I did, Sister. After all, that is what little brothers are for. And I must say, I'm glad I read it. Looks to me like somebody's got a little crush."

Now Rose was merely confused, as she had forgotten to look at the return address to see whom the letter was from, let alone read it herself. Before getting distracted though, she spat at Hugo once more with, "I can't believe you!"

At that, she turned around and headed out of the kitchen in search of some privacy. She could just make out the sound of her mother, the martinet of the family, giving Hugo a lecture on the importance of respect, as she walked into the living room.

Sitting down on the old, much too comfortable couch in the small room that was filled with the perfect combination of bookshelves and Quidditch memorabilia, Rose finally looked at the envelope to see who had written it. The upper right corner read 'Scorpius Malfoy, 687 Godric's Hollow'. The letter was from Scorpius, one of Rose's best friends, and it looked as though he had written it from the Potter house. Rose, still confused by Hugo's comment, pulled out the letter and began to read:

_Rose,_

_ Hello. How are you? Are you back from France yet? I've been staying at Godric's Hollow with Al all summer, and I think we're starting to go crazy without you here to calm the air all the time. That isn't to say I've been lonely though, considering that Lily's been all over me since I got here. It's quite annoying, really._

_ Anyway, I just thought I'd check in before meeting you in Diagon Alley. Can't wait to get back to Hogwarts._

_-Scorpius_

_P.S. – We've been doing a lot of Quidditch practicing lately, Al and I against James and Lily (who's actually quite good), so you better be ready for the Gryffindor-Slytherin match coming up. After all, I wouldn't want us to win _too _easily, with you so out of practice._

Rose smiled at the last part. She had always loved Scorpius's sarcastic side, and he and Rose were constantly challenging each other, especially when it came to Quidditch. It was their own way of showing mutual support. Still though, it was slightly surprising to get a letter from Scorpius at all, especially when there wasn't one from Albus. She and Al were the ones who tended to keep in touch, as Scorpius never seemed to bother taking the time to actually write an entire letter. Although, the letter was quite short.

None of this explained why Hugo seemed to think that Scorpius had some sort of crush on Rose, though. Perhaps he was talking about Lily, Al's younger sister? Either way, Rose decided not to dwell on it, and tucked the letter into her pocket before heading back to the kitchen.

Once through the doorway, Rose could tell that the pancakes were ready. The smell of her favorite breakfast was something Rose's nose was well attuned to, so she sat back down in her seat, ignoring Hugo's pointed looks in her direction, and enjoyed a perfect meal with her family.

"Oh, Hugo, here is your list of books for the year," Hermione said, handing Hugo the same type of Hogwarts envelope that she had given Rose earlier. After noticing Hugo's roll of the eyes, Hermione added, "You'd better not lose it. Otherwise, you'll be using all of the school's old, torn books. In _every_ class."

"Yeah, you wouldn't want that," Ron stated with a snort. "After all, it's not like they'd have tons of notes in them that told you how to do everything perfectly."

Hermione looked back at Ron with defiance and retorted fiercely, "No, nor would they possibly have dangerous spells that would later be the cause of a certain _somebody_ losing his ear."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rose interjected. Normally, she would just ignore these spats of which her parents had frequently, but this one sounded particularly interesting.

"Are you talking about Uncle George?" Hugo asked, very curious to know anything and everything about anyone and everyone. "Doesn't he only have one ear?"

This seemed to catch their parents' attention, as Ron and Hermione both sharply turned to Hugo and stated in unison, "No".

"All right, all right. I was just asking," Hugo replied.

Hermione was about to console Hugo when Ron interrupted. "So Hugo, which classes did you end up choosing?"

Hugo was about to enter into his third year at Hogwarts, and this was the year that students could choose two option classes to add onto their required ones. Rose had chosen Arithmancy and Muggle Studies, though there were rumors that she used her mother's old time turner to also go to Ancient Runes, Care of Magical Creatures, and Divination, always keeping her options open to do whatever she'd want to when the time came.

"Oh, how am I supposed to remember?" Hugo replied. "All I know is I listed whatever classes they said were required to become an Auror."

Ron beamed at this, as he himself was an Auror, and took much pride in his son. Hermione, on the other hand, looked quite disappointed.

"You mean you aren't going to take Muggle Studies, then?" This had been one of Hermione's favorite classes, and being that she was Muggle-born, she thought it was very important for her kids to know how her half of their family lived.

Both Hugo and Ron rolled their eyes at this, having already agreed that Muggle Studies was not an important class. Plus, the class was taught by Arthur Weasley, Hugo and Rose's grandfather, and Hugo never liked to have teachers who knew him. It made it that much harder to pretend he wasn't there.

"Look, Mum, I don't want to burst your bubble or anything, but I don't really care that much about tel-phuns, or whatever it is you call them. I'm a wizard, after all. Plus, Care of Magical Creatures is way cooler," Hugo said, in an effort to provide an explanation to his mother, though it was obviously not a good one.

"They're called tel-e-phones, and to be quite honest, they're actually a lot more practical than communicating by owl," Hermione replied.

Rose just laughed at all of this, finding the conversation oddly perfect. Her family had always been a little odd, but at the same time they were all quite brilliant, and she couldn't have loved them any more. Sometimes, thinking about these things made her sad to go back to Hogwarts, as it meant that she would have to say goodbye to her parents until Christmas. Still, she loved school. It wasn't her home, like it was for Scorpius, but it was like a second home, and she felt incredibly comfortable there.

Within the next hour, the four Weasleys finished their breakfast and got their things together for their journey to Diagon Alley. They were going to travel by Floo Powder, a common form of transportation for underage witches and wizards who could not yet Apparate. Rose was hardly a fan of the neon green fire that emitted from the powder, but after so many years of traveling this way, she was somewhat used to it.

Hugo, on the other hand, was always excited to 'burst into flames'. Anything remotely dangerous was something he deemed to be 'cool'. For this reason, he opted to go first. After Hugo disappeared from within the Weasleys' living room fireplace, Hermione stepped in to take her turn, followed by Rose, and finally Ron.

The Floo Powder transported them to the fireplace in the back of the Leaky Cauldron, which was the café that connected Charing Cross Road of the Muggle world to Diagon Alley. Once there, Rose asked her parents excitedly, "So, where are we meeting the Potters?"

"Well, if they go to the right place this time, they should be meeting us right here," replied Ron, with a wink at Hermione.

However, Hermione didn't look as amused as Ron had intended, and fired back, "Ronald, it's been _years_. I'm sure Harry would appreciate it if you could finally let it go."

Ron lowered his head in response, looking extremely defeated. He had never been one to enjoy losing a spat, especially when up against Hermione. Unfortunately, she was one of the only ones who could ever win against him. In the long run though, this was exactly why he loved her.

Ron's thoughts were interrupted when the sound of another person crashing into the fireplace could be heard. Looking up, the Weasley family was met with none other than James Sirius Potter, Harry and Ginny's eldest son.

"Oh, hi everyone," James greeted them, while wiping some chimney dust off his messy, brown hair. James really didn't look much like either Harry or Ginny, but instead was more of a mix between the two. With the exception of his mother's light brown eyes and his father's stag patronus, James was taller than both of his parents, and had Ginny's aggressiveness mixed with Harry's talent for trouble and rule breaking. He also had the Quidditch skills of both his parents, and was therefore quite the legend at Hogwarts, having been recruited as Gryffindor Seeker in his first year, and having caught the snitch at every match since.

"Hello, James," Hermione replied. James was possibly Hermione's least favorite nephew/godson, though she hugged him nonetheless. Ron and Hugo merely waved hello, as they were both secretly envious of Gryffindor's number one player.

James then turned to Rose and said, "Hey Rose. You've been practicing this summer?" James was entering his sixth year at Hogwarts, and had been the captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team since his fourth.

Before Rose could reply, Ron interjected, "Of course she has. Don't worry, she's more than ready for the match against Slytherin. I've gotten her well prepared for it. We're even going to go get her a new broomstick today." Rose smiled at this last part, happy to hear that Ron hadn't forgotten his promise.

James merely chuckled at Ron's attempt at intimidation and said, turning back to Rose, "Great. Better than that old Cleansweep you were using last year."

"Yeah, definitely," Rose replied, stepping in front of her father before he had the chance to embarrass her yet again. "How's the team looking this year, then?" One of their Beaters and a Chaser had graduated last year, so Rose knew that the team would need two new players this season.

"Oh, I think it'll be good. I've got my eyes on Fred as our new Beater, and Lily's hoping to make it this year; she's trying out for Chaser. Roxanne might put up a good fight though." Roxanne was Fred's little sister, both of whom were the children of Rose's uncle George and his wife, Angelina. Fred was entering his fourth year at Hogwarts, Roxanne her third.

"Anyway," James continued, "I was going to ask if you've seen Lysander around anywhere. I was supposed to meet up with him, and I think he wanted to talk to you." Lysander was one of the Scamander twins, Luna Lovegood's boys. He was also going into his sixth year, and played Beater for the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. He and James had met through Quidditch, and had been best friends ever since.

"Er, no, I haven't seen him anywhere," Rose replied. "Why would he want to talk to me anyway?" Lysander had never been particularly close with Rose. In fact, they had never really talked at all off the Quidditch pitch, on which he was always particularly mouthy and sometimes even offensive toward his opponents.

"Oh, no reason. Never mind," James quickly stated, before he said goodbye and headed off on his own, having spotted one of the Finnigan girls in line to buy a drink.

Before Rose could wonder any more about what Lysander may have wanted to talk to her about, Albus Severus made an enormous clunking noise as he appeared in the fireplace beside where the four Weasleys were still standing. Unlike James, the middle Potter was the spitting image of his father, with his messy black hair and enormous spectacles covering his bright green eyes.

Seeing Al for the first time in months, Rose ran straight up and hugged him.

"Hey," he said as they broke apart. "How are you? I've been meaning to write, but I knew you'd be away."

"I'm great," Rose replied. "And that's okay. You're right, I probably wouldn't have gotten any letters anyway. Plus, I got one from Scorpius this morning, which was sort of a nice change."

Albus made a confused face at this, but Rose didn't have time to comment, since at that moment, Scorpius appeared, his light skin and white-blond hair barely visible through all the black soot.

As he looked up and wiped his face off, Scorpius saw Rose and smiled. At the sight of those familiar ice blue eyes, Rose smiled back, but when the two came closer to each other, neither seemed to know if a hug was appropriate or not. Instead, they mutually decided to shake hands, in an attempt to end the awkwardness between them. Ron and Hermione could be heard chuckling in the background.

Once the rest of the Potters arrived, the two families split off into small groups to do their shopping, the four parents staying at the Leaky Cauldron to catch up over a couple of butterbeers, Lily and Hugo off to find Fred and Roxanne at Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, and Rose, Al, and Scorpius headed to Flourish & Blotts to get their new books.

Once away from their families and onto the familiar streets of Diagon Alley, the trio went right back to being the close friends that they had always been, and Al immediately started to tease Scorpius about the fact that he had sent Rose a letter.

"Since when do _you_ write letters to anybody?" Albus asked.

"Well, that's just it," Scorpius replied. "Rose isn't just _anybody_."

Rose blushed at this and Al gave a shocked look to Scorpius, who seemed surprised himself to hear such words come out of his mouth. "I – I mean, well, you know what I mean," Scorpius replied, trying to change the subject.

Albus whispered, "Nice save" into Scorpius's ear, but Rose didn't hear. Instead, she continued walking, acting as if she hadn't heard anything out of the ordinary. On the inside though, her heart was beating faster than ever.

"Anyway," Albus started, waking Rose from her trance and bringing Scorpius back to his normal self. "How was your summer, Rose? We want to hear all about your trip."

To answer, Rose began to tell them about everywhere she had been that summer, from France, to Greece, to Sweden, and back again. She could have gone on talking about it for hours, if it wasn't for the three of them arriving at Flourish & Blotts only to be interrupted by Draco Malfoy, Scorpius's father.

Malfoy was a scrawny man with Scorpius's same white-blond hair, but with a much more sallow looking disposition. Though Rose knew that he was no older than either of her parents, he looked as though he had aged much less kindly.

Scorpius stopped walking first, followed closely by Rose and Al, after noticing Mr. Malfoy staring at his son in the doorway with a somber expression.

"Scorpius," Mr. Malfoy said, sounding none too shocked to see his son in Diagon Alley only a few days before school started.

"Father," Scorpius acknowledged. The tension in the room was highly palpable, and Rose could hear the resentment in Scorpius's voice. She also thought there was a small amount of fear in his tone, though she knew that Scorpius would never have admitted to that.

"Ah, you must be that Potter boy my son is always with?" Mr. Malfoy asked (though it was more of a statement than a question), turning toward Albus. Al merely made a face at the way Mr. Malfoy had said 'Potter': as if it was the most disgusting word in the English dictionary.

This was until Mr. Malfoy addressed Rose, saying, "And the Weasley girl." The way he pronounced _her_ name was even more disgusting than Al's. After a slight pause, Mr. Malfoy added, "What a pity."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Scorpius retorted, practically before his father was even able to finish his comment regarding Rose. Though Rose was normally the protector of the group, Scorpius had always felt responsible to protect Rose. It was one of the few sweet gestures between him and Rose that always went without questioning.

"Oh, nothing," Mr. Malfoy said, turning back to his only son. "Just a pity. After all, as if it wasn't bad enough to be a _Weasley_, she also happens to be the daughter of that _Granger_ girl, isn't that so?"

Scorpius jumped forward at this, fists balled. Luckily, Rose was quick enough to hold him back, whispering, "Scorpius, it's okay. I can handle this for myself." Scorpius nodded, albeit reluctantly, and then relaxed his stance, though Albus was ready to take hold of his other side if necessary.

"Oh, good for you, turning down help. You are your mother's daughter. What are you going to do next, give me a black eye?" Mr. Malfoy said to Rose, leaning toward her and eying her bushy hair as he spat the word _'mother'_.

Scorpius tried to leap forward again, this time being held back by Al, but Rose stood her ground. Lips pursed, leaning forward toward her assaulter, she retorted confidently, "Yes, as a matter of fact, I _am _my mother's daughter, and I _am _a Weasley. But I am also a – friend - to _your_ son, and no matter how apathetic and cold you are toward Scorpius, I know that deep down you care about him just like I do. And no matter who my parents are, or what my blood status is, there's nothing you can do to drive me away from _my_ friend." Every time she said the word 'friend', it didn't feel big enough to describe her relationship with Scorpius, but she wouldn't let that thought distract her.

Mr. Malfoy didn't reply to Rose's statement, nor did he notice the way that his son was now staring admiringly at the girl who had just insulted him. Instead, he turned away from Rose, about to leave, only to turn back around and state to Scorpius, "Oh, I just thought you should know that your mother and I are now officially divorced. I told her to send you a letter with her new address… though I wouldn't count on receiving anything." His face looked genuinely pained at this reveal, though he continued on. "It was nice to see you again. I hope you have a good year at school, though I'd advise you to try to keep slightly better company." Mr. Malfoy then walked past the three teenagers and out of the store, leaving his son speechless.

Scorpius looked both angry and pained as he stood in his place, still with shock. Shaking it off, he turned to Rose, who was already looking at him, and said, "Rose, you were…"

Rose interrupted him, feeling guilty. "Scorpius, I know. But I couldn't just stand there after what he said. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have spoken to your father like that; it wasn't my place. I do hope you're okay."

"Sorry?" Scorpius asked, clearly shocked at Rose's guilt for standing up for herself. "Rose," he continued, "I was going to say thank you."

"Thank you?" Rose asked, equally shocked at Scorpius's reaction.

"Of course. What my father said to you was terrible. I mean, I was just about ready to knock him to the floor. But what you said, well, that was even better. I've never seen him look so put-out."

Rose didn't say anything, but merely blushed and smiled slightly. This was until Albus broke up his two friends, put his hand on Scorpius's arm, and asked reluctantly, "Scorp, your parents are divorced? You never mentioned that this summer."

Scorpius turned toward Al and nodded, the pained expression returning to his face.

Without thinking too much about the repercussions of the gesture, Rose took Scorpius's hand and squeezed it, trying desperately to make the expression on his face go away, as she felt equally pained by looking at it. After about a second, both their eyes widened and they looked at their hands, locked together, and quickly broke apart. Al just laughed in amusement. He was used to these awkward moments that always happened between his two best friends. During the school year, it could get quite annoying, but he had actually missed it over the summer.

"But honestly," Rose began to say, acting as if what had just happened never actually did. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, of course. They had been fighting for the entire two weeks that I was there in July, and eventually I just had to get out. Mum was going a little insane, and Dad definitely wasn't happy about it. That's when I went to Al's." He motioned toward his messy-haired friend. "I hadn't heard from either of my parents since… until now."

Albus and Rose nodded in acknowledgment, and the subject was officially dropped.

Over the next hour or so, the trio selected and bought all of their required books (Rose buying quite a few extras), and then continued down the alley, on their way to Florean Fortesque's for ice cream. After a few minutes of light conversation, the three were interrupted by Lily and Hugo, who had run up excitedly while carrying bagfuls of merchandise from George's joke shop.

"Hey, Rosie," Hugo addressed Rose. "Um, Dad's looking for you by the way. He's at the Quidditch Supplies shop with Uncle Harry."

"Oh, thanks Hugo," replied Rose, ignoring the name he had called her, all her attention focused on the idea of her new broom. "I'll go now."

She then stood from her seat and was about to walk away, Albus and Scorpius in tow, when Lily beamed and said, "Hi, Scorpius."

Scorpius replied with, "Hey, Lil," and a nod, but continued walking with his friends. Lily frowned with jealousy.

After a moment of silence, Rose asked Scorpius, "So, what was that back there? With Lily…"

Scorpius took a minute to respond, but finally did with, "Er, she might have a slight crush on me. It's no big deal, really." He looked at Rose reluctantly, who had her eyes straight ahead, refusing to look the least bit perturbed by this.

"A little?" Albus asked sarcastically. "Pshh, my sister's obsessed with you!"

Scorpius replied to Albus with a look that asked him why he would say such a thing, and a nod toward Rose, who was walking in between the two, still staring straight ahead. At this, Al dropped it and the three walked into the Quidditch store.

The shop was the perfect distraction to their previous conversation. It was filled with broomsticks, maintenance kits, special Quidditch robes and headgear, and a magnificent array of Quidditch balls: enormous red quaffles, locked-up bludgers, and perfectly golden snitches. The most notable item, however, was the snitch that seemed oddly attached to a certain person who was hidden from site, standing in front of the rack of new brooms. Next to the person, above the aisle, a head of bright red hair could be seen.

Recognizing her father instantly, Rose led the way around the rack to see Ron talking to the store manager with Harry Potter, whom the snitch was circling around.

Spotting his daughter at once, Ron exclaimed, "Rosie! Perfect timing; Harry and I were just talking to Will here about which broom would be best."

"Great!" Rose beamed. "It better go faster than either of these two's," she said, gesturing to Al and Scorpius.

Harry and Albus laughed, but Scorpius didn't back down so easily. "Are you kidding?" he asked, turning toward Rose. "You do realize that I'm a Seeker for a reason? I could go ten times as fast as you any day of the week. _Keepers_ barely even move."

Rose was about to reply with a witty comeback when Ron interjected, holding up a hand in front of Scorpius and saying, "Now hold up, Blondie. First of all, there's no way in hell you could fly faster than my Rosie. She gets her Quidditch genes from her old man, after all." Rose could just make out her uncle Harry bite his tongue at this remark. "And second," Ron continued, now pointing a finger at Scorpius's face. "You don't _ever_ get to speak to my daughter like that. I know you may think us Weasleys are _beneath _you, but I'm not about to tolerate that sort of behavior when it comes to my fourteen year-old girl."

Rose, astonished by Ron's sudden attack on Scorpius, whom he had known was her friend since they met in their first year at Hogwarts, looked at her father with a furious expression. "Dad! How dare you talk to him like that! You know full well he cares less about my blood status than tea-leaf reading, which we all know is complete bullocks." In more of a whisper, she added, "We've had this conversation before, remember?"

Ron didn't look very remorseful, and was still glaring at Scorpius. Harry, catching on to Ron's temper flare, put a hand on his best friend's shoulder and said, "Ron, come on man. You've known Scorpius since he was a little kid, and he's never done anything to remind us of his father. They're different people, okay? And Rose isn't Hermione, either."

At this, Ron finally nodded, accepting the fact that he had crossed a line. "I know. I'm sorry, Rose," Ron said, Rose smiling in return. Turning to Scorpius, he said, "My apologies. Sometimes I get a little over-protective, and you happen to look an awful lot like an old enemy of mine."

Scorpius, who had had his head bent down before now, finally looked back up at Ron and said, "It's okay. I understand. You'd be surprised how many times I get told off just because of the way my dad's treated certain people."

The other four all chuckled at this, but in a wry sort of way. They pitied Scorpius in that moment, though they would never have let him know it.

In an attempt to redirect the conversation to its original topic, Albus turned to the manager, Will (who had remained silent through the Ron-Scorpius spat), and asked, "So, what's the fastest broom you've got?"

"Ah, well," the manager started, happy to be of service again, "I was just telling Mr. Weasley and Mr. Potter here that a brand new broom was shipped in this morning from Bulgaria. It's called the Falcon Flyer. It's by the makers of the old Firebolt, and is being used by the Bulgarian team. As of now, it's the fastest on record and goes from naught to 200 in 10 seconds!"

Rose, Albus, and Scorpius all beamed at once, jaws dropped wide open. The Firebolt had been the best broom around for as long as they could remember; nothing else had ever come close to beating it. This one could apparently go 50mph _faster_.

Ron stood proudly with his arms crossed and said to Rose, "So, what do you think? Are you good enough to handle that?" Ever since Ron had become an Auror, and with Hermione working in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures at the Ministry, they had been earning very good money. Naturally, Ron liked to let people know of his small fortune every chance he got.

Rose laughed it off, though secretly she was quite curious as to how it would feel to fly on the fastest broom in the world. The freedom of it, and all the possibility – would be exhilarating, she thought. Sadly, she knew that the Falcon was much too expensive and not at all necessary, so she turned her focus onto the less extravagant, but still very fast, Nimbus 2021.

"Ah, now that there is also a very good broomstick. Doesn't come close to the Flyer, but what does, eh?" Will said, having noticed Rose's interest in the crimson-colored broom.

They all laughed in response, and after Ron talked to Rose about it, he agreed to get her the Nimbus 2021, and in return she promised to brag about it to Scorpius every chance she got.

After leaving Quality Quidditch Supplies, the three followed Ron and Harry to the Owl Emporium, the last stop of the day, where they were to meet up with Hermione (who had previously been at Madam Malkin's buying robes), Ginny, Lily, Hugo, and James.

As soon as Rose crossed over the threshold into the magical pet store, she was instantly blown away. She had been there many times in previous years, when Albus had gotten his grey owl, Witherwings, and when Scorpius had gotten his pet ferret, Ally. Nevertheless, the riot that was taking place inside the store, with all different sizes of owls flying and squawking overhead, cats prancing across the top of kids' shoulders, and the loud ribbits of the frogs and toads was truly spectacular. Rose had always loved animals, though her family had never had a pet other than their shared owl, Pigwidgeon, and Crookshanks the cat, who had died when Rose was very young.

Rose, Scorpius, and Albus had just walked in when Hugo ran right up to them, yelling and shouting something that was incomprehensible to Rose. After telling him to breathe and slow down, he explained, "Rosie, Rosie, Mum just got me an owl!"

"Wow, that's great!" Rose replied, though she was skeptical of the idea of her trouble-making little brother having his own pet to be responsible for.

"Look, here he is!" Hugo yelled as a miniature white owl with big black spots flew onto his shoulder and nipped at his neck. "Ow! Cow, stop that!"

"Cow?" Albus asked. He (who had always detested animals and other magical creatures) and Scorpius had been hiding behind Rose before, but now that Al had heard the ridiculous name that Hugo had given his new messenger, he had a reason to butt in.

"Yeah, Cow," Hugo explained. "Get it? Pig and Cow. Plus, his spots are perfect!"

Everybody laughed at this, and Hugo looked somewhat hurt by their response. Fortunately, Hermione appeared, and quickly took the attention off of the three cackling teenagers. She immediately went to Ron's side and explained how Hugo had begged for the owl, and that eventually she had had to give in. Ron nodded understandably, though the two parents both had clearly fearful expressions.

About twenty minutes later, the Weasleys, the Potters, and Scorpius were heading back to the Leaky Cauldron, hands full of new books, robes, brooms, and pets. It was getting late, and all had had a long day, so as they approached the fireplace, they each said their goodbyes.

The Potters left first, with James, Ginny, and Lily. Before they departed, Rose gave another large hug to Albus and even one to Scorpius, as they mutually decided to skip over the awkward moment that had occurred earlier that afternoon. Rose was sad to be saying goodbye so soon, but she was well aware that soon they would all be together again, back on the familiar train that would take them to where all the magic was. For now, she would spend the last moments of summer with her family.

After Hermione and Hugo had left, with Hugo's screams of excitement still echoing in the background, Rose and Ron each took a handful of the bright green Floo Powder. The father and daughter duo then stepped into the fireplace, muttering the familiar word of 'home' before they burst into flames and disappeared.

* * *

**_Note: _**_So, what did you think of the first chapter? Please let me know by reviewing. Readers' feedback is always appreciated, in whatever form it comes._

_-Hailey_


	2. Lysander Scamander

**2 - Lysander Scamander**

Platform 9¾ was bustling with families of witches and wizards, all saying their last goodbye to their children who would be gone for the next four months. The Hogwarts Express was a familiar sight for Rose, who was standing on the platform with Hugo, waiting for their parents to come through the magical brick wall behind them. They had told her before that the black and red train was the exact same one that they had once ridden, #5972. This had provided a comfort to Rose in some way, particularly when she was younger. It was as if every time she rode the train, her family was there too, sitting silently in the same cabin as her. Now though, Rose was staring at the train thinking that she no longer needed that comfort. After all, she had a whole other family waiting for her inside the train, and at that moment, the thought of them was all the comfort she needed.

Rose kept this idea in her mind as Ron and Hermione appeared behind her and Hugo. Hermione already looked like she was about to cry, and Ron was holding Hugo back as he tried to run off after a friend who had just boarded the train. The final horn blew then; they only had a minute left to say goodbye.

"Oh, why did we have to get here so late?" Hermione asked. She had always been the prompt one in the family, and it made her very uncomfortable to have so little time to see her kids off.

Nobody answered, though Ron wore a guilty look on his face. He had had to drive them all there, like they did every year on this day. Still, he wasn't quite used to this muggle custom, and along the way he made a number of wrong turns. The confundus charm may have worked to get his license to drive, but it didn't actually help him _learn_ to drive. Unfortunately for the entire family, Ron was just too proud to let Hermione take the wheel instead.

"Oh Mum, does it really matter now?" Rose asked, starting to lose her patience. "The train's going to leave!"

Hearing these words, Hermione snapped right back into focus and said, "Oh of course, Rose, you're right. Well, come on then. Give me a hug." This was of course followed by an extremely tight hug from her mother, from whom Rose had to break apart in order to take a breath.

Rose then turned to her father, who had just given a big old bear hug to Hugo, and looked up at all six feet of him. For some reason, the sadness of leaving sunk in at that moment, as she realized how much she would miss the man she so idolized.

Before Rose began to cry however, Ron pulled her close and kissed the top of her ginger-covered head, which barely reached his chest. He never liked the part when he had to say goodbye to his little girl, this year in particular. Now that Rose was a teenager, and with so much attachment to her friends, Ron felt like she was really growing up. So he stretched out their hug, secretly wishing that he'd never have to let go.

After some time though, Rose broke away, and looked to both of her parents as she gathered up her things. Hugo had already left for the train, but Rose didn't care. "I'll miss you both so much," she said.

Ron and Hermione were now standing together, with Ron's arms around Hermione as she tried desperately to stop her tears from falling. "We'll see you soon," said Hermione.

At that, Rose was reminded of something. "Dad, you and Harry are still planning on coming to DADA soon, right?" she asked. Ever since before any of the kids were born, Ron and Harry had been paying yearly visits to Hogwarts, teaching a special Defense Against the Dark Arts class to fifth years. It was the talk of the school every time the two famous wizards came through, and a class that students looked forward to more than any other.

"Of course!" Ron said. "I wouldn't miss getting to teach my own daughter, plus Harry's got to come and see Al too."

This was reassuring to Rose, and so with the thought that she would be able to see at least one of her parents in the very near future, she said her last goodbye and turned around, just making it onto the train before it started to leave the station.

Though Rose was crying now, she told herself to cheer up, wiped the tear off of her face, and headed through the compartment with her suitcase, looking for Albus and Scorpius.

After she had passed a few rooms, including the one Hugo and Lily were sitting in with some of their other friends, Rose heard the voice of somebody coming from behind her.

"Hey Rose!" the voice called as Rose turned around to see Lucy Weasley running up to her.

"Lucy! It's so good to see you!" Rose replied. Lucy was another of Rose's cousins, the youngest daughter of Ron's older brother, Percy, and his wife Audrey. Lucy, like her mother, had long brown hair that was so dark it was nearly black, the perfect contrast to her pearl white skin and light blue eyes.

"You too! I've missed you all summer," said Lucy. She was now in her fifth year at Hogwarts, like Rose, though she was in Hufflepuff. The two girls had known each other their entire lives, and had always been very close, as Lucy was Rose's best girl friend.

"Yeah, me too. What have you been up to?"

"Oh, well mainly I've been spending a lot of time at the Scamander's. Lorcan and I are…" Lucy trailed off.

"Oh, that's great! How's it going?" Rose knew immediately that this meant that Lucy and Lorcan had become an official couple over the summer. Lorcan, who was Lysander Scamander's twin brother, was also in Hufflepuff, though he was a year older than both Lucy and Rose. Him and Lucy had been friends for years though, and anybody who knew them knew how they had always felt about each other.

"It's… perfect," Lucy explained. "He's amazing. Sometimes I feel like we're the same person, we're just so alike." Lucy had always been sweet and quiet, the exact opposite of most of her fellow Weasleys. From the little time that Rose had spent with Lorcan on the Quidditch pitch (he was a Beater for the Hufflepuff team), he had in fact seemed the same way. Rose had always found it interesting, considering how outgoing and obnoxious his twin brother was.

"Actually," Lucy continued. "I was just headed to his compartment now. Did you want to come? I'd love for you two to meet. Formally, I mean."

"Well, I was on my way to find Al and Scorpius, but I suppose I could spare a minute or two." At that, the two girls headed off until they reached a compartment a few doors down the hall.

As Lucy opened the door to the room, Rose could just make out two light blonde heads of whom she assumed were Lorcan and Lysander, sitting across from someone with a mousy-brown shade of hair whom she would have known anywhere.

"Rose, hi," James said as Rose walked into the compartment, obviously confused as to what she was doing there. He was sprawled across his seat already, clearly only caring about his own comfort.

"Hey, Ginger," somebody said from behind. When Rose turned around, she saw that it was Lysander, and he had suddenly sat up quite straight, looking directly at her. Of the two identical twins, Lysander was the more devious looking. Though physically they were extremely similar, Lysander always had a sly expression on his face, and was extremely arrogant (hence his crude nickname for Rose), which was probably why him and James had so much in common. For a minute though, James wasn't the one Rose was reminded of when she saw the tall, blonde boy with dark green eyes looking at her in a way that she had only seen one person ever look before.

"Hello," Rose said after a long pause. Lysander smirked in response, and then looked down at the floor as Lucy came in and closed the door behind her.

She then walked around to Rose, which took a small amount of maneuvering in the tiny space, and looked toward Lorcan, the nicer looking twin, who was sitting beside his brother.

"Lorcan, this is Rose. Rose, Lorcan," Lucy introduced the two. They both said hello as Rose sat down across from him, James making room for her on his side. Lucy had sat down right next to Lorcan, who put his arm around her shoulder. Lysander, the third wheel on their right, was clearly uncomfortable, but he also didn't seem to feel much like leaving.

"So when did all this happen?" Rose asked, referring to Lucy and Lorcan. "I feel like I really missed something this summer…"

"Oh great, girl talk," James blurted out before Lucy had the chance to answer. "I think I'm going to bow out of this particular conversation, if you don't mind." He then stood up and left the compartment.

With the seat next to Rose now empty, Lysander moved across the room and took James's place. He didn't bother to ask permission to slide closer to Rose, and before she had time to say something, his arm was around her. Rose was slightly surprised by this blunt action, but tried to ignore it, as she figured that Lysander was always like this.

"Actually, it's a funny story," Lucy said, too caught up in her own romance to notice Lysander's behavior.

"Actually, it's really not," Lysander cut in, mimicking Lucy's high-pitched voice. In response to the three looks of disgust he received from Lorcan, Lucy, and Rose, he said, "I mean, come on. We all knew it was bound to happen eventually! You were writing all summer, and after I got sick of hearing everything about it, I convinced Lorcan to get it together and just tell her how he felt."

Lorcan shook his head, clearly disappointed by Lysander, and Lucy tried desperately to hide herself, refusing to say anything as she sunk deeper into her seat. Rose, on the other hand, was just about ready to punch the player in the nose. She would have as well, if it wasn't for Lysander interrupting her thoughts, sitting back and adding, "That's right. Lysander Scamander: the ultimate match-maker."

"Oh come on, Lysander!" Lorcan yelled. "What's your problem?" Though Rose would have loved to add on to the takedown, she decided to leave it to Lorcan. It just wasn't her place.

"Nothing," Lysander answered, shrugging his shoulders. "I'm just making sure Rose here doesn't have to sit through the longest story of all time. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for you mate. But come on, can you not talk about anything else?"

Before Lorcan could reply, Rose decided to finally interject, as she thought it fair to address Lysander after he had mentioned her so matter-of-factly. "Actually, I'd love to hear the story. You can leave if you're not interested. In fact, why don't you go off and find James? After all, he's the only one that can seem to tolerate you."

Lysander snickered in response, nowhere near backing down. Instead, he leaned closer to Rose and said, "Well, I'd rather not leave for a number of reasons. One, Potter's probably off with that Finnigan girl, and I've had enough of people goggling all over each other for one day. And two, how could I _possibly_ leave when I have your pretty face and sassy smirk to look at?"

Rose, who had officially decided that she did not like this particular twin at all, stood from her spot, turned toward Lysander and said, "Well unfortunately, you won't be able to look at me anymore."

To Lorcan and Lucy, she added, "I'm sorry, Lucy. Maybe you could tell me about it later?" Lucy nodded, before Rose opened the door, muttering, "It was nice to finally meet you, Lorcan," before she left the compartment.

Rose had just picked up her suitcase and was about to walk away when Lysander came out of the compartment door behind her. Turning back toward him, she said loudly, "Bloody hell, how much indignity must you spread upon people?"

"Oh, relax," Lysander replied. "I'm sorry for being such a jerk in there. I got a little… nervous." The last word he said seemed to require a lot of force to be let out of his mouth. "I've actually wanted to talk to you about something for a while now."

Suddenly, Rose was reminded of her conversation with James in the Leaky Cauldron the other day, when he had mentioned that Lysander was looking for her. She had forgotten about it before, but now was quite curious as to what Lysander wanted to say. She couldn't imagine it being anything even close to pleasant.

"Let's hear it then," she said, her arms crossed in defiance.

"Well," Lysander started. "Recently I've been thinking about all of the things we have in common. I mean, we both play Quidditch, we're obviously extremely witty, and we have so many mutual friends. I think there's possibility here."

Rose was shocked, especially when she considered how incredibly serious Lysander looked. She had never expected the first time she got asked out to be quite so ridiculous, but decided to just laugh it off and walk away, leaving Lysander standing there with no idea how somebody could turn him down so easily.

A few minutes later, Rose had finally found the compartment that she should have been sitting in all along, with Albus on one side and Scorpius on the other.

As she opened the sliding door and stepped in, both boys looked up at her with expressions full of relief. "Where have you been?" Scorpius asked with concern, as he stood up and took her suitcase, lifting and setting in on the racks above the seats.

Rose sat down next to Scorpius while Albus added, "Yeah, we've been worried sick."

"Oh, I'm sorry. We were late getting here," Rose began to explain.

"Let me guess, your dad was driving?" Albus asked.

"Of course," Scorpius responded for Rose, as he was so used to this happening every year. "But you've been gone for ten minutes since the train left…"

"I ran into Lucy," Rose started to explain, though she didn't go into great detail, since she knew that the boys wouldn't be interested. "Her and Lorcan are together now. But I didn't stay for long, because Lysander was starting to get on my nerves…"

"What did he do?" Scorpius asked, sitting up in interest. Ally, his ferret that had been sitting on his lap, leaped into the air with fright, though Scorpius didn't notice.

"Oh Scorpius, relax. You're scaring Ally. And anyway, it's not even worth telling. Lysander Scamander is just an ass, that's all," Rose replied.

Scorpius swallowed loudly, and Al too looked concerned, but neither decided to push Rose to speak further about it. They had learned long ago that Rose never liked to dwell on the past. She always looked to the future.

After a minute or so of awkward silence between the three, Rose turned toward Scorpius and mentioned, "Scorpius, you've got dirt on your nose by the way. Did you know?" She then pointed to the right side of her own nose and said, "just there".

Scorpius, somewhat flushed, quickly wiped the spot away, and explained, "We had one last game of Quidditch before we left. Unfortunately, Harry's snitch went pretty far into the woods; I must have been hit by a few tree branches along the way. The Potters have some nice land back there though; those woods would make for a wicked camping spot."

"Why in the name of Merlin's beard would you ever want to go camping?" Albus asked. He had never been a big fan of the outdoors, especially when he thought of all the magical creatures that could be lurking around in the dark.

"Yeah, Scorpius. I mean, who knows, there might even be spiders!" Rose said in a teasing way, knowing that Scorpius was afraid of anything that had more than four legs. He had always been great with animals, but insects seemed to get on his nerves.

"Oh, please. I can handle a few spiders," Scorpius replied cockily. "I'd just use a vanishing spell."

"A vanishing spell?" Rose asked, shocked that he could know such a difficult spell so soon. "We're not meant to even begin learning that until midway through this year! McGonagall said so…"

"Yeah, but Scorp's been practicing the incantation all summer," Al explained to Rose. Then, turning back to Scorpius, he added, "Seriously Scorp, I'm beginning to think you're some sort of Transfiguration prodigy."

"Well, it's not like I've actually tried it out yet. I mean, we can't use magic outside of school," Scorpius said, defending himself. "Plus, who are you to talk? You're the Potions _master_, and Rose here can do just about any spell in the book."

Rose blushed, but Albus merely nodded, saying, "Well that's true. I am the Potions master." Scorpius laughed in response, sitting back in his seat again, and lifting his legs to rest atop the seat next to Al.

"But Scorpius, we're technically in school now. How about you try it?" Rose suggested. "The vanishing spell, I mean."

"Oh, well I suppose I could," Scorpius considered. "I mean, it's not like I could be that bad, right?" He then sat up and looked around the compartment, asking, "What should I get rid of?"

Rose and Albus both looked around as well, and then Rose spotted Ally, whose snow-white fur could be seen hiding behind Witherwings, Albus's owl, in his cage. "How about Ally?" Rose asked Scorpius.

"What? You can't be serious!" Scorpius said, shocked at such an absurd suggestion. Ally had been part of the Malfoy family for a very long time, ever since the Potters had told Scorpius the story of how his father had once been transfigured into a white ferret in his fourth year at school.

"Look, we've already learned how to recover something that's been vanished, so you can get her back. Plus, if you can make an _animal_ disappear, then you'll be able to do it on practically anything," Rose explained. She had never particularly cared for the ferret, but was even more interested in making the spell as difficult as possible for Scorpius.

"That's true," Albus agreed. "After all, McGonagall said that most people can barely get past the slugs."

Scorpius considered it for a minute, looking at his pet with worry. Still, he was never one to pass up a challenge, so he reached his long arms through Witherwings's cage and pulled Ally out, who was happy to be in such familiar hands again.

After Scorpius was back in his seat, with his wand pointed at the middle of Ally's back, he muttered the word, "Evanesco".

Before all of their eyes, the ferret quickly disappeared, so hidden that it could have been covered by James Potter's Invisibility cloak for all they knew.

"Bloody hell," Albus and Scorpius said at once. Rose just stared in amazement, still looking at the place where Ally had vanished.

"Yup, you're officially a prodigy," Albus said, and Scorpius smiled with pride. Rose sat back and crossed her arm. This was meant to be one of the hardest spells in the whole area of Transfiguration, and Scorpius had performed it perfectly.

Realizing that Rose was jealous, Albus said to her, "Oh Rose, come on. We both know that there are plenty of spells that you can do that neither of us would get in a million years. I'm sure you've been learning some over the summer?"

Excited by this, Rose perked up and answered, "Well, as a matter of fact I have. I just recently…"

"Actually, Rose," Scorpius interrupted, knowing that Rose was about to experiment with what was sure to be an endless amount of new charms she had read about on her trip. "If you don't mind, could you maybe recover Ally first?"

"Oh, right, of course," Rose responded. She then performed a revealing charm, which was much simpler than the original vanishing spell that Scorpius had used, and Ally was sitting on Scorpius's lap once again.

This was followed by an array of spells that Rose performed within the compartment, using a simple charms spell to lift everything in the room and then rearrange it in the air, and then providing everybody with cups of water, through two charms spells that weren't to be taught until their sixth year at Hogwarts.

Albus joined in on the magic as well, practicing his patronus charm, which his parents had been telling him about over the holiday. Though he was able to successfully produce a small blue spark that sprouted from his long, sandy wand, he could not yet grasp the full animal patronus.

The three friends continued to practice spells and talk about the year ahead of them throughout the rest of the train ride. Soon, they were pulling into Hogsmeade Station, and Rose, Albus, and Scorpius hopped off the train to find all of their fellow classmates. They were jumbled together into one enormous clump of students waiting to board the carriages that would take them to the castle.

Not too far away, a loud voice could be heard roaring over the students' heads. "ALL FIRST YEARS, FOLLOW ME! WE'RE HEADIN' TER THE BOATS."

Rose, Albus, and Scorpius merely smiled and looked at each other, each happy to be hearing the familiar voice of Rubeus Hagrid, their Care of Magical Creatures professor and very good friend, who happened to be an old half-giant, with a beard that trailed on the ground nearly ten feet below him.

After slowly weaving through the groups of impatient and hungry kids, some of whom waved hello as they passed, the three finally reached Hagrid, who was standing in front of a large group of nervous first years, waiting to lead them down the road to the Black Lake.

"Hagrid!" Rose called up as they reached him.

"Rosie? Is tha' you?" Hagrid asked as he looked down to see his young friends. "Al and Scorpius too? Blimey, it's good ter see yeh three!"

"You too, Hagrid," Albus said. "We've missed you this summer."

"Ah, well, o' course yeh have," Hagrid replied. Then, after clearing his throat, he added, "Look, I'd love ter stay an' chat, but I've got a lake to cross, an' yeh three've betta' get ter the castle!"

In response, Rose, Albus, and Scorpius said goodbye to Hagrid, who yelled back, "I'll see yeh at the feast!"

They then made their way to the main road, where the last carriage had just pulled up. They each climbed aboard the horseless wagon that seemed to pull itself, which had only one other passenger along for the ride.

This other girl, who looked as though she was slightly younger than Rose, had straight, mouse brown hair, light brown eyes, and a childish face covered with freckles.

"Hello," Rose said, looking to the girl, who also happened to be holding an enormous, prickly plant in her lap. "You're Professor Longbottom's daughter, right?" Professor Longbottom was the Herbology teacher, and also happened to be the Head of House for Gryffindor.

"Yes. I'm Holly," the girl said. "Um, fourth year. Hufflepuff."

Rose nodded. "Right. I'm Rose. Fifth year, Gryffindor. This is Albus and Scorpius; they're both in Slytherin. Our parents were in the same year, weren't they?"

"Maybe," Holly said. "I wouldn't know though. Us Hufflepuffs, we aren't very observant. We're great finders though!" she added as she looked in the opposite direction.

"Right," Scorpius replied slowly, looking at Holly with a very confused expression. He then looked back to Rose and Albus and rolled his eyes, only to receive a kick in the knee by Rose.

As the carriage started to move, all three remained completely silent, clearly uncomfortable with the presence of Holly. The stillness was broken quickly though, when somebody leaped onto the carriage from the back, causing Rose, Albus, and Scorpius to all jump in their seats. Holly remained perfectly stagnant, unaware of the new member of the group.

James Potter scooted in next to Rose, and said, "Hey. How's it going?"

Rose laughed at James's surprise visit, none too shocked by her troublemaker cousin. "James, this is Holly Longbottom," she said, motioning to the girl sitting across from her.

"Hi," James said, though Holly didn't reply. Looking to Albus, he whispered, "What's up with her?"

Albus just shook his head, telling his older brother not to bother, and James let it go. Turning back to Rose, he said, "So I heard about what happened with you and Lysander. He feels pretty bad about it."

"What happened? What did he do?" Scorpius asked, suddenly curious.

Ignoring Scorpius, Rose responded sarcastically to her cousin with, "Really? Does he?"

After a moment of consideration, James answered, "No, probably not. But I do. I told him at least twenty times that you were way too clever to fall for his act."

Rose rolled her eyes, not noticing Scorpius's glare on her other side, and said, "Well, there's not much of an act to fall for, quite honestly."

"True," James said. "But as his friend, it is my duty to tell you that he deserves a second chance. He's not all bad. At least not _all_ the time."

"Pshh, yeah right. What a slime," Scorpius complained.

Rose laughed, but didn't have the chance to respond, as Holly stated, "There was a Greek god named Scamander. Did you know that?"

After that comment, nobody spoke for the rest of the ride to the castle. Once their carriage past through the front gates, it lined up with all of the others along the side of the road, and everybody stepped off.

The ride had been very dark, and the trees along the way hadn't provided anything particularly interesting to look at, but now Rose was facing the back of the castle, all lit up under the starry night sky. It had been rebuilt after the infamous battle that had taken place there when her parents were young, but they claimed it looked just the same. Every year, she would admire the enormous walls, and how beautiful the place was, but then she would forget about it over the summer. It really was magnificent, with its semi-gothic style and tall towers at every corner. She had never been anywhere quite like it.

After all the students were directed through the front doors and toward the Great Hall, they were told to divide into their four houses. This was where Rose and James left Albus and Scorpius, heading off to the Gryffindors, who were always the last to enter the Hall. James left Rose shortly afterward, going to find the one of the Finnigan girls.

As Rose came into contact with all of her housemates, she was bombarded with people who were asking how her summer was. They were all pushed aside, however, when Hugo came running through the crowd and right up to Rose, saying, "Rose! Rose! I've been looking for you for _ages_!"

"Hugo, calm down!" Rose yelled. "What's wrong?" It was normal for Hugo to be in such frenzy, but it wasn't normal for him to be coming up to Rose about it. During the school year, Hugo never did anything other than plan how to make her life miserable, so they weren't exactly the closest siblings.

"Look!" Hugo cried, as he held up his wand in his hands for her to see. It had been broken in half, the dragon heartstring core flopping out of the chestnut wood. "What am I going to do? Mum will _kill_ me…"

"You're right, she will," Rose replied.

"You mean you can't repair it? I thought you were good at charms!"

"Of course I am, Hugo, but this is really far gone. How did it happen anyway?" Rose asked.

"Well, it's sort of a long story. Me and Lily were…"

"Lily and _I_," Rose corrected, ignoring the face Hugo made at her. "And how about we skip to the part where it actually broke?"

"Fine! It was Cow," Hugo stated.

"Cow?" Rose asked, just to make sure that she had heard correctly. After all, how could a miniature owl break a wand, which is supposed to be awfully strong, completely in half?

"Yes, Cow! He sort of tried to eat it while we were on the train." Hugo now wore a guilty expression, and looked down, swallowing hard.

"Oh, Hugo," Rose exhaled. "Mum never even wanted to get you the owl in the _first_ place!"

"I know," Hugo said, his head still down. He was constantly making trouble, but he knew when he had done something extreme. In this case, he most definitely had, and was just waiting for the punishment.

"Gryffindors, if you could all line up please! We'll be moving into the Great Hall shortly!" yelled Professor Longbottom. He was a stout-looking man, and could act a little strange, but he was lovable at the same time. He was also one of the youngest teachers to be a House Head.

Realizing they had little time left to discuss the matter, Rose came up with a plan for Hugo's wand problem. "Look," she said. "We can't do anything about it right now. Give it to me, and I'll see if I can think of something. But Hugo, I'm warning you that the chances of you being able to use this wand again are _very_ slim, so you have to promise me that you will write to Mum and Dad about this first thing tomorrow morning. Is that a deal?"

"Yes," Hugo said, bobbing his head at the floor. He then handed her the wand.

"Alright then. Now go on back to your friends; I know you don't want to be hanging around me anyway," Rose said, in an effort to cheer up her little brother.

Hugo smiled, and said, "Thanks, Rosie. I'll see you later." He then turned and ran off as fast as lightning, clearly ready to be rid of his disciplinarian older sister. He may have been acting guilty before, but Rose wasn't fooled. She knew that he had just been looking for pity. This one time only, she had been nice enough to show him some.

Before Rose could even speak with anybody else, Longbottom yelled, "Alright, Gryffindor, it's us now!" This was followed by a slow procession into the Great Hall, where all the Gryffindors took their seats along the long table near the far wall, next to Hufflepuff. Rose sat next to James on one side, with Hugo on her other. Across from her was Fred Weasley, her younger cousin, and his best friend, Lila Jordan. They were both in their fourth year.

A few moments after all the Gryffindors had taken their seats and Professor Longbottom had made it to his own at the long, horizontally placed staff table in front of the four vertical ones, the enormous double doors at the opposite end of the Hall opened yet again. In came Professor McGonagall, the Headmistress at Hogwarts, who walked down the middle of the Hall, in between the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables. The tall, gray-haired woman was followed by the anxious group of first years, who were all ooing and awing at the floating candles in the ceiling above them.

The eleven year-olds barely noticed when McGonagall stopped walking, cast her wand over an empty stool, and on it appeared a ratty old hat. This was one of Rose's favorite parts of the year. The Sorting Hat would always sing a song about the four houses and the founding fathers of Hogwarts. It was a great opportunity for Rose to learn even more about her school, through the voice of an object that had been there since the very beginning.

The first years stared at the hat in complete wonder, but it was when it opened its brim like a mouth and began to sing that it really caught their interest, and the rest of the school silenced immediately:

"_Welcome back to those of you_

_Whom I have sat upon._

_And welcome to all the rest_

_Whom have yet to try me on._

_For those of you who do not know_

_The story of our school,_

_It started with four best friends_

_And ended with a duel._

_The fair and beautiful Hufflepuff_

_Treated all wizards the same._

_The frail and clever Ravenclaw_

_Was best at number games._

_But it was the brave hearted Gryffindor_

_Who made sure to win the fight_

_Against the enemy Slytherin,_

_For his beliefs were not quite right._

_The serpent house considered_

_Blood to be most important_

_In the creation of a brilliant wizard,_

_And thus was how they sorted._

_But now the times have changed_

_And we all know that mud,_

_Muggles, and halfs alike_

_Are no less than the purest blood._

_Still, you must be warned_

_That while recent years have stayed true_

_A step back will soon be taken _

_Before we can start anew._

_While I do not often speak_

_Of that with which I am not concerned,_

_I do think you ought to know_

_That yet again, the times have turned._

_So before I sit upon your head_

_And decide where you belong_

_I must urge you all to look to the birds,_

_For their songs will keep us strong._

_But alas, I have gone too far_

_For I have a job to do._

_So bring up all the little ones_

_While we wait for the feast to brew!"_

Once the song was finished, something odd occurred. While many of the younger students burst into applause and cheers, the older ones held their celebration. For all the years that Rose had been at Hogwarts, the hat had never spoken about any danger. From what Rose had heard from others, the hat also never lied. As the first child was called upon to take their spot on the stool, and as the hat roared, "SLYTHERIN!" Rose ignored the cheers from the table on the opposite side of the Hall. What did it mean when it said that, _'yet again, the times have turned'?_ she thought.

Having no idea where it was all coming from, she asked James, "What d'you reckon that was all about?"

"I dunno," he said, though he was staring curiously at the hat, which had just called out, "RAVENCLAW!" to a scrawny looking boy. "I wouldn't worry about it though. The hat's known to say some wacky things."

"But I thought it never lied? Isn't that what your parents always told you?" Rose asked.

"Yeah," James said reluctantly. "I guess I just don't really _want _to believe it."

Rose let it go, turning back to the first years and cheering as the hat called, "GRYFFINDOR!" to one of the new students. She decided that she would try and wait to think about it until she could speak with Albus and Scorpius, both of whom also had confused expressions on their faces as Rose spotted them from across the Hall.

After the rest of the first years had been sorted and had taken their seats at the end of their designated house tables, Professor McGonagall stepped forward once more to give a short speech before the banquet would begin.

"Welcome," she announced, as the room was suddenly filled with claps and cheers from every side. "Welcome back to a new year at Hogwarts."

After a slew of more cheers and plenty of smiles from all the students, McGonagall continued, "Now before we begin our feast, I would first like to introduce all first years to the school's staff." She then motioned toward the horizontal table that was sitting just behind her.

McGonagall then named off all the teachers, starting on one side of the table, and ending on the other. First was Professor Patil, a young Indian woman who taught Astrology. Next was Flitwick, the old elf who taught Charms class, and who also served as the Head of Ravenclaw. Rose was one of his favorite students, and she had always loved his endless amount of energy that he brought to every class, never allowing for a dull moment. This was the opposite of Professor Binns, the ghost who taught History of Magic, and tended to make all his students wish that he had _stayed_ dead. Binns was followed by Professor Longbottom, and then came Professor Pontner, a short woman who taught Potions. She was the Head of Hufflepuff. The core class professors were followed by those who taught the options classes, including the extremely odd Divination teacher, Professor Trelawney, Hagrid, and Professor Weasley, Rose's grandfather, who taught Muggle Studies.

However, McGonagall had skipped over a teacher whom Rose didn't recognize, and she quickly realized that her old Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher was missing from the group. "You may have noticed," continued McGonagall, "That Professor Smethley is no longer with us. She is currently with a child, and will therefore not be returning to Hogwarts for at least one year."

All the students starting making noises of surprise, asking each other if they had heard anything about their previous teacher. "However," McGonagall raised her voice, trying to regain the students' attention. "We have found a replacement for Mrs. Smethley. May I introduce Professor Shunpike, your new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and Head of Slytherin House." She then motioned to the pimply man, who looked to be in his mid to late forties, sitting just behind her. Everybody clapped, welcoming the new member of Hogwarts as he waved hello to all.

Rose didn't recognize Shunpike, though she could have sworn that she had heard his name before. Yet again, she didn't have time to think much of it, as McGonagall seemed to have even more to say. "As many of you may be wondering about, the new Head student of each house, along with their fifth year prefects, have not been officially assigned yet." This grabbed Rose's full attention immediately. She had been working to become a prefect for four years now, and so when she had received her letter from Hogwarts at the end of this summer, she had looked through it ravenously, hoping to find a sheet telling her that she would be one of the two new Gryffindor prefects. Unfortunately, it hadn't been there. She hadn't told anybody, especially her parents, since she was too embarrassed to admit that she may not have been chosen after all. Now, though, it sounded as though there was still some hope.

"This is because," McGonagall went on. "We have felt for many years now that the chosen prefects and heads deserve more whole school recognition than one letter can give. Hence we have determined a new policy: from now on, house officials will be announced before the Welcome Feast, at the beginning of every year. A subsequent letter will be sent home to each of those students' parents, explaining their important new role within the school.

As McGonagall then began naming the new Ravenclaw prefects, followed by their Head Girl, Rose's stomach felt as if it were about to fly away without her. Whole school recognition was something she would greatly appreciate, but it would make it even worse if she _didn't_ get recognized.

The Headmistress was now announcing the prefects for Hufflepuff, and Rose cheered loudly when Lucy's name was announced. Next was Gryffindor, and Rose could barely contain herself.

"And the prefects for Gryffindor are Bobby Dormer and Rose Weasley." Rose smiled and slouched back in relief as Hugo whistled and James patted her on the back.

"Congratulations, Rose! You know, being a prefect is a _lot _of responsibility," James said. He too was a prefect, though most believed that the only reason for this was because of his superior Quidditch skills, as he had never been the responsible type. "Oh, who am I kidding? You'll be perfect."

"This year's Head Boy is Gryffindor's Sam Thomas." Rose cheered for Sam, having regained her composure. Sam, like all Heads, was a seventh year, and had always been very nice to Rose. He was a Beater on the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and was dating fellow Chaser and seventh year, Cassidy Finnigan. They had been together for years, and were barely ever seen apart.

"And finally, the new prefects for Slytherin are Scorpius Malfoy and Patty Parkinson," announced McGonagall. Rose cheered the loudest for Scorpius, and looked over at his stunned expression. Like James, he had never been much of the responsible kind. In fact, Rose would have thought that Albus would have been prefect, as he was much more involved with his fellow classmates. Still, Rose was happy that at least one of them had been given the opportunity.

"Now, congratulations to all! Your first meetings will be held after dinner in your house common room. But no more interference; may the feast begin!" As McGonagall finished off her sentence, hundreds of dishes on every table were suddenly filled with food: various different meats, every possible type of cooked potato, piles of peas and carrots, and cauldrons full of gravy. Rose dug in, having eaten barely anything since before she boarded the train. She merely chuckled at the familiar sight of Hugo holding up two drumsticks of chicken, one in each hand, and taking turns biting from each one.

After all had finished eating (including the piles of cake and pudding that was provided for dessert), the plates vanished and students were dismissed to their houses, where their bags were already waiting for them.

As Rose made her way out of the Great Hall, somebody was lurking in the corner, eyeing her. She rolled her eyes, but James reminded her from behind, "Just give him a chance. He really likes you."

Rose looked to James with an expression that said, _do I have to?_, but decided to do as he said nonetheless. As she turned around to approach Lysander, James whispered, "The password's 'caput leonis'. I'll cover for you at the meeting." Rose nodded in thanks.

"Lysander," she sighed as she neared the boy who was now dressed in his blue and silver school robes. "Look, I…"

"No," Lysander interrupted. "Rose, I know you don't like me very much, but I like you – a lot. And all I'm asking is that you try to get to know me a little better, and that you let me get to know you."

Rose felt guilty, since Lysander's explanation seemed genuinely honest, but she also didn't want to pretend to feel something she didn't, especially when she knew how he could be. "Lysander, I can't. I'm sorry."

Lysander looked down at the floor for a moment, before looking back at Rose, and asking, "It's him, isn't it? You like that other guy you're with all the time?"

Rose blushed, but, in an effort to hide it, blurted out, "Who, Scorpius? Oh, no, no, no. No. No. I mean, I – I – I mean, we're just… friends, i-is what I mean."

"Huh, right," Lysander said, smirking back at Rose. "And how's that goin' for you?"

"What do you mean?" Rose asked.

"It's just that," Lysander started. "He doesn't even seem to have the balls to tell you how he feels. He's a coward."

"He is _not _a coward! How dare you say something like that!" Rose said. "He's just… he has a lot of other things on his mind, that's all."

"Oh, please. If I were him, I'd do it pretty bloody soon, 'cause with you looking like that, there's no time to waste."

"Alright, that's it," Rose stated, about to turn around and leave.

"No, Rose, wait!" Lysander yelled, grabbing her arm in the process and steering her back to him. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that, even though it's true."

Rose didn't say anything, but she didn't try to leave either. After a minute of silence, she was losing her patience, so she asked, "What is this about, Lysander?"

"Look, it's like I said, I like you. And I realize that you may not like me back. Even so, I'd like to spend some more time with you, and who knows? Maybe seeing you hanging around me all the time might finally give Malfoy the incentive he's been needing to man up, and to come claim you as his own."

"Ugh, you're disgusting!" Rose yelled. "You know, girls aren't just cattle that boys can buy, sell, and trade as they please. We have our own ideas as well!"

Lysander didn't say anything, but just smirked at her retaliation. This was a game for him, and he loved to watch her fluster.

Eventually, Rose sighed and walked away, only to hesitate a moment later when Lysander called after her, "You know, he's never going to tell you! Unless you don't do something about it, you'll just be waiting around for him year after year. And who knows, he might just find a different ginger he likes better!" Lysander than walked away in the opposite direction, leaving Rose staring after _him_ this time.

Rose had never even admitted her feelings for Scorpius to herself, but to hear them from somebody else was somewhat of an eye opener. After all, she did want to be with Scorpius, and she most definitely didn't want to see him with anybody else, especially Lily.

As Rose reached the seventh floor and approached the portrait of the Fat Lady that guarded the entrance into Gryffindor tower, she said the password and was let in.

She had missed the prefect meeting, but knew that James would fill her in tomorrow. As she walked into the common room, she was met with an array of older students, as the younger ones had already been told to go off to bed. The cozy living room was filled with boys and girls who seemed oddly paired off. Sam and Cassidy were lying on the couch in front of the fireplace, James was off in a corner snogging the younger Finnigan girl, and even Fred and Lila were sitting together at the table, Lila laughing hysterically at one of Fred's jokes. Rose had never noticed these things before, but now it was all she could see.

Rose then walked up to her dormitory, where a few other fifth year girls were already unpacking. She joined them, and then put her pajamas on as she climbed into her red and gold colored bed. As she laid there, her head slowly sinking into the puffy pillow, she thought about all that had happened that day. She had only been back at Hogwarts for one afternoon, but already there was so much to think of. What had the Sorting Hat been talking about? Who was this new teacher she thought she recognized? Why hadn't Albus gotten prefect instead of Scorpius? Scorpius… the foremost thought in her mind.

As she wondered if Lysander was right about Scorpius, Rose remembered something else that had happened today, and that was also fairly odd. She slowly turned onto her side, and pulled Hugo's broken wand off the nightstand that sat on her right. The wand was irreparable, she could tell. Curiously, the heartstring core, though snapped in half, still felt as tough as ever. How could something so strong, so perfectly fit, not stay together?

Her and Scorpius had always been friends, he had always been her family, and Rose had promised herself that she would never do anything to break that apart. _But perhaps it was in fact possible to make their relationship even stronger? _she thought. And perhaps it would in fact require a slight bend if it were to be stretched further, but maybe that was okay? After all, the more pliable the wand, the stronger it was.

Rose continued to think on Lysander's proposition until she had made a final decision. It was then that she began to drift off into perfect, undisturbed slumber, just waiting for the morning birds to sing their song that would signal a brand new day.


	3. Shunpike and Filch

**3 – Shunpike and Filch**

Albus was hunched over, staring down at the black and white board as one of his pawns was destroyed by Scorpius's white knight. Rose watched the game as she walked into the Great Hall for breakfast, heading toward her two best friends. It was the first day of classes, and she still hadn't had the chance to talk to them since the feast from the day before.

"And, check mate," Scorpius said lazily, as if it had been the easiest game he had ever played. He then sat back and started to clean up the board with a charms spell.

"Blimey," Albus said in surprise and frustration. "Am I _ever_ going to be able to win against you?"

Scorpius laughed and said, "Well, you have other talents. I guess you'll just have to leave the chess playing to me."

"How about I just leave everything to you then?" Albus muttered under his breath, though Rose could tell that Scorpius had heard based on his expression.

She was just sitting down now, next to Scorpius on the long bench, and said reluctantly, "Hi".

Scorpius turned toward her and said, "Hey." They both then looked to Al, who didn't speak.

"We haven't seen you in a while," Scorpius said to Rose, choosing to ignore Albus's lack of interest in the conversation. "Where'd you go off to last night?"

"What do you mean? I just went back to the common room, like everybody else. I was busy trying to fix Hugo's wand. He broke it on the train," Rose rambled, showing Scorpius the cracked piece of wood.

"Oh, is that why he looks so put out?" Scorpius asked, leaning forward to look at Hugo, who was sitting toward the end of the table.

He had a pile of crumpled paper in front of him, with ink splattered all around. His fire-red hair looked like it was in flames as he started to repeatedly bang his head against the table. "He does, doesn't he?" Rose said.

As Rose and Scorpius turned back toward Albus, who had still not sat up once more, a loud hooing sound was heard, and the Great Hall was quickly filled with barn, snowy white, and miniature owls, all flying toward students to hand over the first letters of the year.

Rose looked up at them just as Pigwidgeon was darting toward her. The old, tiny bird slowed down in time to slide across the table and into Rose's lap. He then looked up at the familiar face and spat out the letter he was holding.

"Thanks Pig," Rose said, taking the letter and placing the family owl back onto the table, where he started nibbling on her bowl of muesli. She then opened up the letter from her parents and started reading:

_Dear Rose,_

_ Hope you had a great first day at school. We heard word that you were chosen to be prefect for Gryffindor. Congratulations! We're both so proud (we were prefects in our 5__th__ year as well). _

_Your uncle Harry also informed us that Stan Shunpike will be your new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Harry used to know him when we were in school, but I never realized he had become a teacher. Let me know how you like him!_

_Send our love to your grandfather, as well as Neville of course. We hope that both you and Hugo are doing well, and will write again soon._

_Love from,_

_Mum and Dad _

Hugo was standing behind Rose when she finished reading, and as she looked up at him he asked, "Is that from Mum?" He then swallowed hard, clearly nervous.

"Yes," Rose answered. "But don't worry, she hasn't heard about your wand. Not yet, anyway."

At that, Hugo sighed with relief, but still looked slightly worried. "So you didn't fix it then?"

"No, not yet, but I am trying," Rose said apologetically.

"Rose, how am I going to tell her? Especially after _you_ got prefect. It'll just make me seem even _more_ disappointing."

Rose didn't know how to respond, but Hugo wasn't paying attention anyway. Finally with somebody else to blame, he perked up and shouted, "Rose, this is all your fault! Why do you have to be such a good person all the time?" He then turned around and walked back to his seat, took a new sheet of paper, and tried writing to his parents yet again.

Rose was about to try and put the overdramatic Hugo in his rightful place, but decided it wasn't worth it. After all, she had something else on her mind. Her parents had mentioned Hogwarts' new professor, whom she had thought she recognized from the night before.

"Al," Rose started, "My parents mentioned that your dad knows the new professor, Shunpike."

Finally, Al looked up (though drearily), asking, "Really? He's never mentioned him before."

"Didn't he seem a bit shady to you?" Scorpius asked. "He looks like he's been through war and back with all the scarring on his face."

"Well, he probably has," Rose said. "Most Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers work as Aurors first. And if Harry knows him, he must've fought with our parents in the Battle of Hogwarts."

"Maybe we should ask him about it in class?" Al suggested. "When do we have DADA anyway?"

"I dunno'," answered Scorpius. "We should be getting our schedules any minute now."

A few moments later, Flitwick came into the Hall, flying all of the Ravenclaw schedules to their respective students. In the corner of the room, Rose spotted a tall blonde catch one of the papers in his hand. She knew that she needed to talk to him, but now wasn't the time.

Professor Pontner came in next, followed by Shunpike, who walked all but two steps into the hall before placing the pile of Slytherin schedules on their table and then turning around to leave. Scorpius and Al both got up from their seats to collect their schedules, too lazy to perform a summoning charm for them.

Professor Longbottom was the last of the four Heads to walk into the Hall, as was usual. His papers were flying everywhere, and it was obvious that he had failed to keep them all together. Seeing him flailing about, Rose stepped up and walked over to him.

"Professor, may I help you?" she asked, taking half of his sheets and setting them down on the Gryffindor table as other students came to collect them.

"Oh, thank you Rose." Longbottom said.

"You're welcome," Rose replied. "By the way, Professor, I'm sorry I wasn't able to make it to the prefect meeting yesterday. I promise it won't happen again."

"Oh, I know that, Rose. I'm sure you'll be the perfect prefect. You are just like your mother, after all. And your father… well, he wasn't all bad."

After a moment of not knowing what to say, Rose spat out, "Um, thank you. They said to say hello to you, my parents."

"Oh, well hello back! Unfortunately, I can't stay and chat right now. I've got to get to the greenhouse for my second years class, but I'll see you in Herbology!"

"Have a nice day, Professor," Rose ended, before grabbing her schedule and heading out of the Great Hall, where Al and Scorpius were waiting for her.

"Looks like we've got Care of Magical Creatures first," Scorpius said. This was one of the optional classes, so all 5th years who had chosen it would be in the same period, regardless of their house.

"Well, that's good, isn't it?" Rose asked. "We'll get to see Hagrid again."

"Yeah, but look what we have for our double last period," Al said.

Rose looked down at her paper as she was told, only to see that last period, she did indeed have a double period of Defense Against the Dark Arts with the Slytherins. "Well, maybe he won't be so bad?" Rose asked, though she already didn't believe what she was saying. Al and Scorpius gave her a look that said they didn't believe her either.

On their way to Hagrid's Hut, which was on the side of the Forbidden Forest, the three past a group of Slytherin boys walking down the hall in the opposite direction. They were led by Vincent Goyle, an extremely large 7th year boy. Goyle was exactly like his father, Gregory, who had once been a friend of Draco Malfoy's: tall, burly, and dimwitted. The two boys trailing behind him were exactly the same, only not quite so giantess.

"Oi, Potter!" Goyle called. Albus turned toward him, Rose and Scorpius right behind. "How does it feel to have your best friend get prefect, huh? Not Daddy's little boy anymore, are we?"

"Oh, that's it!" Scorpius shouted as he sprang toward Goyle to defend his friend. Luckily for Goyle, Albus held Scorpius back.

"He's not worth it mate," Albus said. "I mean, we both know he's already as dumb as a doornail. Imagine how he'd be if you blew his brains out even more?"

After the minute that it took for Goyle to understand the joke, his entire face turned a bright shade of furious red. "You keep going like that Potter, and it'll be your little _half-blood _cousin next!" he yelled at Al. When Scorpius looked like he was about to leap at him again, Goyle added, "Oh don't worry, Malfoy. These two may be in for it, but your name should save you."

Albus and Scorpius continued to battle it out with Goyle, and before long a crowd had formed around them in the hall. Rose was standing just beside the three boys, trying not to listen in on what Goyle was saying about her. Not far from her was a Slytherin girl whom Rose didn't recognize. She looked to be around her age, but couldn't be a 5th year, as she wasn't in any of Rose's classes. The girl had pale skin and dark brown hair that was almost black, like Lucy's, but it was much wavier. As she looked to Rose, she could see the girl's bright green eyes, the exact same as Al's. She looked guilty in some way, and hurt, as if something that Goyle had said was directed at her rather than Rose. Unfortunately, Rose didn't get the chance to speak with her, or even get her name, before she ran off through the crowd.

"What the devil is going on here?" somebody screamed as he approached the crowd. Rose didn't even need to look over to see who it was. She could have recognized the screech of Hogwarts caretaker Argus Filch from anywhere. Him and his red-eyed cat, Mrs. Norris, had been at Hogwarts for quite some time, and both were now very old. Filch had grey hair and barely any teeth, and walked with a cane. Mrs. Norris, oddly enough, seemed healthier than her owner, as she was still able to walk just fine. She too, however, was beginning to go grey.

As Filch pushed his way through the crowd, not hesitating to knock half the students down as he passed, Goyle, Albus, and Scorpius silenced. All three were still glaring at one another, though they were desperately trying to keep a safe distance between themselves. "Boys," Filch spat, his eyes widening with the pleasure of possibly giving this year's first punishment.

"Do you need to take a visit to see the Headmistress? Huh?" He was speaking to Al and Scorpius, Rose noticed, already assuming that Goyle was innocent. Filch had always sided with bullies, as he was one himself.

Albus and Scorpius remained silent, not bothering to explain themselves. If anything, a visit to McGonagall would be better than having Filch yell at them some more. She would at least take the time to listen to their side of the story.

"Not talking, eh?" Filch asked. "Alright then, you two'd betta' follow me."

As Filch and Mrs. Norris, who had been trailing behind him, were about to turn around and lead the two boys to McGonagall's office, a small chuckling could be heard behind everyone.

"What was that?" Filch barked. At his command, Peeves the poltergeist flew out from behind a statue and threw a shiny-looking rock at the ugly old man whom he loved to torment. Filch ducked, and the rock hit the ground. Just as he was about to run after Peeves, the entire hallway went black with a smoky quality to the air.

Peeves, still chuckling in the background, called out, "Instant darkness powder! Imported from Peru. Can't catch me now, can you?" Rose could just hear Filch's reciprocal growl as his cane thumped all about the floor. He may not have been able to see Peeves, but he wouldn't let that stop him.

Meanwhile, the distraction provided Rose, Albus, and Scorpius to run out of the crowd and through the back doors, avoiding both Filch and Goyle. Once outside the castle and in the fresh air, the three caught their breaths, and Albus said, "That was a close one."

Scorpius nodded, and Rose said, "Things never do change here, do they?"

"Ha, yeah," Albus said. "Just another run-in with Filch and Peeves. Same old, same old."

It was true that things seemed exactly the way they had always been, even though they had only been back at Hogwarts for a day. Still, Rose didn't mind. In fact, she loved the familiarity of it all. She could only think of one thing she would ever want to change, and she had finally come up with a way to make that happen. Unfortunately, now wasn't the time for Rose to be thinking about such things, but she couldn't help it.

Rose shoved the thought to the very back of her mind, and the trio ran down the hill to the outside of Hagrid's Hut, where the half-giant was standing in his enormous pumpkin patch. A group of fellow 5th years were gathered around, though there was one boy whom Rose didn't recognize. He was scrawny, had strawberry-blonde hair, and was standing very close to Hagrid, away from the rest of the kids. Curiously, he also wasn't wearing any Hogwarts robes.

"Come on over, yeh' three!" Hagrid shouted as Rose and company approached the crowd.

"Right," he continued in his rough tone that was just barely understandable. "Well, now that we're all here, I'd like ter introduce yer to Colin Creevey, the second."

Hagrid then motioned toward the boy Rose had noticed before, and explained, "Colin here is Nigel's older brother." Nigel Creevey was a third year Gryffindor, and Rose knew him well, as he was very good friends with Hugo. She had never known that he had an older brother, and was still wondering why he wasn't actually a student at Hogwarts.

"He's goin' ter be helpin' me out with some of the game, and is also ter be helpin' Mister Filch with his cleanin' duties. Now, Colin's new ter Hogwarts, so everybody try and be nice!"

"Why isn't he going to classes like us?" an Indian boy from Ravenclaw asked. He had addressed the question to Hagrid, even though Colin surely could have answered himself.

"Well, that's not really any of yer business, is't?" Hagrid shouted at her, clearly trying to protect a secret of Colin's.

Into Rose's ear, Scorpius whispered, "What d'you reckon's the deal?" Al was also awaiting an answer.

"I dunno'," Rose answered quietly, though this wasn't entirely true. Rose was fairly certain she did in fact know why Colin couldn't actually attend Hogwarts. However, if her hunch was right, it wasn't something that people would be particularly open to.

Once the class had realized that they were not to ask any questions regarding Colin, they followed Hagrid and the boy down to the Black Lake. For the rest of the period, they tended to Hagrid's newborn Grindylows. They had already learned all about the pale green creatures in their third year, but Hagrid wanted to start them all off with something simple.

After the class was over, the trio split up, Al and Scorpius heading to the Astronomy Tower with the Hufflepuffs, and Rose off to Charms with the Ravenclaws.

At the end of a relatively slow lesson with Professor Flitwick, it was time for Lunch. Normally, Rose would be pleased for this time of the day, looking forward to relaxing with her two best friends. Today, however, was different. Today, Rose wasn't going to sit with Al and Scorpius, but instead was headed for a group of 6th years at one of the middle tables in the Great Hall. She and Lysander needed to talk, and Rose wasn't willing to put it off any longer, no matter how awkward she expected it to be.

Lysander was sitting across from James and one of the Finnigan girls, whom the eldest Potter had his arm around. As Rose approached them, James gave a nod at Lysander to turn around. When he did, seeing Rose, he stood up from the stool and greeted her.

"Hey, Rose," he said. Quietly, he added, "So, I assume you've made a decision?"

Rose, feeling self-conscious, just nodded and looked over at James, trying to tell him to give them some privacy. Understanding immediately, James stood up, leading the girl to a spot further down the table where Lorcan and Lucy were sitting.

Now that they had some room to themselves, Lysander sat back down, and Rose took the spot next to him.

"So," Lysander started, after a moment of silence. He seemed to be able to tell that Rose wasn't going to start the conversation herself, and that he should take the initiative instead. "Do I have to guess or are you gonna' help me out here?"

Rose was already uncomfortable, and Lysander's blunt question was only making it worse. Not knowing how to explain, she merely stated, "Yes".

At first, Lysander looked slightly confused, but after a moment of Rose raising her eyebrows at him, her decision seemed to sink in some. To make sure his hunch was correct, he asked, "Yes?"

"Yes," Rose said quickly.

Lysander smiled at the confirmation, but his smile soon turned into a smirk as he said, "So how're you going to tell him?"

Rose was caught off guard by this, but tried to keep her strength up. She was not about to back down to Lysander's arrogance. "I'm not," she said. She hadn't actually thought about how she would tell Scorpius that she and Lysander were now dating, or _if_ she would even tell him, but wanted Lysander to think that she had a foolproof plan in the works.

"Really?" Lysander asked. "Well, I never knew Rose Weasley, the _brightest_ witch in her year, could be so deceitful."

"Year?" Rose asked, fighting his comment. "More like _generation._ And I'm not being deceitful. It's none of his business. If it were, than I wouldn't be in this position."

"Right," Lysander said.

Sensing his sarcasm, Rose explained, "Lysander, you do realize that Scorpius is the only reason I'm doing this with you, right?"

"Well, we'll see about that, won't we?" Lysander challenged her.

From Rose's perspective, however, Lysander had just taken things a step too far. If this was going to work in the slightest, he needed to learn his place. Still, she didn't want him to feel as though she was using him, so she responded in the kindest way she could, "Lysander, please. If that's how you think this will end up, then just call it off now. I don't want to disappoint you."

"Relax," Lysander said after a moment, though his cool demeanor wasn't completely convincing. "Look, I stated the terms last night. We both have our own reasons."

Before Rose could question him again, Lysander added with a wink, "That being said, it doesn't mean that I can't flirt a little."

Initially, Rose was somewhat insulted, but sensed Lysander's sarcasm once again, and laughed it off with him. Normally, she would be more on the ball with such hidden meanings, but the guilt that she felt was overpowering her thoughts. She tried continuously to deny it, as she knew that what she was doing wasn't really worthy of it, but felt it nonetheless.

This feeling was only heightened when she caught Scorpius's eye from the Slytherin table across the Hall. He was sitting across from Albus, but was looking directly at Rose, and at the blonde beside her. He was too far for Rose to see what sort of expression he wore, but she could tell that he was concerned, as he still hadn't looked away. The guilt was now terribly present in Rose's stomach, but yet again she tried to push the feeling away. Concern was exactly what she wanted from Scorpius, wasn't it?

"Oh, so we should probably make plans to go do something then?" Lysander asked, leaning in and interrupting Rose's gaze.

Having been pulled back to the conversation, Rose nodded before she had even registered Lysander's question.

"Alright, well what do you want to do? I'd normally suggest Hogsmeade, but it's closed for the first two weeks. This isn't a problem for me of course, but I do know how much you just love rules."

"Right," Rose said, finally understanding what he was talking about. "Um," she added, trying to think of an alternative location for their 'first date', "Maybe we could just play some Quidditch or something? I could use the practice anyway."

"Sure," Lysander said. "I'm not sure how well that'll work in your plan though."

"Scorpius doesn't have to _see_ us to get jealous," Rose reminded Lysander. "But since you brought him up again, I'd better go see how the plan's working so far." Of course, Rose didn't want to rub her new relationship in to Scorpius _too_ much. Her intentions were more to just gain his attention, and to hopefully find out whether or not his feelings for her were the same as hers were for his.

"I'll reserve the field for tomorrow then," Lysander called out as Rose walked away.

"Great," Rose acknowledged from behind.

After a long walk around the hall that included trying desperately to avoid Hugo's second attempt to get his sister to write the letter to their parents for him, Rose made it to her usual lunch spot next to Scorpius and across from Albus.

"Hey," she said. "Sorry I'm late, I was just talking with somebody."

"Who?" Albus asked curiously. His back had been turned toward when Rose had been talking with Lysander, so he didn't actually know whom Rose was speaking of, though the distraught-looking Scorpius obviously did.

"Lysander Scamander. He's a sixth year in Ravenclaw," Rose answered, glancing over at Scorpius as she said it. He was staring blankly ahead, focused on nothing but eating the pile of potatoes that sat in front of him.

"Oh, I know him," Albus said after swallowing a mouthful of food. "Mum and Dad have had him and his family over before. He's one of Luna's boys, isn't he?"

"Yeah," Rose answered, again looking at Scorpius. This time, Al too noticed his friend's solemn expression.

"Scorp," Albus asked concernedly, "You okay?"

Finally looking up, though avoiding eye contact with Rose, Scorpius said sarcastically, "Oh, yeah, I'm just _peachy._" At that, he stood up and added with a nod at Albus, "If you don't mind, I've got a prefect meeting to attend to."

After a moment, Albus muttered, "Yeah, have fun," though Scorpius was already too far to hear Al's lack of enthusiasm for his new position.

"Al, I'm sorry about him. It's my fault, not his," Rose tried to defend Scorpius for his treatment of Albus.

"Oh, really?" Albus asked sardonically. "So you're the one who made him prefect then? Him and not me?" Normally, Albus wouldn't admit to such strong jealousy so directly, but him and Rose had always had a very open friendship. They told each other everything, including the things they would never confess to Scorpius.

"No, of course not," Rose said. "But Scorpius didn't make himself prefect either, and you know he wouldn't usually boast on about it like that. He's only doing it because he's mad about Lysander and me… or at least, I hope that's why."

"What exactly is going on with you and Lysander?" Albus asked, trying to change the subject. Al and Scorpius both never liked to address their conflicts. Like their fathers, and like any teenage boy, they were both too stubborn to admit that they even had feelings. Though Albus was comfortable opening up to Rose quickly, he would still try as best he could to lock them back up again.

Luckily for Albus, Rose was aware of her best friend's enormous pride, and so she went along with the topic change. She did, however, plan on bringing the subject back up later, after Albus would've had the chance to cool off.

In answer to his question, she said, "Well, I just accepted his request to go out some time." Rose said the sentence slowly, trying to get each word out without too much stuttering. She couldn't help but feel like she was betraying Scorpius, even when he wasn't around to remind her.

"Really, Rose?" Al asked disapprovingly. "Don't you know what this will do to him?"

Rose didn't need an explanation. She knew exactly who Albus was referring to. Unfortunately, Al's skepticism only made her feel worse.

"I mean, do you even like him? Lysander?" Al asked, after a moment without answer from Rose.

Rose, feeling extremely uncomfortable now, wanted to lie and tell Albus that she did have feelings for Lysander, and that Scorpius would just have to deal with the fact that she refused to wait around for him any longer. Unfortunately, she knew that Albus was one of the only people who could have seen through her lying. Plus, she needed to tell somebody about her true plans; she didn't want to have to go through the possibly ruinous consequences alone. So in reply, she said, "No, of course not. We both know I have feelings for somebody else."

"Then why?" Al asked, still not understanding.

Rose tried to think of the best way to explain everything, as she desperately wanted Al's approval. She couldn't stand to have _both_ of her best friends being mad at her. With this thought in mind, she took a deep breath and said, "Look, I've known Scorpius for four years, and he's never been able to admit his feelings for me. It's starting to seem like either he doesn't feel the same way after all, or he thinks he's got all the time in the world to tell me. I just want to make him realize that he needs to pluck up the courage and show me how he feels before somebody else does… I'm not going to be his last resort."

After taking a minute to comprehend Rose's motives, Albus said, "Well, you do have a point, I suppose."

"Thank you," Rose said appreciatively. She was relieved to have somebody who could fully understand where she was coming from, and Albus had seen it all. He had been there waiting for his friends to get together just as long as Rose had, and he knew how much she wanted it to happen.

"But Rose, regardless of how much of a bloke he's being right now, I don't want to see him get hurt by this," Albus said, warning Rose to not go too far with Lysander. "He does like you, I'm sure of that. He's not going to want to see you with anybody else."

"How can you be so sure?" Rose asked. It was true that she believed that Scorpius felt the same way about her as she did him, but the unanswered question was always burning a hole in the back of her mind. There was the possibility that, for once, she could be wrong. "Has he told you?"

Albus looked down quietly and answered, "No, he hasn't told me. But you know him. He doesn't share his secrets with anyone… he doesn't _trust_ anyone."

Rose thought about this for a while, and she knew what Albus was saying was true. Though it had always been easy for Rose to trust people, that was one area where her and Scorpius's personalities differed. Rose had a family who loved her, and friends who were loyal. The same couldn't be said for Scorpius. His parents had never had much of a presence in his life, from what Rose could tell, and although Scorpius had always had her and Albus at Hogwarts, he tended not to socialize with anybody else. Though Scorpius obviously trusted her and Albus somewhat, it was true that he had never instilled complete faith in either of them. Perhaps, Rose thought, this may be the reason for his hesitance to start something with her.

Even if Scorpius did have such a legitimate reason though, it wasn't enough. Rose had heard the story of her parents, of how long they had waited for each other, and the pain they had caused along the way. She wasn't going to put up with that; she cared too much. "Well, he'll have to learn to trust somebody eventually. And in the meantime, I need to learn to trust him. I need to hear from _him_ that I'm not alone in this."

Al nodded and said, "Well, you know you can trust me, Rose. I'll stand by you on this, until it goes too far that is."

"Thank you, Al," Rose said.

After the two finished their lunch, they walked together to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. They were the first in the room, and took seats together toward the front, as both had always liked this class, and were curious to see what Shunpike would be like. The rest of the Gryffindors and Slytherins joined shortly afterward, and Scorpius sat in the back with his fellow prefect, Patty. Rose looked back at him just as he was walking in, but he didn't meet her eye.

As soon as all had sat down, the door to the small office at the top of the staircase opened and Shunpike walked down to the front of the class. There was complete silence as he approached them, all the students fascinated by the new teacher. He was tall, but very scrawny, and his scarred skin was even worse looking now that Rose could see it from up close. He seemed to sway as he walked, which ensued a great deal of whispering amongst the class, everybody asking if he was hung-over or had drunk a displeasing potion.

"Hello," he said as he headed to the blackboard. "My name is Professor Shunpike." He wrote his name on the wall as he announced it, but his handwriting was barely readable.

"Now," he spoke directly to the class now. "I'm sure you all know how important your fifth year is at Hogwarts."

Rose didn't even wait for Shunpike to ask an actual question before blurting out in excitement, "Well of course. We have our Ordinary Wizarding Levels at the end of the year."

Everybody sighed in response, not needing to be reminded of the highly stressful end of year exams that would determine which N.E.W.T. classes they could take. They had already had the lecture in Charms or Astronomy (Hagrid hadn't mentioned them in Care of Magical Creatures), and were well aware that they would hear it again in every other class this week.

Shunpike's reaction, however, was not one of excitement or dread. On the contrary, he looked rather confused. "Well, that's true, Ms…"

"Weasley," Rose informed him. "Rose Weasley."

"Right, well Rose here is correct of course, but that's not what I was thinking of. I mean, your OWL's are important I'm sure, but I didn't pass any of mine, and look how successful _I_ am!" Shunpike exclaimed.

Most of the class laughed in response, but Rose didn't dare. She could already tell that her and Professor Shunpike had completely different ways of thinking, and would not be in good spirits with each other.

"Does anybody beside Ms. Weasel have an idea as to why this year may be so significant…" Shunpike continued, ignoring the rampant giggling from the room over the way that he said Rose's name, which had obviously been intentional. "Something we might be learning, perhaps? You know, something a little more exciting than those boggarts you learned to control years ago."

Boggarts were shape-shifting creatures that took the form of their viewer's worst fear. Hogwarts students usually learned about them and the Riddikilus Charm, which turned them into something humorous, in their 3rd year. Rose could still remember the exciting class, all the students turning snakes, insects, and monsters into jump ropes, toys, and stuffed animals. Rose, of course, had seen herself receiving no OWL's. Obviously, Professor Shunpike had not made this connection.

"Aren't we learning the Patronus Charm this year?" Albus asked excitedly. Rose looked over at him with a questioning expression, to which he merely shrugged in response. Rose was not happy with Shunpike, but Al clearly was.

"Exactly! Much more exciting than Boggarts or OWL's!" Shunpike exclaimed. Then, as Shunpike looked down to Albus to see who had answered him, his expression changed from pure glee to shock, and finally, to realization. "Why," he added, "You must be Albus… Albus Potter?"

"Uh, yeah," Albus said. Rose knew that Al was used to his name being recognized all across the wizarding world. Rose knew the feeling, as the Weasley family was fairly well known as well, but the Potters were like celebrities. Since Al had always looked very much like his father, people recognized him more often than either James or Lily. Still, they almost never knew him by his _first_ name, only by his father's.

"I've heard a lot about you, boy," Shunpike said, answering Al's look of obvious confusion. Al, along with the rest of the class, was only more curious now, but Shunpike didn't explain any further.

Instead, the professor continued to go over the year's curriculum, with an unbelievable amount of jokes and sarcasm in between, irritating Rose to no end. After the first hour of class, Shunpike decided to give them all a break before beginning the second half, in which they would start preparatory work on their Patronuses.

Albus and Rose instinctively turned to talk to each other, Al blurting out, "What do you think he's heard about me? It can't be good, can it? Otherwise, he would've made _me _prefect, I mean he is Head of Slytherin after all…"

"Al, calm down," Rose said, not used to him speaking so frantically. "He'll hear you."

Shunpike had been sitting at a desk just in front of Al and Rose, and sure enough he began to walk over to them now. He came up and stood right in front of Albus, "Albus, could I speak with you for a moment?"

Al looked over at Rose quickly, who shrugged. Then he said, "Sure."

When Shunpike looked at Rose disapprovingly, insinuating to Albus that he had meant to have a word with him _alone_, Albus only remarked, "You can talk here. I'd tell her what you said anyway."

Rose smiled at Albus's words, clearly trying to defend her after how Shunpike had treated her earlier in class.

Shunpike seemed hesitant, but decided to press on anyway. "Well, I've heard that you have a particular interest in Defense Against the Dark Arts, is that correct?"

"That depends," Al answered. "Who did you hear it from?" Albus had always had more interest in Potions, but was very good in DADA as well. His question, Rose presumed, was asked to get more information out of Shunpike.

"Your father informed me that you won a duel against him this summer. He seemed impressed."

"It might've been if he hadn't let me win," Al mumbled. Rose had wondered why she hadn't heard about this 'duel', but now understood. Al wasn't proud of it; he was ashamed.

"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure. I've known Harry since he was a boy, and he wouldn't fake something like that. He's too honest." Shunpike reassured him. "Anyway, I suppose we'll see if he's right soon enough," he added with a wink before walking back to his desk.

Al was looking down now, disappointed, and Rose didn't have to ask why. As she looked at him with worry, he said quietly, "Why is it people always expect so much of me? I'm not _Harry_ Potter. I'm not Albus _Dumbledore_. I'm _not_ the chosen one. I'm Al - just Al."

Rose was about to tell him something comforting, but as she looked toward him, she saw Scorpius standing behind Al's seat. At Rose, he mouthed the words, "Is he okay?"

Rose nodded with sincerity. Scorpius didn't need to be told how Albus was feeling; he already knew. The three of them could always tell what the others were thinking: If Albus was hurting, Rose would be the first to know, but she would never bring it up before he did himself. If Scorpius's temper flared, Rose wouldn't take offense, because she knew he'd come around eventually. This was the usual dynamic, and Rose appreciated the stability of it. She had always liked things that worked every time, things that could resist change.

Shunpike stood up then, and Scorpius headed back to his seat. Albus hadn't said anything to him, and hardly spoke for the rest of the class. Every time Shunpike called on him (which was fairly often), he wouldn't say anything, regardless of whether or not he had an answer. Rose would respond for him, but Shunpike would ignore her and call on somebody else to give the exact same answer Rose had already given. Brooding Albus, fleeting Scorpius, and a ridiculous new teacher. Rose just couldn't wait for the days ahead.

The rest of September passed slowly and, at some points, agonizingly so. Rose was spending a lot of time on the Quidditch pitch with Lysander, which meant that she saw a lot _less_ of Scorpius, even though she was thinking of him more often than ever. Albus was still jealous, but he and Shunpike had formed a strong relationship, as Al's Patronus preparation was very impressive. The professor and Rose, on the other hand, were still at odds with each other, and Rose didn't expect this to change any time soon.

Meanwhile, Hugo had finally sent the letter detailing his wand mishap to Ron and Hermione, and one morning, he received a reply. He had come down from the Owlery looking bright as pumpkin juice, and was walking like a zombie. His three best friends, Lily, Roxanne, and Nigel, all approached him as he made his way to the Great Hall, asking how he was with concern, but Hugo kept walking as if he hadn't noticed them.

Rose and Lysander were following him from behind, Rose trying to catch up and find out what the letter said, calling out her brother's name to gain his attention. After one last, piercingly loud cry of, "HUGO!" the boy finally turned around to Rose.

He swallowed hard and held up the letter in front of her as she came closer. He wasn't handing it to her, but instead started to speak, "I was wrong. Mum doesn't want to kill me." After a huge gulp and with an a terrified expression, he added, "Dad does."

"What?" Rose asked in surprise. Ron Weasley didn't _do _discipline, even when it came to his own children. If either of them had done something wrong, which was almost always Hugo's fault, their father would give them a high-five while their mother looked down on them with shame. "Hugo, he's probably just joking."

Hugo shook his head, denying his sister's assumption. Next to Rose, Lysander was analyzing Hugo's expression. After a moment, he said to Hugo, "No, he's not, but you are."

Immediately, Hugo's face fell and he met Lysander with a mixture of surprise and fury. Rose too looked to Lysander, then back to Hugo, and asked, "Hugo? Is he right?"

Hugo started laughing and said, "Of course he is!" His friends starting laughing with him, and even Lysander let out a hiccough or two, but Rose stood silent. After nearly a week of Hugo fussing over telling their parents, it all ended up just being for dramatic effect. "Dad's brining me a new wand when he visits next month," he said with pride.

"Unbelievable," Rose muttered, then turned away.

In the background, she heard Hugo yell to Lysander, "Thanks for spilling the beans, Pasty!" Lysander laughed at this too, taking the insult as a compliment it seemed, but stopped after receiving a stern look from Rose.

Hugo wasn't the only one not taking well to Rose's new relationship. Scorpius was reacting in a way that Rose hadn't expected. Though she still spent time with him and Albus, Scorpius hardly showed any signs of jealousy. Instead, he was just quiet.

He seemed to be avoiding Rose whenever he could, especially when Lysander was around as well. Still, Rose would have thought that Scorpius would want to fight for her, or that he'd at least show some concern over the matter. Unfortunately, that day he had walked away in the Great Hall (after Rose had agreed to Lysander's proposal) had been the largest reaction Rose had gotten out of him so far.

She suspected (or hoped) that Scorpius was keeping himself away, repressing his jealousy and letting Rose be. As a distraction, he seemed to be throwing himself into the first Quidditch practices of the season, taking his new position as Slytherin captain extremely seriously. When tryouts came up, he was out on the field all day, drilling the young players and making sure to take only the strongest ones.

The Gryffindor tryouts had been much less intense, James choosing Fred as Beater without even bothering to watch anybody else. The rest of the team had to pick between Lily and Roxanne for the new Chaser, as James didn't feel it was fair to choose when one of the contenders was his own sister. Lily was still picked for the spot though, as her flying skills were better polished than Roxanne's.

With all the teams trying to get in as much practice time as possible with their new players, particularly Gryffindor and Slytherin, who had a match coming up, the field had become home to a great deal of 'friendly' competition _off_ the brooms as well as on.

One day in late September, the two rival houses had unknowingly booked practice on the same day, a Friday afternoon. As the teams approached the field, James was the first to speak, and went directly to Scorpius, who was standing at the head of a group of green and silver-clad players. "Gryffindor booked this field for today. What are you doing here?"

"Sorry James," Scorpius said, with a glance at Rose. "But Slytherin's got it today." Looking back at Vincent Goyle, who was one of the Slytherin beaters and who looked ready to interfere at any point, Scorpius warned the Gryffindors, "You'd better just go".

James, however, wasn't scared of the seventh year bully. "Well, unfortunately we can't do that. We've got a new Chaser to train, and Fred and Sam have barely been able to work together yet." Sam was the other Beater, and it was true that him and Fred needed to have good chemistry in order to perform well at matches.

Albus was about to confront his brother for Scorpius, but Goyle was a step ahead of him. "I know how we'll decide this," he said. Then, he held up a fist and gave James a large smirk.

James sighed but still didn't back down. Rose, who was standing by his side as his second in command, whispered, "James, don't!" For a moment it looked as though James was going to turn around, surrender, but instead he just put an arm in front of Rose and pushed her behind him, protecting her from Goyle.

Scorpius and Albus looked wary, but neither wanted to approach Goyle, who now looked enraged. However, when Goyle came closer to James, he didn't hit him. In fact, he _opened_ his fist, and for a split second a small, shiny ball could be seen, before it spread its wings and flew off into the sky. Everybody looked up, trying to find it, and Goyle merely stated, "Catch it."

James and Scorpius, the two Seekers, didn't get on their brooms right away. Both of them seemed to have the same instincts, and approached Goyle with glares. James spat out, "Fine". He then turned to mount his broom, before noticing that the snitch had just flown past Albus's unmistakable black hair, and Al was already on his broom flying after it.

Knowing full well that Albus wasn't a Seeker, James and Scorpius shared a look of confusion, but decided to get on their own brooms anyway and go after Al. Rose yelled after them to stop, but they were too far-gone.

The rest of the players watched as Albus, James, and Scorpius flew after the tiny ball. Vincent was smiling with pride, happy to have provoked such entertainment. Rose was only worried. She knew how testy both Albus and Scorpius had been lately, and even this small competition could easily push one of them over the edge.

James and Scorpius caught up to Al relatively quickly, as both were faster than him. All three were circling around the pitch, following the snitch as best they could. They kept on its tail for quite some time, but eventually Albus fell behind. At the same time, James accelerated and flew past both Al and Scorpius so easily it was as if he could have done so all along.

Just as the snitch was nearing the crowd yet again, James reached out his arm and caught it mid-air, then circled around to a graceful landing in the middle of his Gryffindor team. Everybody cheered, not just because they had won the field for a practice, but also for their star player, who held up the snitch like it was the trophy for winning the Quidditch House Cup.

Rose was standing outside the crowd, until James came up to her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, saying "Alright, Rose, better get your pads on. You've got some blocking to do if Lily has anything to say about it." Rose just shrugged him off and approached Scorpius and Albus as they made it back to the crowd.

She walked directly to Albus and asked, "Are you okay?"

Al got off his broom looking exhausted and well defeated. He turned to Rose in gratitude, but didn't say anything. Scorpius was off then too, and said to Al, "I'm sorry, mate. I should've kept on him at the end there."

Albus nodded dryly, then stalked off the field alone. Rose didn't bother to run after him. He needed his space.

Rose then turned to Scorpius and asked, "Did I miss something?" It was normal for Al to be jealous of James and his Quidditch skills, but he wouldn't usually have been so affected by it. Quidditch wasn't Albus's favorite thing anyway, and for James it clearly was. He had always accepted that about his older brother.

Scorpius shrugged. He didn't seem to know what had happened either, and feeling awkward around Rose, he too walked off the pitch alone. The rest of the Slytherins left soon after, disappointedly following the undefined terms of Goyle's challenge. Once they were gone, the Gryffindors began their practice.

Training lasted long into the evening, and Rose stayed an hour or so more than usual to continue practice with Lily. When the two finally decided to call it quits for the night, they packed up the equipment together in the middle of the grounds.

Still concerned about Albus, Rose asked, "Lil, does Al ever get jealous over James? About Quidditch, I mean?"

Lily looked back at Rose, having not expected the question. "Well, I'm sure he does sometimes. He's my older brother, so to me it's everybody else who should be jealous of him." She then bit her bottom lip and explained, "But you know, everybody gets jealous. It's normal."

Without thinking about it, Rose said, "Apparently not _everyone_." In response to a curious look from Lily, Rose said, "Never mind, it's not important."

"Right," Lily said sarcastically. "Anyway, thanks for staying extra late with me. I really needed the practice."

"Are you kidding?" Rose asked. "I think you're already better than both of the Finnigan girls, and they've been on the team for years."

Lily smiled in appreciation, but Rose knew she had been searching for the compliment all along. Wanting some time to think on her own, she suggested that Lily head off to bed. "I can pack up the rest if you want to go, Lil."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, of course. I usually do this sort of thing anyway, so it's no big deal." Rose liked to stay after practice and put all the stuff away herself. She was the only one she trusted with her Keeper gear, and had a well-developed system of organizing all of it.

"Alright," Lily said as she stood up, about to leave. "Thanks again."

Rose waved goodbye and then got back to the packing. Using a couple of Charms spells to speed up the process, it didn't take long to finish.

Afterward, she brought all the gear into the locker room, and was surprised to see that the lights were on inside. She didn't think much of it though, and as she was leaving, she took out her father's old deluminator and collected all the light from the lamps, making it completely dark.

"Wait!" she heard before she closed the door. She turned around slowly, gradually becoming frightened.

"Could you leave that on for me?" The voice said again. Rose followed its orders, with the main hope of illuminating the room enough to make out the person who was speaking. After taking out the deluminator once more and releasing the light back into the room, the boy appeared to her clear as day.

It was Colin Creevey, Hagrid's helper and Filch's apparent protégé. "Oh, hi," Rose said. "Colin, right?"

"Yeah," Colin replied, moving a bit forward. It was then that Rose noticed that Colin had his hands full of various magical cleaning supplies. "I'm sorry I scared you, um…"

"Rose. And that's alright," Rose answered. "So you have the night shift then?"

"Yeah," Colin replied. "At least for tonight I do. It's not that bad though."

Rose nodded, and the conversation lagged. Trying to think of something to say, she just explained, "I best be going. I've got a curfew to keep."

Colin chuckled and said, "Right. It was nice to meet you Rose. Formally, I mean."

"Yeah, you too," Rose said as she walked out the door.

As she was exiting, broom in one hand and lit wand in the other, she looked at the pitch one last time. It was always beautiful underneath the starry sky. Rose had never been one for Astronomy, but she couldn't deny how incredible it could be, even in a world filled with magical things.

Suddenly, she realized that there was something moving in the dark, and it was much closer than a shooting star. It whizzed right past her, and as it did she knew exactly who it was. Before even thinking about it, she hopped onto her broom and flew up into the night.

It was obvious that Al knew that Rose was there, since he stopped flying around and waited for her as she ascended. They met somewhere above the middle of the pitch, and were just high enough that it felt like they were a part of space, but not high enough to be gut wrenchingly cold.

"Al, what are you doing?" Rose asked concernedly. She had a feeling that Albus was out here to try to cope with what had happened earlier, before practice.

"You know what he said to me before he sped up? What he said to make me back down?" Al was looking below rather than directly at Rose. He tended to do this, and Rose suspected that it made him feel more comfortable, as if he was just talking to himself.

Rose knew that he was speaking of James, but she hadn't realized that the eldest Potter had actually said something to his brother while they were flying, or that Albus had really backed down. She had assumed that James had flown ahead as he always did, and that Albus had realized that he wouldn't be able to catch him. Now that Al had brought it up though, it made sense that James must have said something. Otherwise, Albus would never have backed down so easily.

Rose still hadn't responded to Al's question, but he wasn't expecting an answer. Once he built up the courage to answer it himself, he went on, "He said, 'we both know I'm faster than you. Why bother wasting your time?'"

Hearing this, Rose sighed heavily. Albus could be sensitive, especially when compared to others. Rose loved James, and he was like a brother to her as well, but sometimes he forgot how to act like one to his real family. When it came to Quidditch, James would make sure that he won every race and every match, regardless of who tried to stand in his way. This time, it was Albus.

"Al, I'm sorry," Rose said quietly, tuning into her motherly ways.

"I just wish I could be good at something too, you know?" Albus asked her rhetorically. "James is a better Quidditch player than I could ever hope to be, and Scorpius is just good at everything: Quidditch, chess, transfiguration, and now prefect. Even Lily's going to be a star one day, probably sooner than I think. And she's already got an impressive older brother; why would she need me? Why would anyone?"

Rose thought for a moment, thinking of what would be best to say. With so many factors for Al's jealousy, it was difficult to narrow it down to one core influence. If she had to pick, though, it would have probably been the one that Albus _hadn't_ mentioned in his short speech.

"Al, I know that your name is the product of three of the most brilliant wizards of all time, and I know that that carries a lot of weight," Rose began, swaying on her broom, but still barely moving. "People do have high expectations of you, but you have no idea how much they look up to you. The reason James cares so much about Quidditch is because he's not as smart as you are; he's not as good a wizard. Scorpius has his talents at school, but only because you and your family inspire him to be better than his own. And the reason Lily's going to be a star one day isn't just because she's a great witch, but also because she wants to shine just as bright as you."

Albus was looking at Rose now, and opened his mouth like he was about to interrupt, but Rose wasn't finished. She flew slightly closer to him, looked him straight in the eye, and said, "Your dad was a great Quidditch player, but that isn't what he's remembered for. He never wrote any books, and wasn't all that clever. But none of that mattered… There are more important things: friendship, and bravery. You are the best friend I could ever have, and I've never seen you look scared. You always work hard, and you never complain. Do you have any idea how admirable that is?"

The two of them floated in silence for quite some time, Albus contemplating Rose's words, and Rose hoping that she had said the right ones. Finally, Al spoke.

"Hugo's right, Rose," he said with a small smile. "You're a pretty good person."

Rose chuckled and added, "Yeah, well so are you. Don't you ever doubt it again!"

Albus nodded, and after a few more minutes up in the air, they flew down together, got off their brooms, and began the walk back to the castle. They could have flown there, but walking was a slower, more relaxing way of transportation. It didn't require any magic, but that was exactly what made it so easy.

Rose and Al had just gotten off the field when there was a loud rustling in the bushes behind them. Each quickly turned around, wands lit, but Rose couldn't see anybody. "Did you see something?" she asked Albus.

"I think so," he answered hesitantly. "But I'm not sure what."

Albus suggested that they go after the person, but Rose convinced him not to. They were already past curfew, and getting back into the castle would provide enough adventure for one night.

Curiously, this didn't end up being the case. When the two approached the front doors that were normally so infallibly locked, one was already open, with plenty of space for them to fit through.

"Do you think it was the person you saw earlier?" Rose asked Al, referring to whomever had left the castle with the door open. They contemplated this for a while, but again decided it wasn't worth getting caught out of bed to discover. After all, it could very easily have just been Filch heading out for a walk. So the friends called it a night, Albus headed for the dungeons in the depths of the castle, and Rose off to the top floor for the Gryffindor tower.

The next day was a big one for Rose, though for different reasons than she had expected. She woke up bright and early for a date with Lysander; they were meeting on the Quidditch pitch for some extra practice, though they hardly ever actually played. Normally, they would race each other on their brooms to see who was fastest, would eventually give up, and proceed to lay on the grass for a while and talk. Lysander still hadn't tried anything on Rose, which she was thankful for, and most of the time she even enjoyed their conversations.

He was sarcastic and funny, which always reminded Rose of Scorpius, and even of herself. The one trait that Lysander greatly lacked though, was compassion. He wasn't aware that others might feel differently about things than he did, and this sometimes made his joking more harmful than he ever intended it to be.

As Rose approached the field, Lysander ran up from behind her. "Not a great day for Quidditch, is it?" he asked. It was drizzling rain and there was a small layer of mist above the grass. Lysander was wearing his full-on blue and silver Quidditch gear, more than enough protection against the foggy morning.

"I don't mind it. I kind of like the rain actually. It's such a peaceful noise… like birds singing," Rose said. "In fact, I was enjoying listening to it until you interrupted."

Lysander chuckled at Rose, too tired to retaliate verbally. Instead, he held up his broom and bobbed her on the head lightly. As he did so, Rose stopped walking and looked straight ahead with a curious expression.

"What?" Lysander asked. "Come on, there's no way that actually hurt," he exclaimed, referring to the hit of his broom.

"No, it's not that," Rose said, still staring ahead as if in a trance. She then pointed a finger to where her eyes were focused and ordered, "Look".

Lysander followed her direction, and both were now gazing intently on a pair of bright red dots shining through the mist near the ground. "What is that?" Lysander asked, dumbfounded.

"I have no idea, but it looks like we might find out soon." Sure enough, the red was growing brighter, and there was a soft rustling noise gaining volume. Rose and Lysander both stood still, waiting for the thing to show itself.

As it came closer, a fluffy tail could be seen, followed by the furry face of a very familiar cat. "Mrs. Norris?" Rose asked, receiving only a meow in response.

Instinctively, both Rose and Lysander looked around for Filch. The cat's caretaker never left her side, ever since Mrs. Norris had been petrified while roaming the castle alone. Filch had told the story many times, all in an attempt to scare off any students from trying to harm his cat. Naturally, being a close friend to the Potters, all of whom Filch despised, Rose had been threatened with severe punishment countless times.

Once it was determined that Filch was nowhere in the general vicinity, Rose and Lysander looked to each other in question. Mrs. Norris was still meowing, and was now beginning to circle around Rose's heels. After another minute, she started walking in the opposite direction, peering behind her to see if Rose and Lysander were following.

The two did just that, as it seemed to be the only logical thing to do. The cat led them directly to the entrance to the Forbidden Forest. Though Rose did consider that this could be a trap, she had her wand ready, and they didn't have to go very far into the woods before Mrs. Norris stopped.

"Huh!" Rose exclaimed in shock, as she saw that the cat was sitting right next to Filch's head, dead on the ground. Lysander moved closer to her and stared down as well, before looking back up and noticing that they weren't alone.

"Who are you?" Lysander asked, and Rose looked up to see Colin Creevey, staring down at his boss with the same expression as Rose.

Before Rose or Colin had the chance to explain, Lysander said, "Wait, don't answer that. It's obvious you had something to do with this. I'm going to send word to McGonagall."

Colin looked back with a still stunned expression, but didn't say anything.

"No, Lysander, he was just on the night shift. I'm sure he didn't do it," Rose blurted in an attempt to defend the boy, but Lysander wasn't listening. He had already performed a spell that bounded Colin with handcuffs, and was now giving his full-body, pure-colored leopard Patronus a message to send to the headmistress.

As the silvery animal ran off toward the castle, Colin tried to speak, "I-it wasn't…"

"Shut up!" Lysander yelled. "Look, I personally don't care if you did it or not, but I know how these things work, and trust me, you don't want to say anything right now. Wait until you can talk to someone with authority."

Rose looked to Lysander in confusion. This was a side of him she hadn't seen before. She knew that he had gotten into plenty of trouble in his life, but the responsibility he had learned from it was something he rarely showed.

The three stood there silently, Colin still bounded and staying quiet, Lysander with his wand pointed toward the potential culprit, and Rose standing behind Lysander, who wasn't letting her get any closer to the dead body below them. Of course, Rose had no intention of getting any closer to it. Lysander may have been handling the situation quite responsibly, but Rose was slightly less accepting. She had, after all, seen Filch roaming the halls that same week, very much alive. Now here he was, unmoving and literally lifeless. Though Rose had always been able to hide her feelings, and it was true that she wasn't particularly fond of Filch, this was the first human death that Rose had ever experienced. Naturally, she was in quite the state of shock.

It didn't take long for McGonagall to arrive however, Professor Flitwick right behind her. McGonagall approached slowly and steadily, but Flitwick lost his calm demeanor when he saw his favorite student standing by the murdered Squib. "Rose, what happened here?" he asked.

Lysander was about to speak for her, but Rose didn't need him to. "We don't know. Filch was already dead when we got here, and Colin…" she said, trailing off when she looked to Colin and realized she didn't know what to say.

McGonagall seemed to understand, and said, "I see". She then addressed the three of them and instructed, "Professor Shunpike is on his way to investigate the body. Once he gets here, the three of you will come to my office to answer some questions." She was even more serious-looking than normal, making it clear that whether or not they had wanted to, Rose and Lysander had involved themselves in a very messy situation.

Right on queue, Shunpike approached only moments later. He was rubbing his eyes as he came, and yawned when he saw what had happened to Filch. "So another murder? Well, looks like we've taken a step back to the good ol' days, eh?"

McGonagall turned to Shunpike and gave him a stern look before she left him with the body and led Rose, Lysander, and Colin up to the castle, Flitwick close behind. For the rest of the day, Rose and Lysander spent many long hours in the headmistress's office, sitting and staring at the frames of the old Hogwarts leaders. None of them were awake, though Rose could have sworn she saw Dumbledore peeking through his closed eyelids at times.

After explaining all that they knew, Rose and Lysander had little left to say, but still had to remain in the office for the rest of the day, waiting for the Minister for Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt, to come confirm their answers in person. Being a very busy man, he didn't arrive until after supper, and so Rose was cooped up in the room for quite some time.

Once Shacklebolt was there, Rose and Lysander repeated what they knew, and were let out. They didn't get the chance to hear Colin's plead to Shacklebolt, though he had told McGonagall earlier that though he had been at the pitch all night, he had discovered the body only a few minutes before Rose and Lysander showed. Rose had initially believed him, though she wasn't completely convinced. After all, there was apparently nobody else to suspect.

The day had been slow and sluggish, and Rose was looking forward to going to sleep and forgetting about all that had happened, until the morning when she could talk to Albus about it.

"Rose!" Lysander called, as Rose started up another staircase on the way to her dormitory. Lysander had stopped following her, as the Ravenclaw tower was somewhere off the fifth floor, where he was already standing.

"Yes?" Rose asked as she hesitantly turned around. She was grateful that Lysander had been there with her all day, but now she just wanted to be alone. Also, she was afraid that the staircase would start to move and lead to a different location if she stood there for too long.

"I know it's been rough, but he's bound to notice now, right?" Lysander asked. Yet again, Lysander was referring to Scorpius, something that always made Rose uncomfortable. On top of that, he had just joked about a murder.

Rose didn't even ask for an explanation. Instead, she turned back around and headed up the staircase once more. She was already crying when she reached the top, something she had promised herself she wouldn't do, today of all days.

She tried her best to ignore the tears as she came closer to the portrait of the Fat Lady. This became impossible when she heard her name called yet again. Rose didn't want to give him another chance, so she yelled behind her, "Lysander, please just leave me alone".

"Uh, it's me," she heard him again, but much closer this time. Rose closed her eyes at the familiar voice that somehow sounded just like rain. Another tear fell down her cheek, but she didn't bother to wipe it away.

Turning to Scorpius, Rose couldn't help but wonder how she could have mistaken him for Lysander, even for a second. She knew his face so well: the family necklace he wore around his neck, the only reminder that he had a family of his own after all; the tiny, snowflake birthmark right beside his left ear that she liked to believe only she could see; the icy eyes that pierced straight through her with one look. He was the only thing she had wanted today.

Realizing that she should say something, Rose swallowed and whispered, "I'm sorry. I've been having a bad day."

"I heard," Scorpius said. He didn't elaborate, or even ask if she was okay. Just as Rose didn't need to be told how Albus was feeling, Scorpius didn't need to be told about Rose. He knew too that she didn't need his condolences; she just needed him there.

Rose looked up at him, still sobbing, and wanted to bury herself in his chest. She knew that this wasn't fair though, so instead just said something that she had been dreading to accept for quite some time, "Everything's going to change now, isn't it?"

Scorpius looked down for a moment and answered, "Not everything". He then took a small, red box out of his pocket and placed it delicately in her hands. The box had a smooth, white ribbon around it, keeping its contents hidden, but it looked to be just the right size to fit a ring inside.

Rose opened it slowly, her hands shaking for a reason she didn't know. It was a ring after all, but was different from any Rose had ever seen. It consisted of one black, diamond stone, held in place by a golden band. There was some sort of marking within the stone, but it was blocked by a small crack stretching right across the center. It wasn't perfect, but like the joys of walking or the puddles made by the rain, it was soothing in a way. The mark had split the stone into two, but somehow it remained intact, as if nothing had touched it in the first place.

After a moment of silence, Scorpius said, "Happy Birthday Rose". As she looked up at him, yet another tear falling down her face, Scorpius puts his hands in his pockets and slowly began to walk away.


	4. Cardinal, Falcon, and Hawk

**4 – Cardinal, Falcon, and Hawk**

"Another murder… back to the good ol' days!" Shunpike said, grinning sinisterly from ear to ear. "How exciting!" he added with an eyebrow raise and a wink. Just above his furry unibrow, an enormous zit popped and spread a translucent white goo all over Rose's face. Fortunately, she couldn't actually feel it.

Suddenly, Shunpike disappeared, and Colin Creevey approached, saying, "I didn't do it… I – I – I promise… I – I couldn't have done it!" His face looked innocent and pitiful, but below it an enormous chain was attached to his ankles. As Colin continued to beg for atonement for being involved in such a crime, the chain pulled him to the ground and began to drag him away.

Next up was Lysander, and he was looking around in all directions, his wand held high in mid-air. "I know how to handle things like this," he said just as he turned toward Rose. Reaching out his hands to hold her shoulders, he too expressed an eerie smile, saying, "I've been in _plenty_ of these situations before."

Just as Lysander's hands were about to touch Rose, a bird-call sounded through the infinite black space. Lysander looked back, startled, and pointed his wand at the white falcon. He now had both hands around the piece of wood, but his fearful expression made it clear that he didn't stand a chance. The falcon flew straight to him, and as Lysander's body faded away, the bird transformed into its own human shape.

Scorpius now stood in front of Rose and beamed at her. He didn't say anything, but his eyes remained on hers as he pulled the familiar red box out of his pocket and handed it to her yet again. This time, as soon as it landed in her hand, the box had already opened, and it was only the ring that sat in her palm.

The stone started to turn itself around, stopping after three times. Scorpius didn't even flinch when an enormous ghost appeared behind him and Rose, flying toward them with a zombie-like expression.

Rose's mouth dropped open in shock, but she still couldn't feel anything. As the ghost came closer, the face was clearly that of Filch, and he had the same stunned expression that he had had dead in the forest, the result of being murdered with the Killing Curse. In his arms, which were the same translucent white as the goo from Shunpike's repulsive acne, he was holding Mrs. Norris, though the cat was still in perfect, solid condition.

"You know who did it," Filch spat out, Mrs. Norris meowing in agreement. Rose looked to him in interest, but Scorpius was oblivious to his presence, still captivated by Rose. "You know who opened the gate. You can't trust him."

At that, Filch turned to his left and started to disintegrate, and Rose followed his gaze to where Albus stood. He had his back to Rose and Scorpius, but his messy, black hair was as uncontrollable as ever atop his head. In front of him was Vincent Goyle, towering from above and pointing to his own nose, asking cockily with a baby voice, "Are – are you bleeding?"

Albus stayed still as Goyle continued to bully him. "Oh, poor _Potter_… you _are_ bleeding, aren't you? Well, want to bleed some more?"

"GOYLE!" A female voice called from behind Rose. She turned around to look for the girl, but could only see black.

Turning back to Goyle, Rose noticed that he too was looking for the girl. Unlike Rose, Goyle seemed to have found somebody, as he yelled out, "You'll be next, Mudblood!"

Looking back again, Rose thought she saw a flash of green, but it only lasted a moment. When she turned around to face Scorpius and Goyle again, both were looking directly at her, and Albus had disappeared. Though it hadn't seemed this way before, Goyle was definitely looking at Rose, with an expression that seemed like a warning.

"Don't worry Rose, I'll protect you," Scorpius said. He was the only one left now, as Goyle was already walking away. Scorpius too was slowly floating backward, though his eyes stayed fixed on Rose. "I'll find you," he said. "I'll rescue you. I promise."

Now Rose was alone, surrounded by darkness and hearing only whispers, repeating the things she had already heard, like an afterimage left over from a bright light.

Sitting straight up in bed, Rose was breathing deeply, and tears were flowing down her face, thick as the water from the Black Lake. She had only fallen asleep for a moment, but had already had a nightmare. Logically, this was only normal; it would be expected for people to have difficulty sleeping after witnessing what Rose had the day before. Still, succumbing to such things made her feel quite weak, and honestly very fearful. Though Rose didn't normally let her emotion overtake itself, this was a time where she couldn't help it. It seemed silly for a now fifteen year-old to think about, but Rose really wanted her parents… their presence, their strength, and most of all, their shelter.

Luckily, Ron was coming to Hogwarts in just a few days, along with Harry, for their lesson on the Patronus charm. Rose would be sure to tell him everything then, but for now she at least needed to get out of her dormitory, where the slow breathing of sleeping, female Gryffindors was beginning to irritate her to no end.

Since she knew she wouldn't get any more sleep anyway, Rose stepped out of bed and headed down the spiral staircase and into the common room. She didn't expect anybody to be awake, but she figured the warmth of a lit fire might do her some good.

As she walked into the red and gold-draped room, Rose took out her wand and shot a few red sparks at the pile of wood. Before long, an impressive fire was burning, and Rose had made herself comfortable on the couch in front of it, snuggled under an enormous blanket with her Defense Against the Dark Arts book sitting open on her lap.

She was continuing the preparation for her Patronus, but found it very difficult to brainstorm her happiest memories while one so haunting was overtaking them all. Because she couldn't help herself, she turned to the chapter in her book on the three Unforgivable Curses. Rose remembered learning about them in DADA last year, but Professor Smethley hadn't spent much time on them. As she turned a few pages into the section, passing the Imperius and Cruciatus Curses, her eyes narrowed in on the one she was looking for.

The Killing Curse, otherwise known by its incantation, _Avada Kedavra,_ was an un-blockable spell, and was extremely difficult to perform. Rose knew all of this already however, and was of course well aware that her own uncle was the only one to have ever survived it... twice. This still wasn't what she was looking for. Going on to the next page, Rose read the exact description of the curse:

_Causes instant death in a flash of green light, usually leaving no sign of physical damage or of the cause of death that would be detectable to a Muggle autopsy.__1_

'_A flash of green light'_, Rose read over to herself. McGonagall had told her and Lysander that Filch had been killed by this curse, as they found no wounds on his body. Rose could still remember his stone cold corpse, frozen on the misty grass. She could imagine the scene playing out, with Mrs. Norris's red eyes fighting against the green flash from the murderer's wand. Was that green light the same one she had seen in her nightmare? If so, to whom was it pointed? Or, more importantly, who produced it in the first place?

It was difficult not to think of all possible suspects, even though Rose had promised herself not to make assumptions before discussing everything with Albus and Scorpius. Though Colin was the obvious choice, Rose couldn't imagine him committing such a crime. Also, like he had said in the dream, it just wasn't possible.

Her thoughts were interrupted when Rose heard somebody descending the staircase behind her. Looking over the couch to see who was there, she found a very disheveled James walking toward her, scratching his head as he yawned.

"Hi, James," Rose whispered. She wasn't usually up at this hour, as a full eight hours of sleep was required for her studies, but James didn't look surprised to see her.

"Rose. Couldn't sleep?" He asked with concern.

"No," she answered. "What about you?"

James signaled for Rose to move over as he sat down next to her, leaning into the cushions and stretching his arms. "I heard somebody walk down the stairs earlier; thought I'd come see if it was you so I could keep you company."

Rose nodded in response. She was sure that James knew about Filch's murder, and that Rose had been involved somehow, but like Scorpius, he didn't bother to ask.

For the next hour or so, James stayed with Rose in the common room, telling her about his happiest memory, the first time his father had ever put him on a broom. He also talked about the class he had had with Harry and Ron last year, and of how proud Harry had been when he saw that James's Patronus was the same as his and his father's before: a strong, silvery stag. When the two grew too tired to speak any longer, Rose leaned her head on James's shoulder, quietly wondering to herself what form her own charm would take, and if she too would make her father proud.

As the sun rose slowly, still very early in the morning on the last day of September, the pair stood from their seats, changed into weekend clothes, and walked over to the stained-glass window, looking down at the castle grounds below them. Rose had her eyes on the Quidditch pitch, which looked much more peaceful than it had the morning before. This was until a small grayish dot came trailing out of the Forbidden Forest and walked across the field, headed straight for the entrance gates.

"What's that?" Rose asked, pointing out the questionable thing to James.

"What? I don't see anything," he said. Rose looked to him in confusion, and then back through the window. The thing was still moving in the same direction, and Rose's curiosity was beginning to take control.

She made James look several more times, but he could never see it. To prove that her eyes weren't deceiving her, she began to lead the way out of the common room and down to the entrance hall. She was sure that she had seen something, but she desperately wanted to know what exactly it was.

Rose was jogging fast, James right behind her. She didn't want to miss seeing this thing that for some reason felt very important. The entrance gates had already been opened for the morning as the two approached them, and walking out into the courtyard Rose could see McGonagall standing by the road, Colin Creevey at her side.

"Who's that?" James asked, but was shushed by Rose.

Colin looked very tired, as his eyes had enormous red bags underneath them. He didn't look very pleased either, but rather as if he was waiting for some sort of death sentence. Rose knew she shouldn't interrupt, but once again she couldn't seem to stop herself.

She made her way closer to where McGonagall and the boy stood and asked, "Professor, what's going on?"

Turning toward Rose, and then looking above her head to the courtyard behind them, McGonagall sighed, "Oh dear, we've drawn a crowd."

Rose hadn't noticed before, but sure enough when she looked back she found herself staring at most, if not all, Hogwarts students. They had probably been on their way to breakfast, but Rose could only assume that James had left to spread the word when she went to speak with the Headmistress.

"Professor, please?" Rose asked, turning her attention back to what was really going on. She hadn't forgotten about the dark gray creature she had seen before, but she was also concerned with what was happening to Colin, whom she was sure was just as innocent as she herself was.

"Rose," McGonagall said, with a sympathetic tone of voice. "I don't want you to worry about this. Mr. Creevey here is going to be leaving Hogwarts with the Minister, but I can promise you that he will not be harmed."

Rose immediately tuned into defense mode when she heard that Colin (who was standing silently beside her) would be taken away. "Leaving? But he's innocent… I can prove it!" She didn't know what she was saying, but prayed that it wasn't a lie.

"Ms. Weasley, thank you for your impressive loyalty, but I am well aware of Colin's situation. I agree that he is innocent, but many of the students are under the impression that he is not. The matters were kept completely secret, so naturally, the whole school knows. I'm afraid I can't have Mr. Creevey working around the students any longer," McGonagall explained.

Rose looked down in defeat. She was happy to learn that her assumption about Colin had been correct, but felt terrible for him at the same time. Like her mother, Rose always believed in what was right, and this just didn't seem so.

She didn't have time to dwell on this though, as Shacklebolt was approaching the three of them then, and McGonagall and Colin left Rose to approach the Minister. Now standing alone, Rose looked up to Shacklebolt and the road he was walking along. As she looked behind him, she finally saw the creature that she had spotted earlier from the window in Gryffindor Tower.

The black horse was one of the most frightening beasts Rose had ever set her eyes upon. With a sickeningly thin, skeletal figure, dragon-like face, bat-like wings, and bright, white eyes, it looked like a bad omen. Its appearance, along with its slow walk, which was almost impossible to perceive as actual motion, might have made Professor Trelawney say it looked like the grim. Rose didn't believe in superstition, but if she had, she would not take this to be a very good sign.

Rose turned around to the group of students behind her, but none of them seemed to notice the animal that should have been quite intriguing to them. They did, however, have relatively confused expressions. Turning back to where they all stared, Rose saw Shacklebolt climbing on the creature, just like any normal horse. Colin was already sitting on it, though he was looking down in disbelief, as if he, like the Hogwarts students, couldn't see what was holding him up in mid-air.

Suddenly, the horse started to gallop down the road, Colin and Shacklebolt holding on to its spine, and then lifted off into the sky. McGonagall turned to the crowd then, and announced, "Alright, everyone. There's nothing more to see here. You best be off to breakfast!"

The students followed her orders, all heading back into the castle for the Great Hall. Rose, however, stood still, eyes glued to the sky where the last specks of black could be seen. She was both captivated and dumbfounded by what was now far off in the distance, so she didn't notice somebody approach her from behind.

"You're not crazy, you know. I can see them too," said Holly Longbottom, the girl who had been in Rose's carriage the night she arrived at Hogwarts.

Turning to her, Rose asked, "What are they?"

Holly said, "They're called thestrals. They pull the carriages to the school at the beginning of each year."

Still confused, Rose asked, "Why can't the others see them?"

"They can only be seen by those who have seen death," Holly stated matter-of-factly. It was a very serious thing to say, but she didn't even flinch as she muttered the words.

"So, you've known someone who's died?" Rose asked concernedly. Of course, she now realized that she could only see this 'thestral' because she had seen Filch's death, but it sounded as if Holly had been able to see them for quite some time.

"My mum. It was a long time ago," Holly answered. She still had a smile on her face, but it was slightly crooked now.

It was true that Rose had never heard of Professor Longbottom having a wife, but now felt terribly sorry to hear that he was actually a widower. Perhaps that was why Rose's parents were always so adamant about her giving him their love every year.

"I'm so sorry," Rose said. Holly only nodded in acknowledgement. "That must have been horrible." Rose couldn't imagine life without a member of her family; they meant everything to her.

Holly acknowledged Rose's sympathy with a nod, but didn't respond directly. Instead, she said, "I believe you, you know."

Confused yet again, Rose turned to the petite girl with a questionable expression.

Sensing that an explanation was needed, Holly went on, "That Colin is innocent".

"Oh," Rose said, finally understanding. "Do you know him?"

"Not really," Holly answered. "But he seemed quite nice to me. Plus, if he really is a Squib, how could he have performed the spell in the first place?"

Not bothering to question how Holly had realized Colin's secret just as she had, Rose stated, "Exactly".

The two continued to stare up at the now empty sky, and before long Holly stalked off on her own. She seemed to be headed in the opposite direction of the Great Hall, but once again Rose decided not to question it. When it came to Holly, nothing ever made much sense.

As she walked into the hall, Rose had all eyes on her. It was a strange sensation, knowing that everybody had stopped whatever it was they had been doing just to watch the girl who may or may not have been involved with the mysterious murder from the morning before. Luckily, this only lasted a moment, as Rose wasn't nearly as fascinating as the stories Lysander was already telling or the fireworks James was setting off around one of the Finnigan girls.

Rose quickly walked over to Al and Scorpius, ignoring the overly curious Hugo and concerned Lucy along the way. As she sat down next to Scorpius, and knowing full well what Al was about to say, Rose spat at him, "It wasn't Colin".

"How can you be so sure?" Al asked. " McGonagall just gave a little speech about it, and she didn't deny it. Plus, Lysander said that you two didn't get there until after the fact, and Colin was apparently _already_ there."

Scorpius was staring at Rose, more interested in her bare fingers than solving the mystery. She tried to ignore it, and instead addressed Albus, "And since when do you listen to Lysander?"

"Hey, you're the one dating him," Albus answered, but regretted it shortly after, as both him and Rose noticed Scorpius turn away at the words.

"That doesn't mean he's trustworthy," Scorpius mumbled under his breath.

"Alright, alright, not the point," Rose said, trying to clear the air. She didn't want any more tension than was necessary. "Look, regardless of what Lysander said, Colin _is _innocent."

She was looking toward Albus with a serious face, but he had his arms crossed and shrugged at her. "I'm still waiting for the evidence," he said.

Rose looked around to make sure the coast was clear before she whispered, "He's a Squib."

"What?" Al asked in surprise. He obviously hadn't considered this, and was very caught off guard.

After explaining how Rose had suspected this of Colin ever since she found out that he had _worked_ at the school, instead of being an actual student there, and of what McGonagall had said (Rose decided to leave Holly out of it), Albus agreed that it would have been impossible for Colin to perform the Killing Curse, or any spell for that matter. He may have been born to magical parents, but he himself had no magical powers of his own.

"But if it wasn't him, then who?" Al asked. Scorpius, who had been distant to the conversation before, now seemed curious, but also a little fearful, as he turned back to Al and Rose.

"Well," Rose said, anxious to ask Albus a question she had wanted an answer to all night long, "I was wondering… do you remember what you saw that night? Just before we noticed the open gate…"

"Wait, you saw somebody that night?" Scorpius asked, his sudden interest catching Rose off guard.

"How'd you even know we were out that night at all?" Al asked, staring intently at Scorpius. Rose, now even more caught off guard, also looked to Scorpius.

"Uh, I must've heard it from somebody," Scorpius defended himself. "Never mind," he said before turning away again.

Rose and Albus shared a look of suspicion before they went on with their conversation, Al saying, "I honestly don't remember, Rose. For all I know, it might not have even been a person, just a cat or something."

"Right," Rose said, disappointed. She was going to bring up her suspicion of Shunpike and the dream she had had, but decided not to, since he and Al had been getting along very well lately.

"Look," Al said. "Maybe our dads will know something about it. They're coming tomorrow, aren't they?"

"Yeah," Rose answered with a grateful sigh. "Thank goodness."

Sensing the sadness in Rose's tone, Albus reached over and put a hand on her shoulder, saying, "Hey, you'll be okay. We'll find out who it was."

Scorpius's eyes were back on Rose now, and as Albus's hand left her shoulder, she let her head fall to the side and into the crook of Scorpius's neck. Closing her eyes and breathing in his crisp, wintery scent, he put his arm around her and held her even closer to himself. Rose hadn't wanted to cause Scorpius any more angst, but she decided that, just this once, she deserved to be selfish and take advantage of him, even though she wouldn't let him do the same to her.

Rose and Scorpius stayed like this for the rest of breakfast, Rose half-asleep and breathing deeply to keep from crying all over again, and Scorpius stroking her side with a pained expression on his face. On the other side of the table, Albus took the time to look around the Hall for potential suspects, scrutinizing everyone slowly and carefully. He had always had the instincts of an Auror, and this was the perfect opportunity to prove it, especially when his toughest critic was arriving soon.

The trio spent the rest of the day walking aimlessly about the castle. Once Al's suspicion wore off a little, he remembered to wish Rose a belated Happy Birthday, and stopped by the Slytherin common room to grab his gift for her: a new, very well-made sneakoscope, a small device that sensed when there was somebody untrustworthy around. He explained that, though he hadn't known so when he bought it, it now seemed like the perfect gift… if only she had received it a little sooner.

As the day continued, Rose refused to go anywhere near the Quidditch pitch, much to Albus's dismay, but they did manage to make their way over to Hagrid's, who made an enormous cup of tea for Rose. He wasn't surprised to hear that Rose had figured out that Colin was a Squib, and he too was disappointed in the way McGonagall was handling the situation. Scorpius defended his favorite teacher, but realized around the same time that it wouldn't make a difference. Hagrid was upset over losing his new helper so soon, and he had quite the soft spot when it came to false accusations.

Upon leaving Hagrid's, Rose decided to call it a day and headed back to Gryffindor Tower to try to get some more sleep. Unfortunately, instead of being met with quiet and safety, Rose arrived to a very loud, chaotic common room full of underclassmen looking for trouble.

Among them was, of course, Hugo, who ran up to Rose and asked, "Was it really that Colin kid? Did you see him there?"

A few steps behind him as always was Nigel Creevey, Hugo's right-hand man. Nigel was quite a sweet kid from what Rose could tell, but he could barely keep up with hyper Hugo. His friends all made fun of him for his physical slothfulness, but Rose knew that deep down, Hugo didn't care. In fact, Hugo had once called Nigel the koala to his kangaroo: though complete opposites, they both shared the same environment in perfect harmony. (Hugo hadn't expressed this quite so eloquently, of course.)

"Hugo, I already told you it's not true!" Nigel yelled at what seemed to be the top of his voice, though it still wasn't all that loud. "My brother would never do something like that…"

"I know that Nigel, but I've heard differently from a variety of reliable sources, and I can't very well make a decision on the matter until I hear from the most reliable of all: my dearest sister," Hugo exclaimed, turning back to Rose with a smile. "So Rosie, what's the verdict?"

Rose was not going to take to Hugo's less than sly attempted flattery so easily. Without hesitation, she merely responded with, "You should listen to your friend, Hugo."

As she was walking away toward the staircase, Hugo called after her, "Are you sure about that?"

Another moment later, as Rose was just reaching the top of the stairs and was about to head into her room, she could hear Nigel saying, "You're a slick git, Hugo Weasley, you know that!"

Rose rolled her eyes, wondering to herself how Nigel could've possibly not realized this until now.

"Don't worry Rose, I'll protect you," Scorpius said again. "I'll find you," he said. "I'll rescue you. I promise."

And then Rose was alone again, the darkness and whispers overtaking her slumber.

Sitting up in bed, Rose sighed in exasperation. She had been awake most of the night yet again, and every time she came close to falling asleep, she had that same nightmare she had had the night before, and it always ended with her alone in the darkness, waiting for Scorpius to come rescue her like he had promised to.

This time, Rose decided to stay in her dormitory until sunrise, knowing that James wouldn't be in the common room to comfort her again, and it would just be lonely without him. As soon as the first sign of light came through the window by her bed though, she was already in her robes and was headed for breakfast.

Not surprisingly, there was hardly anybody in the Great Hall; all the students were still asleep. Rose was okay with this though. She enjoyed having some time to herself in the morning, and it would give her more privacy to go over her recurring dream again.

Unfortunately, just as Rose was speculating the meaning behind Scorpius's overthrow of Lysander, the Scamander boy himself sat down next to her with a heaping loaf of pumpkin bread in his hands.

"Hey," he mumbled, his mouth already stuffed. Rose was used to the insane amounts of food men seemed to be able to eat, as she had grown up with Ron as a father and Hugo as a little brother. So naturally, it wasn't the impoliteness that bothered Rose, but rather Lysander's verbal greeting.

"Hey? That's all you have to say, 'hey'?" Rose asked, before standing from her seat and getting ready to storm off.

She wasn't able to though, as Lysander caught her arm and asked, "What?" He seemed to be incapable of using full sentences this morning.

Rose hadn't realized just how angry she was with him, but after he acted so mysteriously at Filch's death, and his lack of concern for her afterward, Rose just wasn't in the mood to play games with him anymore.

"Nothing. Never mind," Rose said, before adding quietly, "I just need some space, that's all."

"But why?" Lysander asked loudly, his hand still on Rose's arm, keeping her from moving away from him.

"Lysander!" Rose exclaimed, signaling for him to let go of her. "Just back off, alright?"

At this, he finally let her go and she headed over to Scorpius and Albus, who were just taking their seats at the next table.

"What was that about?" Al asked as Rose approached them.

"Oh, nothing really," Rose answered. "I think he's just starting to get on my nerves."

"Really?" Scorpius asked, though with more excitement than concern.

Rose smiled at this, happy to see Scorpius perk up about something, particularly when it had to do with her, and said, "Yes, really."

"Oh, well I'm sorry to hear that," he said sarcastically, and still smiling.

Rose smiled back with a small chuckle. She had been in a terrible mood this morning, after getting such a small amount of sleep, but couldn't help cheering up when she was around Scorpius.

Her happiness didn't last very long though, since Scorpius decided to take that moment to look down at Rose's hand again and whispered, "Why aren't you wearing the ring?"

Rose instinctively pulled up the sleeve of her robe to cover her hand, even though she knew he had already seen it. She opened her mouth to explain, but was saved when Professor Shunpike marched into the hall to make a very loud announcement.

"Attention all students, please finish your breakfasts promptly and make your way out of the hall. 5th years, you will all stay here for a special day-long lesson for Defense Against the Dark Arts," he explained, with a formality that seemed very odd when combined with his character. After barely anybody responded to his words, he added, "NOW, please!"

This moved everybody right along, and while most of the students left for their other classes, Rose, Al, and Scorpius just stood from their seats in order to allow their table to magically float over to the side of the room. Shunpike was clearing the hall in order to make room for the 5th years, as all four houses would be taking the full day for Defense Against the Dark Arts rather than following their normal Monday schedules.

Rose was beginning to get excited, as this was sure to be a big day, and couldn't wait to see her father. Meanwhile, she was gradually walking farther away from Scorpius, in hopes that she wouldn't have to answer his previous question.

Upon doing so, Rose bumped into Lucy Weasley, whom she wasn't used to seeing in DADA. Normally, she only had Herbology and History of Magic with the Hufflepuffs.

"Rose, hi!" Lucy shouted, also surprised to see her friend here. "I've been meaning to ask how you've been… after the other night, I mean."

"Oh, I'm alright," Rose said with a shrug. As she said it, it felt like a lie, but she couldn't tell Lucy about what was really going on inside her head.

"Yeah?" Lucy asked to reassure herself. "And what about you and Lysander? Lorcan said you two are dating, but I'm not sure I believe him. I mean, after how he treated you on the train…"

"Right," Rose said, unsure of where to start. She had almost forgotten how everything with Lysander had started, but she supposed that it was normal to forget the beginnings of stories once they started to spiral out of control.

"Well, it is true. We have been dating," Rose answered, deciding to keep it simple. The mere statement that she and Lysander were an item would be enough to sustain Lucy's interest, regardless of whether or not they would remain so for much longer.

"Really?" Lucy asked with surprise. More quietly, she added, "What about Scorpius?"

Rose was caught off guard by Lucy's immediate reaction being about Scorpius, but then remembered that she had talked about him many times over the years with Lucy. Since Lucy herself hadn't had feelings for anybody until Lorcan came around, she relied on Rose for all the stories of romance and gossip.

"I mean, you two still seem like friends, but when did you get over him? You've had a crush on him for years," Lucy continued.

For some reason, Lucy's words felt like a bullet to Rose's heart. She knew as Lucy said it that what she felt for Scorpius was hardly just some crush. She had spent nearly four years pining for him, but at the same time, even if from a distance, she had spent those same four years loving him. Her intentions may have started out to be good, but she could see now that what she was doing with Lysander was not going to make Scorpius come after her; it would only drive him away.

"Rose, are you okay?" Lucy asked after Rose failed to respond to her last question, and noticing that Rose seemed to have mentally stepped out of the conversation at hand.

Lucy's voice jolting Rose back to reality, she said, "Yes. I think I really am," and smiled.

Lucy smiled back, but looked very confused. Rose didn't get the chance to explain, since Professor Shunpike had stepped between them and was looking down to Rose.

"Ms. Wadlib, your father is in the Entrance Hall now. If you'd like, you may go greet him before I bring him in," Shunpike said, though he didn't look happy about it.

Rose didn't bother to say anything before she rushed off to the double doors that led to the other hall, Lucy calling out in the background, "Say hi to your dad for me!"

Before the two doors had fully opened, Rose was caught in an enormous bear hug by her father. She reciprocated the gesture by wrapping her arms around Ron's back and trying her best to hold him close. Having him here, and being able to smell that familiar spearmint toothpaste again, made her feel right at home.

"Dad," Rose sighed, holding on even tighter.

"Rosie," he replied, making Rose smile from cheek to cheek. She hated it when Hugo called her that, but only because she loved it when Ron did.

Once they finally broke apart, Ron looked down on her and put his hands on her shoulders. "How are you?" he asked, full of worry, but soft and caring at the same time. It was obvious he knew about the murder, and that Rose had had some special involvement with it.

It took a moment for Rose to turn her thoughts back to Filch and Colin, after thinking so much about Scorpius, but she eventually managed to. She didn't want to hide from or lie to her father, so she told the truth in the only way she knew how. "I don't know," she said.

Ron looked pained at this, and started to explain all he knew. "Your mum and I got a letter about it yesterday. It said you were the one who discovered Filch… Hermione's gone mental about it. What exactly did you see?"

"Just his body. He was already long gone," Rose said.

Ron nodded at this, happy to know that his little girl hadn't been subjected to too much trauma.

"But Dad," Rose caught his attention once again. "What do you know about dreams?"

"Dreams?"

"Yeah," Rose went one. "I've been having these dreams, and they seem so real. But I don't know what they mean."

"Look Rose," Ron said. "I know you like to have answers to these sort of things. Your mother's always like that too. But there doesn't have to be a reason behind everything. You're probably just scared after what happened, and that's normal. But that'll go away eventually, and then the dreams will too."

Rose nodded. She knew that she had a tendency to overanalyze things, like her father was saying, but she just didn't think that this was one of those cases. "But Dad, I wasn't that scared. I was more just confused. And these dreams, they just don't make sense, that's all."

Ron contemplated this for a while before he said, "Well, Rose, if you're really concerned, then I believe you. I've just never really had dreams like that… the snoring seems to be the extent of my sleeping problems."

Rose laughed at this, knowing how often his snores could keep her up at night. Not wanting to delay the lesson any longer thing, Rose didn't ask her father anything more, and gave a quick wave hello to Harry, who had been pacing just behind where she and Ron stood.

Once back in the Great Hall, Rose took a seat on the floor next to Albus, who waved to his father as Harry and Ron came in. As soon as the two had made their appearance, the students started clapping and cheering, excited to hear what the famous wizards had to say.

As they walked up to the front of the hall, where all the teachers normally sat at every school-wide feast, Harry shook hands with Shunpike and Ron bowed to his audience of teenagers, who laughed in response.

"Hello everyone," Harry said cheerfully after the clapping stopped. Once he introduced Ron and himself, he began the explanation, "So you all know why we're here. As 5th years at Hogwarts, it's time to learn one of the hardest defense spells in the book."

"Yeah," Ron cut in. "Plus, it's wicked cool. Now Harry here, well he likes to look all impressive, coming here every year to replace your normal professor for a day, but I want you all to know that the only reason Shunpike's not teaching you this spell is because you all wouldn't be as excited about it if he did. Being taught by The Chosen One, on the other hand, might provide enough intimidation to make you work a little harder."

Everybody was laughing again at this, and Ron winked over to Rose. He loved to be in the spotlight, and she felt very proud see him there.

"Thanks for that Ron," Harry said from Ron's side as he took a step forward again to address the class. "But getting back to the point, who here can explain why exactly a Patronus Charm is so useful against the dark arts?"

Rose shot her hand up at this, eager for the chance to show off in front of her father. After Harry called on her, she stated, "The Patronus Charm is used to fight off dementors, which are foul creatures that drain the happiness out of the environment they're put in. The witch or wizard must think of their happiest memory to form the spell, which should then be able to drive away the creature."

"Exactly," Harry said. "Very good, Rose." Ron was smiling with pride behind him, his arms crossed around his chest.

"Now, dementors are known to align with witches and wizards who are involved in the dark arts, so it is extremely valuable to know how to defend oneself against one if need be."

"Dementors really are terrible," Ron said. "And they won't let you run away easily."

"But aren't dementors controlled by the ministry?" asked one Hufflepuff girl from the back of the room.

"Yes," Harry answered. "The ministry uses them to guard cells in Azkaban, but they're easily persuaded. Even so, you bring up a good point. If there aren't dementors around here, or if you probably won't ever run into one, then why would you need to learn to perform this charm?"

This time, Rose didn't even raise her arm before she blurted out, "The Patronus isn't just used to fight against dementors. It can also be used as a source of communication."

"Rose is right again," Harry said. Rose smiled, and gave Al a good hit to his side after he snorted at her.

"As you know, the Patronus takes the form of a given animal, usually one that corresponds to the witch or wizard's personality," Harry explained. "Now that animal is able to record a message from said witch or wizard and then deliver it to the person of their choice. It's much faster than sending an owl, and is convenient when one needs to send a message over a short distance.

"In fact, one student used a Patronus for this exact purpose in a situation just the other day here at Hogwarts. This was how your Headmistress was able to find out about Mr. Filch so soon."

All the students started whispering to each other at this, wondering who Harry was talking about, and how they knew to handle a situation like that. Rose just put her head down, not wanting to think about how oddly Lysander had behaved that day.

"Yeah, yeah, alright," Ron said loudly, the students silencing in response. "We all know that the Patronus is great." Then, turning to Harry, he suggested, "But I think it's time to show them just how great it is. What do you say?"

"I say you first," answered Harry with a wink. They had being teaching this lesson year after year, and had it pretty well down pat by now.

"Well, alright then," Ron said. He then took out his wand from his pant pocket, walked straight up the front row of students, held his wand in front of him, and said strongly, "_Expecto patronum!"_

As soon as he did so, a blue and silvery terrier jetted out of his wand and started running all around the room. Students stood up then, making room for the dog who seemed to let off bursts of joy with every step he took. It made its way through the crowd and over to Rose, where it stopped, sat down, and gave a loud bark before it disappeared.

Everybody was cheering all over again, giving Harry and Ron plenty of time to pull out a rather large chest that Rose knew held a boggart inside.

"Okay everyone, attention back up front," Harry called, and all the students turned back toward him, though they remained standing. "Now, when Ron learned the Patronus Charm, that was exactly what he did: just practiced out in the open, with no props. Unfortunately, thinking up happy thoughts isn't so easy when you're around an actual dementor. That's why we're going to have as many of you as we can practice the spell on a boggart as well. Allow me to demonstrate."

Then, Harry took out his own wand and stood in front of the unopened chest. The tension in the air was highly palpable, as none of the students had seen a dementor before. Suddenly, Ron opened the chest and out came a black, hooded figure of human shape.

It flew right at Harry until it was only a few feet away. Rose couldn't see its face, but its hands were dark, long, and skeletal, much like the thestral she had seen the morning before. Around her, the air felt heavy and cold, and nothing could be heard except for the loud breathing of the cloaked creature.

Harry didn't wait long before he yelled out the incantation and covered the dementor with a translucent type of shield, headed by an enormous, silvery stag. Behind the animal, the air was turning lighter again, and warmer. The shield grew larger as the stag approached the dementor, and Harry used his wand to direct it back into the chest. Once inside, Ron pulled over the top and locked it back up.

Most of the students stood in silent shock, but Al and Rose started clapping for their fathers who, so far, were proving to be quite the success.

"Well, that's that," Ron said after the round of applause. "I think it's time for the rest of you to give it a go."

The excitement reached a peak upon hearing this, as everybody was anxious to show off their own skills. Harry gave out some directions, telling them to spread out, and to first try the charm in the open space. He and Ron then began walking around the room, surveying everyone and giving tips on how to improve.

"Make it a powerful memory," Harry called as walked around a group of Ravenclaws who only had small sparks coming out of their wands. "The happiest memory you can remember. Allow it to fill you up."

Meanwhile, Shunpike, who had begun circling from the other side, was saying to one girl who looked quite faint, "Here, have some chocolate. You'll feel better."

Rose was standing on the Slytherin side of the room, with Scorpius off to her left and Al to her right. Scorpius kept muttering the incantation, but seemed to be getting frustrated, as he too was only producing sparks. Albus had his wand out, but wasn't doing anything with it. He seemed to be waiting for something.

Rose was holding on to her wand tightly, and had closed her eyes. She was searching for a memory, but thoughts of her nightmare continued to encroach her mind. She tried out the spell with a simple, fairly happy memory of the first time she had ever used magic. It had been aboard the Hogwarts Express before her first year at school, when she used a simple repairing charm to fix Al's broken glasses after Goyle had stepped on them. With this memory, she was able to produce a medium-sized jet of silver air, but it didn't take any identifiable shape, and it quickly dissolved.

As Ron made his way over to her, Rose turned away. She knew that he expected her to be the best in the class, and normally she would be, but the things she had been through lately didn't exactly prepare her well for this.

"How you doin', Rose? Al?" Ron asked, turning to each of them, but much more interested in his own child. Scorpius, he completely ignored.

"I'm trying," Rose answered as she turned back to him. She figured it was pointless to try to hide from him. "I just, I don't know what memory to use."

"The happiest thing you can think of," Harry said from behind. He and Ron were now standing with Rose, Al, and Scorpius, and Harry asked them all, "You want to know what I used just now?"

They nodded, and Harry answered, "Just the other day, Teddy told me that he's going to be a dad."

"Victoire's pregnant?" Rose asked with surprise. Teddy was Harry's godson, so she had seen a lot of him growing up, even though she hadn't gone to Hogwarts until after he had already left. Victoire, Rose's older cousin, had married Teddy only a few years back. They had always been quite the couple, and everybody had been thrilled when they made it official.

"Yeah," Harry said, nodding with an enormous smile. Al smiled too, thinking about what kind of uncle he would be. They didn't dwell on it for too long though, since Harry had more to say.

"See," he explained. "This memory can't be just the time you got your Hogwarts letters. It's got to be bigger than that; even mine wouldn't have been large enough to fight off more than one dementor at a time, but I wanted to use it anyway.

"Look, the memory's that hardest part. At least it was for me. Once you've got it, you just have to hold onto it as long as you possibly can. If you lose your focus, you Patronus will fade away."

Harry turned to Al then, and asked, "Al? Why don't you give it a try?"

Al looked at Harry and nodded. Rose could tell that this was what he had been waiting for. Albus was ready, she knew, but he wanted his father to see it. As he held out his wand, Harry made room for him to point it straight ahead.

"_Expecto patronum!"_ he called, and like Ron and Harry before, a huge jet of silvery light flew out in front of him. This time though, instead of galloping across the floor, it spread its wings and flew through the air above them. The animal was a dark, almost black, hawk, and it was in full form as it soared beneath the ceiling, circling above the entire crowd. Everybody had stopped their own work to stare up at the majestic creature, and Al was now holding on to his wand with both hands to maintain contact with it.

"Great, Al!" Harry exclaimed. "Keep it going!" He then turned to Rose, and said, "Rose, you try now."

Instinctively, Rose looked to her father, who gave her a nod. He had been eyeing Al with jealousy before, but looked determined that Rose would succeed this time. Rose, on the other hand, wasn't so sure.

Next to her, Scorpius said quietly, "You can do it, Rose. You can do anything, remember?"

Rose smiled, for she knew exactly what Scorpius was doing. He had just told her what memory to use. With it, she closed her eyes, and tried to think of nothing else.

It had been a beautiful fall day during Rose's 2nd year at Hogwarts, her birthday to be exact, and Scorpius had given her a book on common charms as a gift. It hadn't seemed like much at the time, but when she opened it to start reading that same night, she had found writing on almost every page. For each spell that was listed and described, Scorpius had written a note, reading either, _'you can already do this spell'_, _'you'll master this one soon enough, I'm sure'_, or even, _'don't bother with this one; you're too good for it'_. On the very last page, he had written,

'_Happy Birthday, Rose. I just wanted to let you know that you amaze me. I don't know how it's possible, but you can do anything. I would say that you're going to be a great witch one day, but that would be a lie. You already are.' _

They had only been twelve years old, but Scorpius had never said anything as sweet as what had been written in that book. She had nearly forgotten it, but reading his notes that night had probably marked the moment Rose had really fallen for him, the happiest moment of her life.

"_Expecto patronum!" _she called, picturing Scorpius's messy handwriting in her head. As she opened her eyes, she could see the little bird, small but full of strength and color, rise into the air and fly after Al's hawk. Rose directed her wand around the room, and the bird flew where she led it.

It was a cardinal, Rose could tell. It looked just like the ones she woke to every morning back at home, and as it starting singing, its beautiful melody filled the Hall. Everyone around her seemed happy as could be, and out of the corner of her eye she could see a tiny tear of joy falling down her father's cheek.

Unfortunately, Rose couldn't hold on to the memory for very long, and so the cardinal disappeared into thin air, the hawk not far behind. After the superficial merriment wore off, everybody sighed. They didn't seem very surprised that Al and Rose were the first two to successfully perform the charm. It was normal for them to learn faster than the others in DADA, not to mention the fact that today's two teachers happened to be the fathers of each of them.

After all the others had returned to work on their own, Harry said, "That was amazing, both of you! Al, your very first try, and you kept it going for that long?"

Albus blushed slightly in response, but Ron had turned bright red for a different reason. "Hey, Rosie was pretty impressive as well. I mean hers sang, for crying out loud!" he shouted at Harry, gesturing to Rose as he said it.

"Oh, I know," said Harry, preparing for a comeback. He didn't normally involve himself in Ron's competitive spirit, but sometimes it was too hard to resist. "But did you see how many times Al's flew around the room? It probably could have kept going all day."

Albus was beaming, and Harry merely shrugged, saying, "I mean, who knows? Maybe he's just got a better wand, that's all."

Ron shook his hand in frustration, and said "That's it," before pointing his own wand at Harry and yelling, "_Stupefy!_"

Suddenly, Harry flew backward against the sidewall and slid down to the floor. Everybody in the class turned toward him and started laughing as he rubbed his head in pain. Ron gave Rose a loud high-five before they both crossed their arms and looked over at Harry in triumph.

"Okay, I think it's time we all take a little break," Harry mumbled.

As everybody put away their wands and went to get a snack, Ron walked over to Harry to help him up. Rose, Al, and Scorpius stayed where they were and starting talking.

"That was incredible!" Al said, obviously proud of himself.

"Yeah, you guys were great," Scorpius said. Rose could sense a small amount of defeat in his voice though. Albus may have been power hungry, but Scorpius and Rose were normally the competitive ones. She knew Scorpius never liked to be last in anything.

"Hey," Rose said to him quietly, in an effort to cheer him up. "I couldn't have done it without you. Thanks for the memory."

Scorpius smiled, and then Ron and Harry joined the trio again.

"You okay, Dad?" Al asked his father.

"Oh, I'll be fine," Harry said. "At this point, I think I've gotten used to Ron's temper flares."

"Still, I'm sorry about that, mate," Ron said with his signature guilty smile.

Harry just waved off Ron's apology, before he suddenly turned to Al and asked, "Hey, you never replied to my letter. Did you end up getting prefect?"

Albus looked down, his previous excitement over his Patronus replaced with the disappointment of not being chosen as a new Slytherin prefect. "Uh, no, but Scorpius did."

Harry looked over to Scorpius reluctantly. "Oh, well, congrats, Scorp. That's – that's great," he said, but he patted Albus's shoulder at the same time.

For the rest of the day, everyone went back to working on their Patronuses. Harry worked mainly with those who were having trouble, particularly Scorpius, who still couldn't get the hang of it. Unfortunately, Harry's focus on Scorpius was responded with a glare from the oversensitive Albus. Rose tried to reassure him that his father wasn't at all disappointed, but he didn't seem to want to hear it.

Meanwhile, Ron was working with those who had already been able to produce the full charm, and who were now ready to practice on the boggart. This started off being just Al and Rose, but they were soon joined by a small group of Gryffindors, Pranav Patil from Ravenclaw, and Lucy. Her Patronus had taken the form of a clouded leopard, very similar to Lysander's from the other day. Rose could only assume that Lorcan, being Lysander's twin brother, also had some sort of leopard Patronus, and that this was the reason for Lucy's.

Albus was the first to approach the boggart dementor, and when Ron opened the chest and let it out, Rose fell subject to the same heavy coldness that she had felt the time before. Regardless, Al's hawk was still strong enough to drive the dementor right back into its hiding place. It seemed his memory was quite a good one, though Rose had no idea which he had chosen to use.

Next up was Rose, and she could feel the fear even before the dementor was let loose. As she approached the chest, Ron said, "Just remember, it's all in your head. The faster you produce that charm, the sooner the light will return. So let's hear your bird sing."

He then opened the chest and Rose was immersed in darkness. Just like in her dream, she was all alone, and could hear whispers of things people had already said. As the figure flew closer, she could finally make out its face. Its mouth was wide open, and inside was a black hole. She realized then that the thing wasn't just breathing; it was _sucking_. Flying just above her now, its face getting closer to her own, she could feel her memory being taken away, as if somebody had reached into her soul and stole it from her, like a kiss gone terribly wrong.

She knew how to make herself wake up though, so she closed her eyes and thought of the lightest and brightest thing she knew and yelled once again, _"Expecto patronum!"_ She kept her eyes closed, but it wasn't long before she could hear her cardinal singing to her, and this perfect signal of morning pushed away the night.

Opening her eyes to see that the dementor was gone, Rose sighed in relief and Ron came up to pat her back.

"Is it my turn yet?" Rose turned around to see Scorpius, with Harry right behind him.

"Scorp, did you get it?" Rose asked with excitement.

"No," answered Harry sternly.

Rose and Ron were both confused at this, but Scorpius just sighed and said, "Look, I know what I have to do, but I can't just do it like that, out in the open, with nothing to… aim at. I have to face the fear first. Please just let me try it."

Ron shrugged and said, "It's not going to work anyway, but I guess there's no harm in trying, right?" Both Scorpius and Rose had gotten used to Ron's rudeness toward Scorpius over the years, so they didn't take direct offense.

Harry nodded, giving the official okay, and Scorpius cut through the line to stand in front of the chest. When Ron opened it, the dementor flew out faster than it had before, and got closer to Scorpius's face than it had with either Albus or Rose. It seemed to be more attracted to him, as if there was more fear and sadness to feed off of than there had been before. Rose, feeling scared for him, held on tightly to her father's arm, as he was standing with her next to the chest.

Scorpius didn't waste any time before he yelled out the incantation, but only a spark was conjured. After a groan of frustration from Scorpius, Rose could see Harry slyly making his way toward the dementor, ready to take control. Just as he was about to point his wand at the creature, though, Scorpius yelled again, louder than ever before,_ "EXPECTO PATRONUM!"_

Suddenly, another silvery, full-figured bird was soaring the air, and Rose recognized it at once. The same white falcon from her dream was flying up toward the ceiling, where it made a small circle high above its prey before making the great dive down to it. As it came back down to the surface, it flew straight through the dementor and dropped it into its chest.

The falcon continued to soar through the air even after the dementor had been locked away, and Scorpius stared up at with amazement. Without even realizing it, Rose and Albus had soon made their way over to their friend and had conjured their own Patronuses, allowing the three birds to fly together for a while: Al's dark, powerful hawk, Rose's small, gentile cardinal, and Scorpius's light, fearsome falcon, united by the same sky.

Once the creatures faded away, the students began to as well. After only a few successful attempts with the boggart, Ron and Harry decided to call it a day, and all were dismissed. Rose, Al, and Scorpius, though, stayed behind for a while, enjoying their time together with their family.

Rose took this opportunity to give Hugo's broken wand back to her father, who took it and asked, "And you're sure it's irreparable? Because I got another one for him, but it won't be the same."

"I tried everything I could think of, but nothing's worked. The core is completely broken," Rose explained. She felt badly for Hugo, but with the way he was acting lately, he seemed to have had it coming.

"Did you have anybody else try it?" Harry asked curiously. "I mean, sometimes these things are just about luck."

"Can I try?" Al asked. "I've been working pretty hard in Charms class lately; it'd be nice to know if it was paying off or not."

Ron laughed at this, but said, "Give it a go. If Rose couldn't do it, I don't think you'll be able to, but as Scorpius proved, anything's possible these days."

"Dad!" Rose yelled in embarrassment. Sometimes, her father's rudeness crossed a line, and this seemed to be one of those moments. "Please, these are my best friends."

"Alright, alright. I'm sorry," Ron said, but Rose could see from Al's expression that he had gotten under his skin a little.

Even so, Albus took the two halves of the wand, placed them down on the table in front of him, and stated clearly, "_Reparo." _With a swish of his own wand, Hugo's was instantly repaired, its core snapped back into place and the wood with barely a scratch.

"How'd he do that?" Ron asked in surprise, as everybody else, including Albus, stared down at the wand in disbelief. "How'd he do it if Rose couldn't?"

Harry laughed and said, "It's like I said, maybe he's just got a better wand."

"Oh, like hell he does," Ron muttered before he picked up the wand and walked out of the hall, heading off to find Hugo.

The remaining four burst into laughter over Ron's uproar, Rose not caring too much about Al's success with the wand. He had always been lucky, and Rose figured he deserved to show off, after the amount of torment he had been putting himself through over the past month or so.

As the laughing died down, Harry pulled Al aside for a chat, leaving Rose and Scorpius to themselves.

"You were amazing today," Rose said to Scorpius. They hadn't been alone like this for a long time, especially with everything that was going on with Lysander, but Rose wanted to show Scorpius that that distance hadn't changed anything. She still cared about him, possibly even more than ever.

Scorpius chuckled and said, "You too. Seeing you with the dementor, I don't know, I guess it really made me want to step up. I could see how scared you were, but you did it anyway. You've been really brave these past few days, Rose, I hope you know that."

Hearing what Scorpius was saying, Rose felt as if it was exactly what she had been waiting to hear. Nobody had been able to make her fear over the other day go away; she had had to do it herself. And Scorpius, well, he was the light at the end of the tunnel, the reason she needed to fight the fear in the first place.

"Thank you," Rose said.

"But Rose, can I ask you a question?"

"Of course," Rose said, without giving much though as to what Scorpius's question might be.

"Why aren't you wearing the ring I gave you?" he asked seriously.

Rose looked away again, just as she had the first time he had asked. This time though, she knew she had to answer, and that it was only a matter of time before he'd ask yet again. Scorpius had always been determined, and he never liked to give up.

"Because it isn't fair," Rose explained. "I wanted to wear it, but I couldn't, and I hadn't realized why until today. It just isn't fair to you. But I will wear it, I promise. I just need to clear something up first, on my own." She wanted to wear the ring, but she needed to make sure that things were really over with Lysander first. She didn't want to betray either one of them any more than she already had.

"Okay," Scorpius said with a nod. "I just wanted to make sure you didn't hate it or something."

Rose smiled and shook her head. Scorpius could get so concerned over such small things, but she had always loved that about him. The way he had grown up, one small mistake and he was punished for weeks, by both of his crazy parents. He wasn't used to people accepting him, staying with him, loving him.

"I don't hate it," Rose said. "I don't hate it at all."

She then took a breath and said, "I have to go get something. Meet you back here for supper?" Scorpius nodded in response.

Then, as Rose was walking toward the door, she saw Harry hug Albus and say goodbye to his son. As he was walking out, probably off to say hello to James and Lily, he waved goodbye to Rose as well. She then made her way over to Albus, who had remained where he was, too curious to leave him be.

"Hey," she said. "What's going on?" She could tell something was off, as Al had his 'thinking' face on: his eyes straight ahead and squinting slightly, his mouth ajar.

It seemed however, that what was off was actually on, since Al only smiled and said, "He was worried about Scorpius."

"I'm sorry?" Rose asked with confusion, while at the same time checking that Scorpius wasn't in hearing distance. He wasn't, as he had started practicing his Patronus by himself at the other side of the hall.

"My dad, he was worried about Scorpius. After everything that happened with his family this summer, he was worried about how Scorp would cope with everything. He asked Shunpike to keep an eye on him," Al explained. "He said that that's probably why Scorpius was chosen to be prefect. That way, Shunpike could keep him close, since he'd have to meet with him all the time."

Rose finally understood, and it actually made a lot of sense. Heads of houses had to run all the prefect meetings, and there were often quite a few of them throughout the year. Since Shunpike was obviously a lazy man, it made sense that he would take the convenience of requesting Scorpius to be one of his prefects so that he could essentially spy on him every so often.

"Al, that's great," Rose said. "I mean, at least there was a reason, and it wasn't at all personal."

"Yeah, exactly," Albus said and smiled. "Plus, it's better this way. Now I have more time to hone my wizarding skills while Scorpius has to go to meetings with _Patty Parkinson_ all the time."

Rose laughed and said, "And that's obviously been working out quite well for you, mister 'I've been working so hard at Charms lately'."

Al chuckled at this. "Well, what can say? I'm just a natural."

"Hey, you hungry?" he asked after the conversation had reached its end, and upon noticing all the people piling in for supper.

"Yeah, I was just going to get something from my dormitory first," Rose replied before she headed out of the hall.

Once in Gryffindor tower, Rose made her way up the staircase and picked up the black ring that had been sitting on her bedside table. Putting it on a finger on her right hand, she stared down at it and smiled. Now all she had to do was find Lysander.

This was easier than she thought, as he approached her as she was walking through the hallway outside the Great Hall.

"So," Lysander greeted her, his blonde hair a mess above his undone tie that hung around a crumpled t-shirt. "When's our next practice?"

He was referring to his and Rose's Quidditch 'dates', but Rose scoffed in response. She thought that she had made herself clear that morning, that they needed to spend some time apart, and now here she was about to break it off completely and he was wondering when their next date was. "I thought I told you to back off for a while," she said.

Lysander furrowed his eyebrows, confused. He wasn't very skilled at picking up on others' emotions. "Oh come on Rose, we don't need a break, we're just getting started. I mean, what's wrong with you anyway?"

Rose laughed in bewilderment at this. She hadn't wanted this to be difficult, but with the way he was acting, she couldn't help but let it get under her skin.

"What's wrong with _me_?" she asked sardonically. "Lysander, we witnessed the aftermath of a _murder_, first-handedly I might add! Now I don't know how _you're_ dealing with it, because you seem completely fine to me, but I bloody well haven't been! At least not until today, no thanks to you."

Lysander gulped at this, not expecting such a strong backfire to come from sweet, innocent Rose Weasley. Seeing his expression though, didn't stop Rose. She just pressed on, "I haven't gotten more than five minutes of sleep in the past two nights; the whole school's been asking me questions that, for once, I don't know the answers to."

Rose paused at this, letting the words sink in to both Lysander and herself. It felt good to finally let it all out, but there was one more thing that she really needed to say, so she added, "And then there's you."

Lysander, who had been looking to the left of Rose's face before, was now looking straight at her, still confused, but becoming increasingly angry.

"You were there," Rose went on, more quietly now, as she was beginning to fear that people would hear. After all, it wasn't very late yet. "You were there when it happened, and you said things… things that only scared me even more than I already was. And afterward, you didn't even ask if I was okay. All you were interested in was seeing how Scorpius might react."

Zoning in on the main question she had for him, she said, "This was just some ridiculous form of entertainment for you. It's all a game, isn't it?"

"Oh, and it's not a game for you?" Lysander spat out, turning defensive. He had listened to all she had to say, but now it seemed that it was his turn to speak. "You're telling me that my intentions are somehow misguided, that I'm in this, whatever it is, for the wrong reasons… aren't you forgetting something?"

Rose looked down at the stone cold floor beneath her feet. Lysander had bent toward her, but she didn't want to be any closer to him at this moment.

"You were the one who agreed to this," Lysander continued, now pointing toward Rose's chest. "You're the one who's calling this a fake relationship. You're the one who's only worried about how Scorpius might react. And me? Yeah, I'm playing along, but only because _you_ dealt the cards."

"It was your idea!" Rose yelled, greatly agitated at this point. When she heard her own echo, she looked around to see if anyone was there, and noticed somebody walking out of the Great Hall and looking toward them. As fate would have it, it was Scorpius. For a moment, the two made eye contact, and Rose could feel her eyes swelling up, a new habit of hers these days. After her last conversation with Scorpius, having it go so incredibly well, she didn't want to ruin anything, so she blinked away the tears and turned back to Lysander.

"You knew why I agreed, but why did you ever even suggest it?" Rose asked earnestly. She didn't want to yell anymore; she just wanted to understand. She had agreed to it, but at the time she didn't see what was wrong about it. It would have been so much easier if she had never heard the idea in the first place.

Lysander started fidgeting at this and ran a shaky hand through his hair before he said, "You really want to know why I put myself through all of this?"

Rose nodded, but what Lysander did next was something she hadn't meant to give permission for. Before she had the time to stop him, he had leaned closer and was kissing her. It wasn't violent, but it wasn't soft either. She tried to push him away, but he held her steady while it lasted it. After the short minute, he let go, leaned back, and said, "That's why."

Rose shut her mouth slowly and swallowed hard, not knowing what to say. In the background, behind Lysander, Scorpius was storming away in the opposite direction. It wasn't supposed to end this way; Scorpius was supposed to overthrow Lysander; he was supposed to be the last one there; he was supposed to find her, protect her, rescue her… he was supposed to be her first kiss. He wasn't supposed to disappear.

"He's gone," she muttered.

As Lysander cocked his head to the side to see whom Rose was referring to, Rose started to turn around and walk up the steps that led out of the Entrance Hall. Before she did so, however, she turned to hear Lysander say, "So he saw? Isn't that what you wanted?"

Rose shook her head in exasperation. She knew that Lysander wasn't the only one to blame, but at the moment she needed to believe that he was. So just as he was walking up the stairs past her, she yelled, "You ruined everything!"

Lysander looked back at her one last time, but his reaction gave no evidence as to how he felt about anything. He stayed silent, and after a moment he continued on his way.

Collapsing down onto the stairs, Rose was now alone, surrounded by the tall, stark castle walls and seeing only muffled areas of space through her tears, like the fading, red spots of an afterimage left over from a bright light. And this time, she knew that her birdsong wouldn't be able to wake her up.

**Works Cited:**

"HPL: Encyclopedia of Spells: A." _The Harry Potter Lexicon_. Web. 20 Feb. 2011. /magic/spells/spells_#Avada_Kedavra.


	5. Out of Desire

_Hey everyone. I would just like to apologize for the delay in uploading this chapter. I've actually been trying to do so for over a week now, but the site has been giving me pop-ups that tell me an error has occurred every time I did so. Finally, I was able to get in touch with a supervisor, and the problem was fixed. So again, I am so sorry for keeping you waiting, and it will (hopefully) never happen again. Anyway, hope you like this chapter!_

_-Hailey_

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**5 – Out of Desire**

The library was cold. Winter seemed to be well on its way now that November was here, and normally Rose would be very happy about that. She had always loved the snow, and the way it blanketed the castle from December through February. November also brought with it the first Quidditch match of the season, and arguably the most exciting one of the year: Gryffindor vs. Slytherin. Rose would normally be excited about this as well, but she and Scorpius hadn't been on good terms for weeks now, and even Albus had been fairly upset with her.

He claimed that Rose had taken things one step too far with Lysander, just as he had warned her about beforehand. Luckily, he gave her the benefit of the doubt and allowed Rose to explain what had happened, and that there was no way she could have seen Lysander's kiss coming. Once Al understood, he was back on her side, but Scorpius hadn't been so forgiving.

Rose had been trying to approach him every chance she got, but he would always make some excuse and then walk away. She didn't blame him for doing so; she knew she had scared him off. Even so, she wanted to talk to him, or rather, she _needed_ to talk to him.

On the other hand, the one person she never wanted to speak to again had been on her tail nearly everyday. Lysander was constantly coming up to Rose: in hallways between classes, in the Great Hall for meals, on the Quidditch pitch during practice. He had even tried to corner her up on the seventh floor as she was heading to Gryffindor tower to go to bed. She tried to ignore him as he practically begged for forgiveness, but it was becoming increasingly difficult. He seemed to be enjoying the chase.

This was why Rose had been spending so much time in the library lately. It was her favorite part of Hogwarts anyway, but it also happened to be the type of place Lysander would never go, even if he knew Rose was there. Still, she wasn't completely alone.

Rose had bumped into Nigel Creevey over in the Reference section a few days back. Unbeknownst to Rose, Nigel was very interested in the study of wandlore, and had become curious about the repairing of wands after Ron had given Hugo's wand back, good as new thanks to Albus.

"It just seems strange, don't you think?" Nigel had said to Rose upon running into her. "I mean, from all that I've read, when the core of a wand breaks it's nearly impossible to repair, no matter how strong the wizard."

Rose hadn't given this much thought beforehand, as she was happy to see Al so proud of himself afterward. Plus, she figured she had enough mysteries to solve as it was. Unfortunately, her and Al's ideas about Filch's murder had been put on hold during their short fight, and they hadn't had much of a chance to bring it up since.

When Nigel filled her in, though, she agreed that this wand mystery was in fact very strange as well. From then on, Rose had been meeting Nigel in the library everyday to help him look for more information. Neither of them knew exactly what to look for, and Madam Pince, the very old and disgruntled librarian, was no help, since she was even more on edge than usual, grieving over Filch's death.

The two spent most of their time searching for information on wand repair, but this was getting them nowhere. Somewhere in the middle of all this, they had also started talking about Hugo himself, whom Nigel seemed extremely fond of.

On this cold day in mid-November, Rose and Nigel sat by one of the large fireplaces in the library, each of them with a book open on their laps. They were continuing to sort through a pile of reference books, but had given up for the day after sifting through them for an hour or so.

"He's smarter than he gives himself credit for, you know," Nigel said, referring to his best friend of course. "I just wish he wouldn't see it as such a bad thing."

Rose knew this about Hugo already. He was always trying to hide it, but often tried _too_ hard, pretending to forget which classes he had signed up for or simply abandoning his homework for no good reason. He wanted to be just like his father, so he ignored the Granger side of him.

"He'll come around," Rose said. "I think that's one of those things he has to figure out for himself first."

"Yeah, I suppose you're right," Nigel answered, looking disappointed.

"You really care about him," Rose stated. "Even with the way he treats you sometimes."

Another part of Hugo that he didn't like to admit to was his sensitive side. Just as Rose had seen in Lysander, Hugo didn't seem to realize that other people had emotions too. Unfortunately for shy, timid Nigel, Hugo bullied him more than anybody else.

"Yeah, he's my best friend," Nigel said. "I mean, he's got Lily and Roxanne, but they're pretty preoccupied with their own lives. And I know how rude he can be, but he doesn't really mean it. He's just a kid."

"So are you," Rose said with a chuckle. Nigel was very composed for a thirteen year-old, and it didn't take a genius to see why.

"I've seen just how mean people can be, and I know how much it can hurt to feel left out. I'm not exactly the most popular person myself, and Hugo is, but he doesn't care. He lets me in anyway."

"Colin never had it easy, did he?" Rose asked. She knew it had been hard for Nigel to watch the fall-out of his brother, and to see him have to go back home just because people weren't willing to accept him, or believe him.

"Not really, but he's alright. I heard Hagrid's been fighting to get him back?" Nigel wondered.

"Yeah, he is," Rose answered. "He knows he's innocent, and Hagrid just so happens to have a heart that's twice as big as it should be."

Nigel laughed at this and the conversation came to an end when Madam Pince informed him and Rose that it was 8:00, so the library was closing. At that, the two walked back to Gryffindor Tower together.

Once inside, Nigel took off to his dormitory and Rose stayed behind in the common room. She took a seat next to James on one of the couches. Lily was on his opposite side, and on the other sofa were both Finnigan girls and Sam Thomas. Fred was kneeling on the floor in front of them, clapping and cheering as Lila Jordan, who stood in the middle of the group, announced that Fred had just knocked Vincent Goyle off his broom with a bludger.

"Hey," James whispered. "Glad you could make it."

"Was I supposed to be here?" Rose asked in confusion.

James laughed. "Not technically," he said. "But this seems to have turned into an informal team meeting. Lila's going to be the new announcer this year, and Fred wanted us all to hear her practice."

"Oh right," Rose said. "Well there is a big game coming up. You think she's ready, Captain?"

"Well, she's been going on for a while now, and I apparently haven't caught the snitch yet, so I'd say she still has a few things to learn," James boasted.

"How are you so sure of yourself all the time?" Rose asked. "You know just as well as I do that Scorpius is the only Hogwarts Seeker who could ever give you a run for your money, and he's been practicing wicked hard lately."

"He doesn't have a bloody chance," James seethed as Lila announced a goal made by Albus Potter.

"Hey!" Rose turned back to Lila and the rest of the group. "There's no way he could've gotten past me!"

"Actually he probably could have," Lily stated matter-of-factly. "You seemed pretty distracted."

Rose ignored her fellow redhead. Lily always knew the gossip at Hogwarts, so Rose was sure she had heard about what Scorpius had seen going on with her and Lysander. She couldn't have been very happy about it.

Sitting back again and turning to James, she said, "I wouldn't underestimate him." After seeing how Scorpius had conjured his Patronus before, she couldn't help but add, "He's got some impressive determination."

"Don't worry, Rose, I'm sure I can handle it," James said, looking annoyed.

Rose nodded, silently apologizing to James. He then patted her on the back before getting up and leading one of the Finnigan girls upstairs.

Lila had just announced that James had caught the snitch and Gryffindor had won, and the whole team was cheering. Now, Fred was hugging Lila with pride and excitement while Sam and Cassidy shared a celebratory kiss. Back on Rose's couch, Lily gave her one last glare before stalking off. Rose didn't stay much longer before she herself set off to bed for another lonely night.

The next day, Friday, was unbearably slow. It was the day before the Quidditch match, and on top of that, Rose had History of Magic with the Hufflepuffs first period, and it was easily the dullest subject of all. This was followed by Care of Magical Creatures, which was slightly more interesting, but Hagrid was still upset about Colin, so his normal excitement was somewhat diluted.

Rose was relieved when lunch arrived, until she showed up at her normal table to find only Scorpius; Al must have gone off somewhere. Hesitantly taking the seat across from him, she whispered, "Hi".

Scorpius looked up from his book on Quidditch skills, but immediately looked back down upon seeing Rose.

"Would you at least let me explain?" she asked, snatching his book from under him.

"Could you give me my book back please?" he asked quietly, completely ignoring her previous question.

Rose sighed but held on to his book. "Fine. Don't listen to me. Talk to me. What's going on with you?" She thought that there might be something else that was bothering him, other than what he had seen between her and Lysander.

Scorpius still didn't say anything, but Rose wouldn't give up so easily. "Scorp, come on," she said. "It's just talking."

Scorpius squinted at the idea of divulging his feelings, but Rose waited nonetheless. Eventually, he gave in and explained, "For as long as I've been at this school, for as long as James has been the Gryffindor Seeker, Slytherin's never won a match against you guys."

"And you're team captain now, so if you lose it's on you. And you don't want to let them down," Rose finished for him when he started to trail off. She was happy that they were finally speaking, even if they hadn't yet addressed anything.

Scorpius gave Rose a small nod, and she asked, "Is that why you're reading this?" She held up the book she had been withholding from him.

He nodded again and Rose said, "Look, I love books, and you know that. But Scorpius, you know what you have to do. You don't need a book to tell you."

Scorpius smirked and asked, "Why are you telling me this, Rose? You're on the _other_ team, and we both know you want to win just as badly as I do."

"Of course I do," Rose said with a smile. "But I also believe in you. I know that at your best, you're just as good as James, and miles ahead of any other Seeker. Plus, it wouldn't really feel like winning if there was no competition in the first place."

Scorpius took a moment to take in her words. Then he mumbled quietly, "I just feel like this is the only thing I've got left."

As he said the words, Rose could feel her heart start to ache a little. Scorpius hadn't been willing to talk about what had happened at home in early summer, but it had obviously taken its toll. He was slowly being torn apart, and this whole year Rose had just been tearing harder. She knew that now, and just wished that she could find a way to glue him back together.

"You know that's not true," she replied, her voice breaking as she said it.

Slowly, he turned straight to her, and their eyes locked. Rose would have held on to the moment forever if she could, but Scorpius's eyes caught onto something else that was just above where Rose sat.

Scorpius was squinting up at the person, and sighed heavily before covering his face and mumbling, "Oh, bloody hell".

Rose turned around to find a Ravenclaw girl whom she didn't recognize looking down at her. The girl had Asian-looking features, including long black hair that had been tied into two braided pigtails.

"Hi," she said, Rose noticing her strange accent. "I was just wondering if y'all knew where Albus was? Albus Potter?"

Hearing more, Rose recognized her accent as a southern one. It was something she rarely heard living in England, but her father had done some impressions of it over the years, especially when he had to go on trips to America for work.

Rose turned back to Scorpius quickly to see that he still had his face buried beneath his hands. He seemed to know who the girl was, but apparently didn't like her very much.

"Um, sorry, but who are you?" Rose asked, looking back up at the girl in front of her.

"Oh, well I'm Abby Chang, y'all!" she announced excitedly. "Abigail Chang-Turner to be more precise. I transferred here from Tennessee. Uh, I'm a fourth year."

Rose was exhausted from just listening to Abby, she had so much energy. Behind her, Scorpius was groaning loudly, apparently not concerned with being discreet.

"It's nice to meet you Abby," Rose said, to be polite. "I'm Rose, Rose Weasley."

Suddenly Abby's face went blank and her eyes doubled in size. "Weasley? My goodness, people at Hogwarts sure are famous!" she exclaimed, once her face had thawed off a bit.

Rose chuckled sarcastically and once again looked to Scorpius. This time, she coughed at him for help, and he lowered his hands from his face and made a large gulp. He then looked up at Abby and said, "Al's at the Owlery."

"Oh, right," Abby said, as if she had forgotten what she had asked them in the first place. "Well thank you so much! I better get going then…"

"Yeah, you do that," Scorpius mumbled under his breath as she walked away.

Rose turned back to him and suddenly started bursting with laughter, and he joined her. It was the type of moment they hadn't shared in a while, and Rose realized now how much she had missed that. Once the cackling subsided, Rose asked, "What was all that?"

Scorpius shook his head and sighed again, before saying, "Al and I bumped into her at our last practice. Ly…" He paused at the task of saying Lysander's full name. He was Captain of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team, but that wasn't the problem.

Rose was about to try and apologize again, but decided against it. Instead, she just provided Scorpius with an alternative way to explain himself. "The Ravenclaw team," she suggested.

Scorpius looked up and gave a small, grateful smile before going on. "Right, well they wanted the field to start training their new Seeker."

"She's a _Seeker_?" Rose asked in complete shock. Seekers tended to be quick, agile, and focused, all three of which the southern belle clearly lacked.

"It gets better," Scorpius said. "She seems to have a little thing for Al."

Rose nearly spat out her pumpkin juice upon hearing this. "You can't be serious?" she asked after the coast was clear.

"I really wish I wasn't," Scorpius said. They both shook their heads then, thinking of how ridiculous it all was. Albus was so calm and collected, self-conscious at times, yet powerful. He couldn't possibly see anything in this girly, energetic, and dim-witted broad.

The two continued to joke about the prospective couple for the rest of their lunch hour, and Al still hadn't joined them when they set off for the dungeons (they had Potions class next).

They did, however, run into Lysander, an unfortunate turn to the time they were enjoying together. "Rose! How are you?" he had said, running up to her in the hallway. He hadn't noticed Scorpius standing next to her, but luckily Scorpius didn't try to run off.

"Lysander!" Rose yelled, done with ignoring him. She needed it to be completely over between them. She knew that now it was unlikely that Scorpius would ever admit to feeling anything more for her, but Rose was determined to be okay with that. What she couldn't live without, however, was her best friend. She needed to be able to laugh the way she just had on a regular basis.

"Look," Rose stated clearly, looking straight at Lysander, while at the same time hoping that Scorpius heard every word. "It's over, alright? Done. You made sure of that."

"Rose, please!" Lysander said, the same reaction he had had when she had tried to end it before.

"No, Lysander," she replied. "It's done. So just stop, okay?" Then she turned around and walked away, not waiting for him to come up with another excuse.

Scorpius was close behind her, but he kept quiet. When they got into the Potions classroom, they took their normal seats near the middle of the room. Al was already there and was reading through a letter he held in his hands.

"What's that?" Rose asked, sitting next to him. Scorpius was on her other side, and Al noted their proximity to each other, to which Rose responded with a smile and a look that said, _'I'll explain later'_.

"Uh, it's nothing," Al answered Rose. "Just a letter from home that's all, wishing us all good luck tomorrow."

Rose nodded and said, "It must be hard having kids on two different teams."

"Well, it's only the one match though," Al said.

Then, curious to hear from Al's perspective, Rose couldn't help but ask, "So Al, we um ran into Abby… Abby Chang, I think it was. Was she able to find you?"

Scorpius leaned forward at this, also curious, and Al could sense their judging tones. Even so, he answered honestly. "Yes," he said, "As a matter of fact, I was talking to her in the courtyard nearly all of lunch."

"_You_ were talking?" Scorpius asked sarcastically. "So it was an actual conversation, with two sides and everything?"

Rose bit her lip to keep from laughing at Scorpius, who had just asked the exact same question she had been thinking of herself.

"Oh, shut it," Al addressed both of them. "You're both just jealous that I'm finally getting some sort of attention while you two sit here and pine over each other."

Rose and Scorpius looked to each other quickly before turning down to their desks in embarrassment, Scorpius running a nervous hand through his hair. It was normal for the three of them to tease each other, but Al wouldn't usually be so blunt. It seemed that Rose's recent plotting and Scorpius's brooding had gotten under Al's skin more than either of them had realized.

After waiting to let the awkward moment settle, Rose said quietly, "She just seems a little crazy, that's all."

Albus sighed with exasperation but didn't get the chance to respond. Professor Pontner, who was small and very sweet, had just come out of her office, signaling the start of class.

"Please open your books to the chapter on truth serums. Now, most of these are N.E.W.T. level, so I don't want you to fuss too much over actually making them. However, it is very important to know about each as well as their antidotes," she explained. "So, who can tell me something about the truth potion, Veritaserum?"

Rose, as per normal, shot up her hand, but Professor Pontner called on Albus instead. He was wrong about what he had said before; he seemed to be getting _plenty_ of attention lately.

"Uh, well," Al began, "It's the most powerful truth serum there is, which basically means that it will force the drinker to tell the truth at all times. It's also colorless and odorless, so it's often mistaken for plain water."

"Very good, Mr. Potter. Five points for Slytherin, and I'm sure you'll be able to produce a fabulous brew one day," Professor Pontner said.

As the professor started walking to the back of the class, Scorpius muttered, "Not that you'd need a truth serum. I'm sure _little Abby_ would never hurt a fly, and never tell a lie."

Rose laughed and then added, "You know, I bet she's already bought a love potion to use on you."

Al then clenched his teeth and said to them, "I really want to hit you two right now," before they all burst into laughter yet again.

* * *

When Rose woke the next day, Saturday, all of Gryffindor Tower was cheering and singing. Everybody was getting dressed into either their Quidditch robes or anything that was red and gold. As she toppled down the stairs, she could make out their songs, all various chants intended to show off house spirit. Today was a big day, not just for the players, or even the two houses competing, but for the entire school.

Everybody would go to watch the match, including the rest of Gryffindor and Slytherin, all decked out in their house colors, as well as all of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, cheering for whichever house they preferred (normally Gryffindor), along with the entire school staff. Flying above a crowd so large and so loud was always a little daunting for Rose, but there was also nothing else like it.

"Rose, meet you on the field in twenty minutes!" James called at her as she was exiting through the portrait hole. Both of them were already in their robes and Rose had her arms full of her Keeper pads. She waved back to him as she left, on her way to meet Al and Scorpius in the Great Hall for breakfast.

Walking into the hall, Rose was bombarded by other Gryffindors who were coming up and wishing her luck. Nigel approached wearing an enormous hat in the shape of a lion head, and gave her an equally large and surprising hug. Hugo, right beside him, merely threatened Rose, informing her that he had bet a load of money that Gryffindor would win today, and that she better not let him down.

Once past the fans, she sat down next to Scorpius and across from Albus. They both had their robes on, Scorpius with his special Seeker goggles that protected against the wind. He was looking down at his plate of eggs with a queasy expression, and was swallowing hard.

"Scorp, you're going to be fine," Al was saying, waving to Rose as she took her seat and began eating a piece of toast.

Scorpius stayed frozen, and Rose put a hand on his shoulder and said, "Scorpius, just remember what I said. You can do this."

He nodded but still looked nervous. Leaning closer to him, Rose whispered, "If it helps, James is just as on edge as you are." She wasn't lying; James was acting over-confidently, almost as if he was paranoid.

"Yeah, that does help a little, actually," Scorpius said. "Thanks."

Rose smiled in response. Scorpius still didn't eat anything, but Rose didn't blame him. In less than an hour, he'd by flying atop the field at speeds so fast an airplane could barely catch him, so having a full stomach might not be the greatest idea in the first place.

A few minutes later, the Hall was once again filled with owls, flying in for the weekly mail drop-off. Rose looked up for Pigwidgeon, but couldn't see him anywhere. Sure enough, she soon felt a small thump against her back and turned around to find the tiny owl lying on the floor below her, a small envelope nearly choking him to death.

She took it from him quickly before he flew off to see Hugo. The letter was from her parents of course; they too were wishing her luck, her father writing that he wished he could be there to see her play.

Once most of the owls had come and gone, one last bird came in through the hatch near the top of the hall. It was one of the Hogwarts barn owls that delivered letters to and from kids who didn't have owls of their own, and this one was carrying a very large and cumbersome-looking package that was wrapped in newspaper.

As it flew above the tables, people started pointing up to it and wondering what it was carrying, or whom it was for. It slowly descended atop Rose's table and made a final stop in front of Scorpius, where it released the package from its beak, bowed, and then flew off again.

A horde of students had already gathered around, curious. Scorpius was just as shocked as they all were, as he hardly ever received letters, let alone large items. This one was relatively oblong in shape, and was quite long and narrow. With the help of Rose and Albus, Scorpius started to tear the newspaper off of it.

Once unwrapped, everybody gaped in amazement over the beautiful, perfectly new broomstick that sat on the table. It was silver and green, already polished in Slytherin colors, and Rose immediately recognized it as the one she had seen in Diagon Alley: the Falcon Flyer.

Scorpius was speechless, but Al just laughed and said, "You've got to be kidding me." Rose didn't blame him for saying such a thing. After all, what were the odds of Scorpius receiving a package, after so many years of never getting anything, that just happened to be the fastest and most expensive broom in the world, on the day of his biggest Quidditch match of the season?

"Who's it from?" Rose asked, ignoring the 'oohs' and 'awws' coming from the other kids behind her.

Scorpius, waking up from his daydream, started looking it over, but didn't find anything. "There's no letter."

"Are you going to use it? Today, I mean?" Al asked, sounding hopeful. It was a bit risky to fly on a brand new broom during a match, as the player wouldn't be used to it. Still, it might be the type of risk that could really pay off.

"I think I have to," Scorpius said. He then stood from his spot, picked up the broom, and turned around, ready to go try it out. He was about to walk away when he saw everybody standing and staring at him, James in the forefront of the crowd.

"Is that really a Falcon Flyer?" James asked. He flew on a Firebolt just like his father had, but he knew the Flyer was even faster.

Scorpius smirked, nodded his head, and then said, "Yeah, it really is." He then pushed his way through everybody who was still trying to sneak a peek at the broom, before turning back toward James and saying, "Oh, and good luck today."

Al stood up and ran over to follow Scorpius out before James turned to Rose and said angrily, "And what are you doing here?"

"James, relax, I was just having breakfast," Rose said, trying to get him to calm down. He was fuming already, and she knew that wouldn't help him when he got out on the field.

"No, you were fraternizing with the enemy!" he yelled. Everybody looked over at him, and the rest of the Gryffindor team had gathered around him and Rose, looking over to their captain reproachfully.

"The enemy?" Rose asked, turning protective over her friends now. "James, Slytherin is our opponent, but they're not the _enemy_."

One of the Finnigan girls had come closer to him, and now had a hand on his shoulder. He just shrugged her off before heading out of the hall, his teammates right behind.

Rose sighed heavily and stood up, catching up to the back of the group. "You'd better make some good shots today," she said to Lily, who looked confident about the game, yet slightly petrified of her brother. "We're going to need them."

"Yeah," Lily said. "And you better not let anybody else do the same."

"Deal," Rose agreed as they walked through the double doors that led out of the castle. Their team might have been slightly broken, but they would still be giving it their all.

Once on the pitch, Rose flew up and took her place in front of the three goal posts. It was a nice day, not too cold, but clouds were beginning to form above them all, and Rose could tell that rain was imminent.

Across the field was fellow Slytherin Keeper, Lindsay Doyle. She was a 4th year, and it was her second season on the Quidditch team. She hadn't been very good last fall, but Rose didn't count her out. Still, she thought that Lily and the Finnigan girls, Gryffindor's three Chasers, might have a good chance of scoring relatively often.

In the middle of the field, the rest of the players were sitting motionless on their brooms, all having formed a large circle above where the Quidditch teacher stood on the ground, quaffle in hand. The snitch and both bludgers had already been released, and Rose could just make out James and Scorpius eyeing each other while at the same time trying to follow the snitch's quick and unpredictable movements.

Scorpius was on his new broom, and looked very comfortable with it already. It seemed to have given him a large dose of much-needed confidence, which Rose was happy about.

Around all of them, enormous crowds were packed into the stands, cheering. There were definitely more Gryffindor fans than Slytherin ones, as nearly three quarters of the stands were showing off their red and gold umbrellas already. Up high in Professor McGonagall's box, Lila Jordan was standing next to the magical scoreboard and microphone. She had just announced the players of each team and was now waiting, along with everybody else, for the match to begin.

Then, the familiar starting whistle was heard, and Rose turned back to the field just in time to see the quaffle fly into the air. As soon as it did so, Scorpius and James took off in opposite directions, both flying high above the field to start scouting for the snitch, which they had lost sight of from the time of its release. Fred and Sam, the two Gryffindor Beaters, each flew to one side of the field, creating a wall around the Chasers in the middle.

One of the Finnigan girls had caught the quaffle, and was passing it back and forth between herself and her sister as they made their way across the field. Rose kept her eye on them, since she knew Al could get the ball from them at any second.

Lily had flown behind the Slytherin goal posts, and it was clear that she was waiting for the quaffle to be passed. Just as Sam knocked a bludger at Goyle, who had been making his way over to Fred, one of the Finnigan sisters passed the quaffle over to Lily. The youngest Potter then flew around the posts, confusing Lindsay, and hit it directly through the top ring.

"And _GRYFFINDOR_ starts off the scoring with ten points, a goal made by one of their new team members, Lily Potter!" Lila called out from her box, but Rose tried to ignore it, since Al had flown behind the goal post just as Lily had scored, and was now flying toward Rose with the quaffle buried under his shoulder.

"Albus Potter for Slytherin with the quaffle now. He's being protected on both sides by his fellow Chasers, and just dodged another bludger hit by Gryffindor player, Fred Weasley," Lila continued to announce. "He's making his way over to the Gryffindor posts now."

Al was headed straight for Rose, who was directly in front of the top post. She knew this trick, though; Al had played it before. He looked ahead deliberately to try to keep her from moving, but then he'd always swerve slightly to the right before he actually threw the ball. Sure enough, just as he was getting closer, he swerved and threw the quaffle toward the lower right post. Unfortunately for him, Rose got there just in time to throw the red ball right back at him, where a Finnigan girl was ready to intercept and take it for her own.

"And Gryffindor Keeper, Rose Weasley, makes an impressive save from a near-goal by Slytherin. Now with the quaffle is Cassidy Finnigan for Gryffindor!"

Rose sighed with relief once the team started heading back to the Slytherin side of the field. The trio of Chasers were using a different play this time, with Cassidy forcing her way through the Slytherin boys and keeping the quaffle to herself. Once near the posts, she threw the ball toward the lower left hoop, but Lindsay was able to block it this time. Gryffindor was prepared for this, though, with Lily waiting and ready for the rebound.

Once she had the quaffle, Lily only waited a moment before making a huge throw to the opposite ring. It was a risk, since the ball had enough time in the air for somebody from Slytherin to snatch it away, but it was also too far away to give Lindsay enough time to get to it.

It paid off, since even though Rose couldn't see the outcome for herself, with too many players blocking her view, she could hear Lila yell out, "And another ten points for _GRYFFINDOR_, as Lily Potter scores yet again! It's twenty to nothing now, Slytherin having yet to score."

Rose got ready for another try from Slytherin now. A different Chaser had the ball this time, and Al was off trying to block Lily from getting it back. Rose was well prepared as he flew toward her, but she ended up not needing to be, as James zoomed right in front of him then, causing him to fly straight into a side tower, where he fell off his broom and toppled to the ground.

Everybody in the crowd screamed with shock at the early injury, and Rose looked down to see the boy lying completely still; he would be out for the rest of the match. Gryffindor had the quaffle again, and they were able to score easily with Lindsay so distracted.

Meanwhile, James and Scorpius were flying all across the field after the snitch, making it even more difficult for Rose to see who was coming her way. As Al and his fellow Chaser came closer, however, she noticed that neither of them had the quaffle. Instead, it was flying in the air above them, probably having been hit 'accidentally' by a Beater. Rose was heading over to block it from going through the tallest hoop, but was cut off by a bludger headed straight for her. She had no choice but to swerve away from it and let the quaffle in.

"_SLYTHERIN _now officially on the board with ten points! Gryffindor is still leading the way with thirty."

Behind Rose, Lily already had the quaffle back and was headed through the crowd. Sam, who was clearly angry about the bludger, was making his way over to Rose, where he hit the small, dark ball with his bat and it went all across the field. Goyle flew up to it then and hit it back down, where it banged Fred on the shoulder. Losing his balance, Fred swayed off his broom and nearly fell, but was caught by Sam, who had already shot the bludger back to Goyle. Flying together now, with Fred's arm hanging across Sam's shoulders, the Gryffindor beaters were getting ever closer to the goal posts, where a Finnigan girl had just scored. When the bludger made its way back to them, Sam used his one free arm to hit it directly at Lindsay, who got it straight in the gut.

The Slytherin Keeper was on the ground now, marking the third injury and second fall of the match. Rose felt terrible for her, as she must have been in great pain, but couldn't help but feel slightly happy, knowing that Gryffindor would have no trouble scoring for the rest of the match.

It was just starting to rain then, and was pouring before long. The grass below all the players was completely soaked in no time, but the game kept going. If anything, the rain just made it more exciting, with it harder to see and to fly with everybody's equipment so slippery.

The two Slytherin team members who had fallen were both taken to the hospital wing once the rain started. Slytherin was struggling because of their great loss, as Gryffindor continued to score. Al and his other Chaser were making desperate attempts to stop Gryffindor, which included sandwiching Cassidy Finnigan, each of them pushing against one of her sides as she flew, to try to steer her off course. Goyle had taken up position as temporary Keeper, and was hitting both quaffles and bludgers every which way he turned, causing quite a bit of chaos. Luckily, Fred was able to avoid him, and gained enough strength to fly on his own again. Al found a way to get past Rose three more times with the help of Goyle and the rain (though he had tried to do so over twenty times), but Gryffindor was still leading the way with a jaw-dropping 200 points within an hour or two.

James and Scorpius had lost track of the snitch at some point during the storm, and like Rose, were now flying around slowly for the sole purpose of trying to keep warm. Rose would glance up at them every so often, just to see if anything was happening. With Gryffindor so far ahead, she felt confident that they could win, even without James catching the snitch, but chances were that he didn't actually realize this. Seekers could hardly ever hear the announcements very well since they were up so high, and even if they could they'd try to ignore them, in order to keep themselves focused on their own task at all times. Still, Rose was hoping that the game could come to an end soon, before one of Goyle's bludgers knocked somebody else out.

Just as Rose was thinking this, Scorpius suddenly dove down, heading straight for the ground. James had been on the opposite side of the field, but he noticed Scorpius right away and flew after him. The quaffle seemed to be staying over by the Slytherin goal posts for now, so Rose had the chance to watch James and Scorpius battle it out.

"Slytherin's playing good defense now, keeping Gryffindor from getting to their goal posts," Lila said before she noticed Scorpius and James. "Oh my, it looks like Slytherin Seeker and Captain, Scorpius Malfoy, has spotted the snitch! He's flying after it now, and Gryffindor's James Potter's not too far behind…"

Down below, Scorpius was flying frighteningly close to the grass, so much so that his feet were making splashes in the water that covered it. He was flying beautifully on his new broom, as if he had been using it his whole life. He was gaining ground on the snitch, the glow of which Rose could just barely make out against the rain. At the same time, James was gaining ground on him.

They were both swerving around now, flying after the same object. James had completely caught up, and they were going side-by-side at a very high speed. They continued like this for some time, and were still going when Rose heard Lily scream out her name.

"ROSE! LOOK UP!" she called, and Rose followed her order. Sure enough Al was coming toward her, and fast. She didn't know which post he would aim for, but she did know that if he scored, and if Scorpius was able to catch the snitch before James, then the two teams would tie. James would be devastated with this, and Rose wouldn't be too happy herself.

Determined to keep their lead no matter what, Rose decided to just keep her eye on Al and the quaffle, and that hopefully she'd have enough time to follow it before it went through one of the three rings. When Al threw it, he was just above the lower right hoop, but had aimed way over to the side. Rose followed it, flying as fast as she could, but wasn't able to make it to the left hoop in time. Just as she stretched out her arm to stop it, it flew past her. Looking back at it though, Rose saw the quaffle go right _over_ the hoop. It had been a close call, but Al hadn't scored. Relieved, but still focused, Rose made her way around the back of the hoops and hit the quaffle back to Lily, who had been waiting for it.

With the quaffle back in safe hands, Rose returned her eyes to the Seeker duel, which had moved up to mid-field. Scorpius and James were in the same positions they had been in before, flying side-by-side. Scorpius's broom must have been seriously fast, as normally James would have surged ahead by now.

To everybody's surprise though, the snitch made a sudden move and turned ninety degrees in the air, shooting straight up toward the clouds. One would think it would slow down trying to fly against such heavy rain, but if anything, it seemed to be going faster than it had been before. Both having quick reflexes, Scorpius and James turned their brooms and continued their chase after the golden ball. Again to the shock of everybody in the crowds, along with the watchful Rose, Scorpius started to speed up then, flying straight past James and up into a rain cloud where he could no longer be seen.

Rose's heart skipped a few beats then, as she worried about where Scorpius might be. James made his way to the same cloud a few moments later, but Rose couldn't imagine that either of them had very clear visibility. Both were lost from sight for over a minute until, finally, Scorpius came flying down, circling back to the middle of the pitch.

As soon as they noticed that there was no golden ball in front of Scorpius, the crowd stopped cheering for either team and looked up in confusion. Rose, however, knew right away that Scorpius had caught it, just from the smile on his face. Sure enough, as he made his way back toward his team, he held up his hand and showed off the snitch to the crowd.

"And _SLYTHERIN_ Seeker, Scorpius Malfoy, has caught the snitch, earning his team one hundred and fifty points, and ending the match!" Lila announced from her box.

The entire school started roaring with excitement at this. Though the final score hadn't yet been announced, this was the first time in five years that James _hadn't_ caught the snitch. Rose too was smiling from ear to ear. He may not have been on her team, but Scorpius had wanted this ever since he had started playing Quidditch. She had watched him practice relentlessly, and grow into a brilliant Seeker, but she had also lived through his feeling of inferiority when compared to James. James, and most likely the rest of the Gryffindor team, would all say that Scorpius was only able to catch the snitch because of his new broom, but Rose knew better. Scorpius didn't need the broom, he never had. He only needed the confidence.

As all players started to make their way down to the ground, Lila announced, "And that makes a total of one hundred and ninety points for Slytherin, and two hundred for Gryffindor. _GRYFFINDOR WINS!"_

And then there was more cheering, which continued on all the way through to the locker room, where Rose and the rest of the Gryffindor team convened after the match.

Everybody immediately went to Fred to see that he was okay, including Lila, who had run into the room breathing heavily from the long walk from her box and screaming out his name. It turned out the bludger had dislocated his shoulder, but somehow he had managed to play through the pain, though using only one arm. After he had informed everyone, Lila had gone with him to the hospital wing.

Then everybody sat down together and reviewed the exciting match, giving Lily, the new star player, plenty of congratulations for her impressive skills and the incredible amount of goals she had scored. Next to her were Sam and Cassidy, and Rose was surprised to see that for once in a long time, they weren't holding hands. They had been the perfect couple in Rose's eyes, the couple she aspired to be like one day, and she had no idea what had happened between them.

Rose sat just outside all of them, keeping relatively quiet as she eyed James, who was standing alone in the corner, his eyes dead of all feeling and focused on the floor.

The Finnigan girl James had been dating walked up to try and comfort him at one point, but he shrugged her off again. Rose wanted to do the same for him, but didn't think it would do any good at this point. He needed some time. Quidditch was the one things James had always cared about, and it was the one thing he had always been good at. It might have seemed dramatic, but Rose could understand why he was so upset.

Once everybody had changed back into their weekend clothes, Sam, both Finnigan girls, and Lily left for Gryffindor Tower, where there was sure to be a surprise celebratory party waiting for them. James stayed behind, however, now sitting on one of the benches in the middle of the room. Being that they were alone now, Rose decided that she'd try to talk to him, if only to be a good friend.

At first, she just sat next to him and remained silent, not really knowing where to start. She didn't want to talk down Scorpius, but that was probably the only thing James wanted to hear.

Then James chuckled a little, but it wasn't cheerful, more pitiful, before he said quietly, "I uh, I was going as fast as I could. The whole time, I was going as fast as I could, and he was just trying to tire me out. Then he just flew past me, like it was nothing. He did exactly what I always do, so how could I have not seen that coming?"

Rose thought about what he had said before responding with, "Sometimes we get so focused on the ultimate goal, or the idea of this thing that we want so badly, we get paranoid. We start strategizing, making a game plan, thinking of all the ways we could possibly get to that thing. We focus on all the details, without realizing that the answer is right in front of us, and it's so simple. It's so simple, but at the same time it doesn't make sense, because it scares us.

"You focused on yourself. You didn't think about Scorpius or _his_ plans, or _his _feelings, even when they were right in front of you. You ignored them, because they scared you."

James looked to her and smiled crookedly. "So did you," he said.

Rose looked back at him and licked her lips in embarrassment. She still felt guilty about everything that had happened with Scorpius and Lysander. Even though she had ended it, for some reason the whole thing didn't seem over.

"He's a good guy," James said. "I know I suggested that you go along with Lysander, but I knew better. Scorpius is the better guy, Rose. I know I don't treat him very well, but it's only because I envy him sometimes. You told me that he was determined, and well, I already knew that. I've spent a lot of time over the years playing this role as an older brother to him, and I've never seen somebody so determined to succeed. I mean, with Quidditch, with his Transfiguration spells… with you."

"With me?" Rose asked. He hadn't seemed very determined about her. After all, that was initially why she had agreed to Lysander's proposition, to make him more determined.

James laughed and then asked rhetorically, "Do you have any idea how long it took for him to write that letter to you this summer?"

Rose hadn't expected his short letter to be brought up, by James of all people. He had never been close with Scorpius, but this was mainly due to their Quidditch rivalry. It was true that off the field, at home, James probably spent quite a large deal of time with his quasi-brother.

"You knew about the letter?" she asked.

"It wasn't that hard to notice," James said. He then added, "I mean, here I am, fooling around with a girl who I barely care about, barely even know. But Scorpius? He took nearly an entire month to write this unbelievably short letter to you. He was so scared, just to send you this piece of paper, but he did it."

Rose was crying now, listening to all of the things that James was saying, all of these things that had been right in front of her, but that she'd overlooked. "But it's too late now," she said sadly.

"No it's not," James said. "You just need to stop being so scared and focus on what's in front of you. Just lean forward and fly, even if that takes you into a cloud where you can't see anything at all."

Rose smiled in thanks and laughed, saying, "This conversation was supposed to be about you."

James laughed back and hugged her on the side. "Don't worry about me. I'll be fine. I've been flying pretty fast for a while now, so it's about time I slow down."

At that, Rose stood up and was about to leave before she asked, "Are you coming?"

James shook his head and answered, "Not yet. You go ahead."

Rose smiled at him one more time before she left the room and headed back toward the castle gates. She was still wet from the rain, but it had stopped outside. It was much colder now, and the clouds above Rose were turning a milky white color from their original grey. She wanted to go down to the dungeons where she knew the Slytherin dormitories were hidden, but decided to first head back to her own common room, where she could be with the rest of her teammates before meeting Al and Scorpius for supper in the Great Hall.

As it turned out, she wouldn't have found Scorpius in the dungeons anyway. He was already there waiting for her at the top of the castle. He was sitting in the hall a few yards away from the Fat Lady portrait as Rose approached him, still in his Quidditch robes, his light hair dripping water onto the stone floor.

"Scorpius," Rose said as she walked up in front of him. They were the only two in the hallway, and it looked as if Scorpius had been waiting for a while now.

He looked up to her with his mouth open in surprise. He then scrambled to his feet and stood in front of the wall, his goggles in one hand and his snitch wrapped in the other. After taking a few deep breaths he held up his hand and said, "I caught the snitch."

Rose laughed, an enormous smile on her face, and nodded. "I knew you could," she said. "You were amazing today." She was so pleased about how the match had gone. It seemed oddly perfect that Scorpius had been able to catch the snitch, and yet Gryffindor was still able to win.

Scorpius was looking down, flushed at her compliment, and then squinted his eyes, looking at her right hand. "You're wearing the ring," he said. She had been wearing it for weeks, but this was the first time he had noticed.

Smiling again, Rose said, "Yes. I am."

"I caught the snitch," Scorpius said again, before he started to pace slowly across the hallway.

Rose stared after him, not understanding what exactly he was doing. "Scorpius, what –" she tried to ask, but was interrupted when Scorpius stopped walking and looked over at her.

"I caught the snitch," he restated. "I've been thinking about this game, this particular match. I've been training for it, training my team. I was training them so that we might have a chance, even with James. But I never thought that _I'd_ actually catch the snitch."

Rose was still confused, but she didn't want to interrupt, so she tried to be as patient as possible in listening to Scorpius.

"'I've been waiting for this moment, wanting it, ever since my first Quidditch match," he continued. "And now I've done it, not because _I_ believed that I could, not even because of that broom that fell out of the sky. I did it because _you _believed in me."

Rose held her breath when he said this, because she wanted to hold onto his words for as long as she could. They didn't seem real, and she needed to make sure she had heard them correctly.

"You believed in me," he said, allowing Rose to breath again. "And so I caught the snitch. And then I had it, it was in my hands, and for some reason I didn't want it anymore. It was like it felt heavy, like it wasn't supposed to be in my hand after all." He was looking down at the snitch as he said this, the golden ball sitting in his half-open palm.

"And as soon as the match was over, I came up here. I didn't stop and change, I didn't go back to the common room, I just came right here, and I sat down and I waited. I didn't even have to think about it; it was like I apparated straight here or something.

"And while I was waiting, I realized why this tiny thing feels like it's weighing me down. It's because I am standing here with my arms full, and I just want to let go of all of it. I want to drop the snitch and I want to free my hand, because I shouldn't be holding any _thing_. I should be holding you."

Scorpius was speaking very slowly now, as if every word had some great meaning, and as if he had been preparing to say each one for a lifetime. Meanwhile, across from him, Rose was completely still, trying to take in every one of his great words.

"I want to let go of everything and then I want to hold you instead, and I want to never let go again. I want to hold you, and I want to tell you…" Scorpius paused then, and Rose could see the beginning of a tear forming in his eyes. "I want to tell you – I want to tell you that I think you're beautiful."

Rose blinked a number of times, and she could feel her own tears falling down her face. Slowly but steadily, Scorpius started to walk over to her. Once close enough, he lifted the hand that was holding his goggles, brought it to her cheek, and wiped her tear away.

Her heart was beating fast, even faster now that he was so close to her, and Rose was afraid that if she moved at all, it might start beating so fast and so hard that she wouldn't be able to hear Scorpius's voice anymore.

He was backing away now, just as slowly as he had come toward her before. Rose didn't know why he was doing so, and wanted to yell at him to come back, but she couldn't find the strength to say anything at all.

"I want to," he said, tears streaming down his face now. "But I don't know how."

Rose knew that he didn't mean this literally, that what he meant was that he didn't know how to let her in, how to trust her. Even so, the only thing she could think of to say was, "Just let go. Open your hands and turn them to the floor and drop it all. Drop it all and then take three steps forward and wrap your arms around me. Lift me up and hold me, and then don't let go anymore.

"And I'll stand here, with my hands completely empty, and I'll wait for you. I'll wait and when you get to me, I'll wrap my arms around you. I'll hold you, and I won't ever let go. I promise I won't ever let go."

Scorpius, who had been looking straight at Rose, took a deep breath before he opened up his hands, turned them to the floor, and dropped what he was holding. The snitch quickly spread its thin, silvery wings and started to fly by his side, waiting for him to catch it again, but he didn't notice. Scorpius's eyes remained on Rose as he took three steps forward to where she was standing. Once there, he wrapped one arm around her and used the other to take a strand of her wet, curly red hair out from in front of her face and place it behind her ear. This hand then stroked her neck and his head leaned down toward hers until their noses touched. Then, tilting his head to the side, he leaned in even further and kissed her softly.

Rose kissed him back, letting her instincts take over her thoughts. Without even realizing it, she was soon lifted from the ground, Scorpius's arms now holding her up by her lower back. Her arms where locked around his neck, and they remained like so for a very short eternity.

Eventually, Scorpius brought Rose back down to the ground, but didn't loosen his grasp around her. They both spared a glance at the snitch floating next to them, and at the same time spotted the perfect, magical snow that was falling outside the window at the end of the hall. Smiling, they pressed their foreheads against each other and closed their eyes, taking the moment to listen to their hearts beating, and to breathe in the same fresh, wintry air of November.


	6. The Morning Spat

**_Note: _**_If you haven't already noticed, I have written a oneshot following James (S.) Potter, which is meant to be concurrent with the last chapter, Chapter 5 - Out of Desire. If you haven't read it, I hope that you take the time to now. It reveals some new information that may not be revealed within the main story, so it is worthwhile. Plus, it's a nice change, as everything is seen through a different perspective than that of Rose. After you've read that, however (or if you choose not to), feel free to continue on to this chapter, #6. Happy reading!_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**6 – The Morning Spat**

Outside the Hogwarts Express, perfect, powdery snowflakes were falling, slowly piling on to the blanket of white that had formed atop the cold, December ground. Rose couldn't help but smile as she looked out at it through her compartment window. Snow was such a delicate thing, so small and detailed, light and pure. It was almost more magical than rain.

She had gone off on this train of thought a few minutes ago, after getting bored with her book on wandlore. Nigel had made sure that she packed it to read at home over the holidays, and she had reluctantly kept her promise to him. They still hadn't found anything that explained how Albus had been able to fix Hugo's wand, but Nigel wasn't ready to give up, so Rose was still going along with it.

She hadn't, however, been meeting Nigel in the library as often as before. She just couldn't seem to find enough time anymore, thanks to Scorpius. Ever since their first kiss, they had found it difficult to stay apart for too long. It wasn't that they were snogging all the time, though. Both of them were much too prudent for public displays of affection. They really just enjoyed each other's company, and would sneak in a handhold or a kiss every now and then. In fact, not many in the school knew that they had recently become more than friends, with the exception of Albus and James, and Rose was adamant on keeping it that way.

Now, the two of them were sitting with Al on the Hogwarts Express, on their way home for Christmas. Scorpius normally stayed at school over the break, but the Potters had invited him to spend it with them, and Rose had convinced him to oblige. They would be able to see more of each other that way.

"Merlin's beard, not again," Scorpius mumbled then, sitting up from where he had been lying across his seat, his head on Rose's shoulder. Waking her from her daydream, Rose turned to where Scorpius was looking to see Abby Chang-Turner at the door to their room.

She had stopped right in front of it and started blowing on the window, making a large circle of fog. She then traced her and Al's initials in it, and enveloped them both in a heart. Across from Rose and Scorpius, Al sighed and stood up from his seat.

"Don't worry," Al said to Scorpius. "I'll leave." He was annoyed yet again by Scorpius's disapproval of Abby, and Scorpius gave him an apologetic smile as he left the room to join his eccentric new girlfriend.

As soon as he had gone, Scorpius sighed with relief and laughed at the sign she had left on their door.

"I'm surprised you were able to hold in it that long," Rose said, referring to Scorpius's restraint from teasing Al or laughing at Abby before he had left.

"Yeah, well I'm trying," Scorpius said. He and Rose had agreed that they would lay off of Abby if that's what Al wanted. They didn't want him to feel like a third wheel now that they were together, and Abby was a good distraction from that. "Sorry I almost slipped," Scorpius added, turning back to Rose.

"Mmm, I don't know how I'll ever forgive you for it," Rose joked back.

"Oh, I think I know a way," Scorpius said, raising his eyebrows. He then leaned forward and kissed her.

It took a lot of inner strength for Rose to break apart from him, but eventually she managed to. She could have continued on with him for the rest of the ride to King's Cross, but she didn't want anybody to walk by and see, even if it was just an innocent kiss.

"Oh, why don't we just tell people?" Scorpius asked, sitting back in his seat, but still with his arm around Rose's shoulders. He knew that was why she had backed off, and he knew why they had agreed to keep it quiet, but he couldn't help but get impatient sometimes.

"Because," Rose said, taking his open hand in hers, "It's not anybody's business. Plus, it wouldn't be fair."

Scorpius's expression turned to one full of envy as he asked, "It wouldn't be fair to Lysander, you mean?"

Rose didn't answer right away, out of fear that Scorpius might break away and get very angry. She had explained to him everything that had happened with Lysander, and had put particular emphasis on the fact that she had never had any feelings for him. Scorpius had been very accepting of what Rose had done, but he wasn't happy to know that Lysander had tried something on her without her permission. Every time he had seen the other blond since, Al had had to hold him back from going up and beating him to a pulp.

After waiting a moment, and seeing that Scorpius was still holding on to her hand and looked relatively relaxed, Rose said, "It's just that I'd feel like I was rubbing it in his face or something. I mean I already feel bad enough for using him."

"But it was his idea!" Scorpius said. He was always on Rose's side, and so he never thought that she should feel bad about anything. "Plus, he seems to be doing okay, and not just on the Quidditch pitch."

During the Ravenclaw vs. Hufflepuff match in late November, Lysander had led his team to a violent victory, after knocking out nearly every Hufflepuff player. He was lucky enough that Abby was also able to catch the snitch as well, which came as quite the shock to everyone who had met her. Ravenclaw won, 250 – 70, taking the overall lead early on in the season.

Quidditch aside, Lysander had also gone back to his polygamous ways, and was dating Myriam Vane, a 6th year astronomy fanatic, one day, only to be seen with fellow Ravenclaw, Pallavi Patil, the next. Rose assumed this was his way of coping, though Scorpius used it as proof that he had moved on… just in an interesting direction.

"Even so," Rose replied, trying not to tell Scorpius that he was wrong, but at the same time prove that she was right, "Do you really want him to be looking at you the way you look at him right now? I mean, you're the one who has a match against him coming up." Slytherin would be playing Ravenclaw in January, and Lysander being a Beater could put Scorpius in a very precarious situation. Plus, Scorpius would be having a hard enough time trying not to knock Abby way off her broom every time she got near him.

"Fine," Scorpius sighed, after squinting with dismay upon hearing Rose's threat. "We won't say anything. But if we're keeping it a secret at Hogwarts, then we're not telling your parents either," he stated, looking at Rose with his eyebrows raised, though this time for a much different reason.

"Scorpius!" Rose exclaimed. They had been talking a lot about this as well, and though Rose dreaded the idea of actually saying it, she felt obligated to tell her father about him. She and Ron had always been very close, and she couldn't imagine lying to him so blatantly. As for Hermione, hardly anything ever got past her, so chances were she'd know before Rose said a single thing. "You can't just ask me to keep this from them!"

"Rose, trust me," Scorpius replied, changing positions on the seat so that he was directly facing her, and moving his hand from her shoulder to the crook of her neck. "It'll be better if he doesn't know. He hates me enough as it is, and if he finds out about this, it'll only make it worse."

Rose sighed, but didn't yet agree. She would never wish to put Scorpius in an uncomfortable position, but she also desperately wanted to believe that what he said about Ron was wrong. Rose was sure that he would support her with something that made her happy, no matter the circumstance.

"Look," Scorpius said, stroking her chin. "This is my compromise. So, do we have a deal?"

Though she tried to look away, Scorpius gently turned Rose's face to his, making her look straight at his ice blue eyes. Rose could never sustain herself against them; they had some sort of power over her.

"Alright, deal," she said. "But we're going to have to tell him eventually."

"I know," Scorpius said. "We'll tell everybody. Just not yet." He then kissed her softly before returning to lying down across the seat, his head leaning on her shoulder as she went back to reading.

* * *

"Rosie, over here!" Rose heard her father yell. She was just barely off the train, but could already see his hair among the sea of parents, his hands waving high above them all.

Once on the platform, Rose began pushing her way through the crowd, Scorpius and Albus not far behind. When she reached her parents, both of them grabbed her in an enormous hug, blinding her from everything and everyone else around her. Yet again, she was immersed in the rich scent of spearmint toothpaste from her father, with a hint of freshly mown grass and new parchment from her mother. This was the smell she had been missing most lately, as it had been such a long time since she had seen Hermione.

"We've missed you so much!" Hermione said, once all three had broken apart.

Rose smiled in return, saying, "I missed you too". Ron was next to her, his arm on her shoulder. To their right was the Potter family, Ginny and Lily locked in a tight hug and Harry with a hand on both Al and Scorpius's shoulders. It seemed as though James and Hugo were missing, but this was only normal. Hugo usually took a while to say goodbye to his friends, but as soon as he did so, he'd come running up to find his dad. James, on the other hand, was too cool for any of that, and tended to meet the rest of the clan just outside the over-crowded platform.

"Hugo did make it on the train this time, didn't he?" Hermione asked with worry, referring to the unfortunate event that had occurred in Hugo's first year at Christmas, when he had been too distracted by the prospect of Honeydukes (which sat only a block away from Hogsmeade Station) to ever board the train. Ron laughed in remembrance, but Rose just nodded in reply. She had been on Hugo-watch ever since the incident, and was positive that she'd seen her little brother on the way there.

Though slightly calmer than before, Hermione continued to look around until Lily called, "There he is!" while pointing to a small, redheaded figure a few yards away.

Hermione sighed with relief at this, but her content expression turned to irritation when she noticed her son's tousled hair and ratty old Chudley Cannons t-shirt above a pair of pants that were much too small for him. Just like Ron, Hugo grew too fast to ever have a pair of trousers that covered the whole way down his legs.

Rose laughed at all this, as she already felt like she was back at home. Giving Hugo and her parents some space to greet each other, Rose went to hug both Harry and Ginny before stepping to the side, next to Scorpius.

Neither said anything to the other, but Rose could feel the light touch of Scorpius's hand brushing past hers. For that moment, everything and everyone around them disappeared, and it was just the two of them, their palms barely touching as Scorpius slowly opened up his hand to clasp it around hers. He then squeezed it tightly once before releasing it and returning to the previous stroking. He was trying to abide by his promise to keep things secret, but Rose didn't blame him for slipping a little. If anything, the distant closeness was only making her want him more.

Scorpius broke apart from Rose suddenly then, the feel of his hand disappearing from her skin and allowing her to return to the world of King's Cross Station, where her family was gathering all of Hugo's misplaced things that had spread themselves across the floor during her reverie.

She looked up at Scorpius to see where he had gone. He was still standing next to her, his hands now at his side, but it was clear that his eyes were lost in something else. Following them to the brick wall that marked the entry and exit point of the magically hidden station, Rose saw that a relatively tall, dark-haired woman, who looked to be around the same age as her parents, had just appeared. She was walking through everyone now with the same look of determination that Scorpius so often wore, and they all moved aside to make a path for her as she went. Rose wouldn't have recognized her if it hadn't been for Scorpius's reaction, but she could tell by his clenched teeth and gaping eyes that the woman they were staring at was in fact his mother.

Rose didn't dare speak, but just waited for Astoria Malfoy to approach her son. It came as quite the surprise to Rose though, when the woman did _not_ head toward them. In fact, she didn't even seem to notice Scorpius, and instead walked right by. For a moment, Rose considered that they should call out for her, but she seemed to know who or what she was looking for, and it didn't appear to be Scorpius.

Their eyes were still on her as she disappeared into the smog at the other end of the platform. A moment later, she began to head back the same way she had came, and Rose and Scorpius watched her walk right past them for the second time and go straight through the brick wall without even a jerk of the head.

As soon as she was gone, Rose looked to Scorpius to see if he was okay, He seemed confused, with his forehead wrinkled, but was still up and breathing in the same spot he had stood in before. This was more than could be said if the same had happened to Rose, she thought.

Slowly, Rose turned to face Scorpius and tried to get him to look at her, but he was in deep thought. Just as she was about to say something, she heard a soft whispering from Scorpius's other side. Leaning around to see past him, she spotted Vincent Goyle walking alone with his head down, quietly talking to himself. As he passed her, he looked up for a moment and spat out, "What are you looking at, _Weasley?"_

Goyle continued on his way after Rose failed to reply, and she then turned away to make sure neither Scorpius nor Ron had heard, and luckily they hadn't. Ron was busy trying to corral Cow back into his cage, since he had apparently escaped during Hugo's moving fiasco, and Scorpius was still lost in his own world.

Al approached then, looking to Scorpius and asking, "What's up?"

Rose was about to explain when Scorpius said, "I just saw my mum."

"Here?" Al asked. "Where'd she go? I mean, I thought your parents told you not to come home for Christmas. Did they change their minds?"

"No," Scorpius stated matter-of-factly, swallowing hard. To a confused Albus he added, "I'll tell you later."

Al didn't understand, until Scorpius nodded to his side, where the rest of the Weasley and Potter families had finally seemed to get a hold on things, and were just about to make their way off the platform. Seeing this, Al gave Scorpius a small nod and then caught up with the rest of his family.

"Rosie, come on! You're slowing down the herd!" Hugo yelled as he walked with Ron and Hermione toward the brick wall. Ron, who was carrying Rose's heavy suitcase, looked back at Rose as well, signaling for her to follow.

Rose was still standing with Scorpius though, and so she called back to them, "Go ahead, I'll meet you outside!"

Hugo shrugged and ran for the wall where everybody else had vanished. Ron looked to Rose and to the boy next to her with skepticism, but eventually turned around to follow Hugo, giving Rose a moment alone.

Nearly everyone had left the platform by now, with only a few first year stragglers still running around. Rose knew that Scorpius didn't want to talk, and she wanted to be there for him regardless. Still, in order for that to work, she needed the truth from him… the whole truth.

"What happened with your family this summer, Scorpius?" Rose asked sternly, with a look that told him she expected an honest answer. She had accepted the brief explanation he had given her and Al at Diagon Alley, but they hadn't really been together then. Now that they were, she needed more.

Scorpius looked at Rose for a moment before shaking his head and breathing deeply. "Your dad's waiting for you," he whispered, now looking to the floor. He then started walking, passing Rose and making a run for the wall.

Rose suspected that Scorpius might not tell her right away, since he was so stubborn. Oddly enough though, Rose didn't think that Scorpius was being headstrong; it seemed more like he was scared.

Rose gave him some space to breathe before she too exited the platform, making a slow run for the wall and walking out the other side to try to blend in with the Muggles making their way between platforms 9 and 10.

Once in the parking lot, hats and boots on and ready for the winter weather, Rose found her family standing by her father's car. They were saying goodbye to the Potters, which now included James. Scorpius was on the outside of them all, and Rose didn't even try to talk to him this time.

"Rose! There you are; we've been waiting for ages!" Hugo called. He was always over-exaggerating (for effect, of course).

"It's true," Lily piped in, crossing her arms at Rose. She couldn't keep track of Lily's hot and cold behavior toward her, but tried not to take it personally.

"Sorry, I thought I'd lost something," Rose said, trying to come up with an excuse.

"Oh, I got your bag; it's already in the boot," Ron said.

"Thanks Dad," Rose smiled back, making Ron smile in return.

She then leaned against the beat-up car that her grandfather had built them and sighed. James, who hadn't been standing very far away, walked over to her and asked, "Everything all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Rose answered, her voice flailing slightly.

James chuckled, and Rose could tell he saw right through her white lie. "Just uh, give it some time."

Rose smiled at him. "You know, you're getting quite good at this brotherly advice," she laughed.

"Yeah, well I'm not sure I'm worthy of it, but I try," James mumbled, looking thoughtful about something. "Anyway, see you on Christmas," he added, before he walked away with his parents and Lily. The Potters and Scorpius would be coming over to the Weasley house on Christmas day. It was a yearly tradition, and was always hosted at the Weasleys' rather than the Potters', since Hermione's decorating skills were far superior to Ginny's.

"Bye," Rose called to James. Ron, Hermione, and Hugo had already gotten in the car, but Al and Scorpius hadn't left yet.

"See you on Christmas, Rose," Al said with a hug. "Oh, but don't expect a gift or anything. Birthdays are hard enough to remember."

Rose laughed and nodded before Albus left, taking the ferret cage Scorpius was holding before he walked off and left the two alone.

Rose and Scorpius faced each other, not knowing what to say or how to say it. Ron was honking inside the car, and Rose wanted desperately to tell Scorpius to forget what she had asked before and give him a kiss goodbye, but neither seemed plausible.

"I'm sorry," Scorpius said finally. He sounded sincere, and so Rose gave him an enormous hug in return. Ron honked even more at this, no doubt looking at them through his rear-view mirror, but a hug was nothing more than they had displayed in front of him before.

In his ear, Rose whispered, "I'm sorry." She didn't like to give up so easily, but decided that the best way to earn Scorpius's trust was to start acting like she deserved it.

They broke apart then, and Rose watched Scorpius walk away, knowing full well that she would see him again before long.

Rose then got in the car, sitting in her seat only to quickly be reminded by her mother to fasten her seatbelt. She had never gotten used to riding in a car, and the odd, elastic band seemed highly unnecessary when Rose could perform a cushioning charm in mere seconds if needed.

The drive went slightly better than usual, though Hermione still had to yell out orders to Ron at every corner. Hugo got a kick out of it all, laughing hysterically in his seat the whole way home. Rose didn't think it was as entertaining, but it still felt good to be back with her family. This time though, she felt like she was missing a crucial member.

It was straight to the kitchen when the Weasley family arrived home, and Rose smiled at the familiarity of it. She hated to admit how much she missed watching Ron and Hugo tear through every cupboard in the house, stuffing their mouths with everything they could lay their hands on.

Rose and Hermione took a seat at the table in the middle of the room, each with a cup of tea in front of them and a book on their laps, and watched the boys at work. After a few minutes of whining that there was absolutely no food in the house, Hermione got up from her seat and made dinner for them all.

Afterward, Hugo, exhausted from the day and completely stuffed, set off for bed. Hermione put Ron to work washing the dishes, which wouldn't take long if he used the proper spells (which he almost never did), and she and Rose walked into the living room to relax for a while.

Once there, Rose stopped abruptly upon seeing an enormous Christmas tree by the wall opposite the fireplace. Rose loved this holiday, if not for the perfect weather than for the beautiful decorations.

"How does it look?" Hermione asked. She was standing closer to the tree, which was a foot or two taller than her. "We waited for you to hang the ornaments, of course."

The tree was completely bare, except for a string of lights wrapped around it. It was a Weasley tradition for Rose to hang the ornaments on the tree every Christmas Eve, while Hermione sat on the couch and read to Hugo. Ron would normally be behind the couch, frantically trying to finish wrapping his last-minute gifts. Eventually, he would give up and Hermione would take over, Ron replacing her on the couch and falling asleep next to Hugo.

"It's perfect," Rose answered, marveling at it. She then took out the deluminator from her pocket, clicked it once, and watched a tiny ball of light race from inside the metal object over to the tree, where it spread itself evenly across each of the miniature bulbs in the string of lights. The room was lit only by the tree now, the lights reflecting the snowflakes from outside the window.

"Did your dad ever tell you what else that's used for?" Hermione asked then. She was pointing to the deluminator in Rose's hand.

Rose had no idea what her mother was referring to. Ron had given her the magical switch when she was very young, and she only knew that it could store light, and both acquire and release it from any bulb or fire. "What do you mean?" she asked, taking a seat on the couch next to Hermione.

"Do you remember what I told you about what was supposed to be my seventh year at Hogwarts?" Hermione asked, beginning her story. "Before I went back to finish my N.E.W.T.'s, I mean."

"Yes, of course," Rose answered. "You, Dad, and Uncle Harry didn't end up going to school, because Lord Voldemort was… looking for you." Rose had only heard this story once, when both her parents had sat her and Hugo down to tell it. It wasn't one they liked to recall all that often.

"Right," Hermione nodded. "We went into hiding, and it was just the three of us on our own for the longest time. We had discovered this thing, it was called a horcrux…"

"Objects of dark magic, they have the ability to store a piece of one's soul," Rose finished for her. "I know. I read about them in _Hogwarts: A History_, the updated version. It didn't say what the actual objects were though… or how many he had."

"Yes, well Harry never told anyone the specifics," Hermione explained. "But we had found one of them, one of Voldemort's. It was an old necklace that belonged to Salazar Slytherin.

"At the time, we had no way of destroying it, so we took turns wearing it around our necks, the three of us. As it turned out, the necklace sort of rubbed off on us, especially Ron. It made him angry, jealous, and irrational." Hermione was looking away from Rose now, lost in her own memory. She appeared to be sad as she thought back to this time, and Rose was beginning to get the feeling that her father had not been so kind to Hermione.

"What did he do?" Rose asked concernedly.

Hermione took a deep breath before stating, "He left."

"What? He left you?" Rose asked. This part of the story had not been told before. "How did he find his way back?" Rose knew that Ron had been with them at the Battle of Hogwarts, and it would have been extremely difficult for him to get to them with all of Hermione's protection spells that Rose was certain she would have used everywhere she and Harry went.

"With the deluminator," Hermione answered simply.

Rose was very confused now, and waited for more explanation.

"He said that one day, when he was gone, he heard a voice coming from it. Apparently, the voice was mine, and I was saying his name. Just his name. Then, he clicked it and this tiny ball of light appeared, floated toward him…"

"And went straight through my chest. Right here," a voice said from behind Rose. She turned around to see her father, pointing to where his heart was and smiling down at Hermione. "And I knew it would take me where I needed to go," he continued, walking over to them.

Once he reached the couch, Hermione made room for him and he sat down and held her close, saying, "And I've never left since."

Hermione blushed, and Rose smiled at her parents. They still seemed so in love, even after all these years. Sometimes, Rose could picture her and Scorpius having that… everlasting love, the kind that never faded, not even a little. Still, it seemed a bit far off.

"So you mean to say that the deluminator can record your voice, and only your voice?" Rose asked her mother curiously.

"I don't know exactly. We never found out how it all works, and it seems to be the only one of its kind," Hermione answered.

"Well do you think it would work with another voice?" Rose asked. "I mean, if that's the person you needed to go to…"

Hermione smiled at Rose, and Rose could tell that Hermione knew she was talking about Scorpius. Ron, on the other hand, was oblivious to Rose's insinuation, and was staring blindly at Hermione with dreamy eyes.

"It might," Hermione said. "There's no way of knowing in advance."

Rose nodded. She was always scared that Scorpius might leave, or merely get lost somewhere, and that she wouldn't be able to find him. It would be nice to know that if something of the sort did occur, she'd at least know where to look.

A little while longer, Rose left her parents and made her way upstairs to her bedroom. Once inside, she laid down on her bed in the dark, the deluminator pressed against her ear. Listening intently, she slowly fell asleep in hopes that Scorpius's smooth, rain-like voice whispering her name would wake her up.

* * *

Christmas morning came much sooner than Rose had expected. Over the week leading up to it, she had gone into town nearly everyday shopping for gifts. She hadn't found much, but had bought a book for Hermione, matching Chudley Cannons socks for Ron and Hugo, some new broom polish for James, and was even lucky enough to come across a Bezoar for Albus, which was a very rare antidote that could overpower almost any potion. She hadn't been able to find anything for Scorpius though. She felt terrible about this, even though they had both agreed back at Hogwarts not to get any Christmas gifts for one another. It would keep others from suspecting anything, and keep the pressure off of themselves.

On Christmas Eve day, Rose and her family had gone over to the Burrow to visit Ron's parents. Though Rose had been seeing plenty of her grandfather in her Muggle Studies class, it was nice to see her grandmother again. They only stayed for a couple of hours, as all of Ron's brothers and their families were also stopping through at some point (though the Potters weren't visiting until later that night). Rose's visit overlapped slightly with her Uncle Percy's, so she had the chance to talk with Lucy while she was there.

It was difficult not to tell Lucy about Scorpius, especially since she was questioning her so much about what had happened with Lysander. Still, Rose was able to steer the conversation away from her as soon as she brought up Lorcan, whom Lucy couldn't stop talking about once she started. They did seem to be the perfect pair, Rose thought, both so quiet and sweet. It sounded as if they hardly ever fought with each other, which Rose was jealous of. She had to continually remind herself that what had happened with Scorpius at the train station wasn't really a fight, and that they were fine now, but she couldn't help but worry about him.

Mrs. Weasley had made Ron and Percy do some de-gnoming in the garden (trying to get the last of the pests out before there was too much snow to dig through) while she, Hermione, Audrey, and Percy's elder daughter, Molly, conversed by the fire. Hugo had gone off with Mr. Weasley in his shed of Muggle 'toys', which Rose couldn't help but notice was rather odd, considering that they had never been close. Still, it was probably better than de-gnoming, which was Hugo's only other option.

They all left just before Bill and Fleur were arriving, Rose and Ron carrying sweaters with R's on them, and Hermione and Hugo with H's. Some things never changed.

Now it was the morning of Christmas day, and Rose awoke not to the sound of birds chirping, but instead to the pounding of Hugo's feet as he ran down the stairs. As soon as she heard him yelling through the halls, "Happy Christmas everybody! Now wake up!" she counted to ten and waited. Sure enough, exactly 10 seconds later, an even louder thumping came from the stairwell. Ron was always just as excited as Hugo for this holiday, and his enthusiasm only seemed to grow larger with age.

Because she knew that the two were highly impatient and would wake her up if she tried to sleep more, Rose got out of bed to get dressed. Ron and Hugo would still be in their pajamas, but the Potters and Scorpius would be arriving soon, and Rose wanted to look somewhat presentable.

She came downstairs to find her father and little brother tearing apart their stockings, which were filled with all of their favorite candies. Once each had gathered a nice pile for themselves, Hugo announced, "Hey Dad, tell you what, I'll let you switch Drooble's with me. I'll give you the chance to switch Drooble's with me, I'll give you that opportunity." Drooble's Best Blowing Gum could fill rooms with bubbles that refused to pop for days, and Hugo was after Ron's blue one, which was his favorite flavor.

"Ahh, let me think about it," Ron said, staring up at the ceiling and stroking his scruffy chin as if in deep thought. He then looked straight back at Hugo, raised his eyebrows at him, and stated bluntly, "No". The blue had been Ron's favorite flavor first.

"I'll give you my chocolate frog!" Hugo begged, Rose rolling her eyes in the background. They hadn't even noticed her yet, standing in the doorway giggling at them.

"Oh…" Ron said, sounding interested. (He had always loved collecting the cards that were included inside every package of chocolate frogs.) He then looked down to inspect his pile, before saying, "No, no. I have a peppermint toad."

"I'll throw in some Ice Mice with the frogs, you can make little hippety-hoppety choreographies," Hugo suggested, looking desperate now.

"Alright…" Ron gambled. "You throw in that pack of Every Flavor Beans and you've got yourself a deal."

Hugo took a step back in surprise at first, then looked down at his one and only package of Bertie Bott's longingly. After another moment, he shook his head furiously, looked back at Ron and said, "Absolutely not. No."

Ron shrugged in response, before throwing his blue piece of gum in his mouth right in front of Hugo, who crossed his arms and stomped his foot like an eight year-old full of defiance.

Hermione had appeared behind Rose now, and both were laughing hysterically. As Ron looked over to find where all the noise was coming from, he saw Hermione's expression and asked innocently, "What?"

Hermione giggled, then walked over to him and began hitting his shoulder lightly with a book she was holding, asking, "Will you _ever_ stop eating?"

Ron was leaning away, surprised. He blew an enormous bubble into the room, then looked to his wife and shrugged, saying questionably, "I love you?"

Hermione laughed again, before giving him a peck on the lips and whispering, "Happy Christmas, Ronald".

"Happy Christmas, Hermione," Ron said back, smiling at her, before going in for a better kiss.

"Well played, Dad," Rose commented after her parents had separated from each other, walking up to her father to give him a hug and wish him a Merry Christmas herself.

"Thanks, Rosie," he said in return.

Rose and Hermione then took a seat on the couch next to the boys and opened their own stockings, which had also been filled with chocolates and small trinkets. They had to be careful to sort through all of the Weasley products Hugo had stuffed in them, but the rest was warmly welcomed.

Afterward, the Weasleys migrated to the kitchen, where they had a nice breakfast of crumpets and various fruits. Soon after they had finished eating, the Potters finally arrived, appearing in the living room fireplace one by one.

Rose, who had been trying to convince Hugo to be more patient in unwrapping his presents, rushed over to greet James as soon as she heard him coughing from behind her. "James, Happy Christmas!" she said, after calling to her parents that the Potters were here.

After stepping out and brushing off the soot on his face, James gave Rose a hug, patted Hugo on the head, shook hands with Ron, and kissed Hermione on the cheek before making himself at home in front of the Christmas tree. Harry came in next, followed by Al, Scorpius, Lily, and Ginny.

Once everybody had said hello, they split up into their separate groups. Ron, Hermione, Harry, and Ginny all gathered in the kitchen while Hermione made them some tea. Hugo and Lily stayed by the tree and marveled at the gifts beneath it, James with them to make sure they didn't open any just yet. Al stayed as well, motioning to Rose and Scorpius that now was the perfect time to talk alone, since their parents weren't paying attention.

Following his suggestion, Rose led Scorpius into her mother's office, which seemed more like a home library with Hermione's impressive book collection covering each wall. She stood in the middle of the room and faced Scorpius, who closed the door as he came in.

Rose looked at the rug on the floor with a guilty expression before mumbling to Scorpius, "I didn't get you a gift."

Scorpius chuckled and Rose could hear him walking toward her, though she was still looking down. Once he reached her, he put his hand under her chin and lifted her to his eye-level. "You've given me enough already," he said sincerely. He then leaned down and kissed her, and Rose could tell that he hadn't gotten her any material gift either, but she didn't care. This was much better.

Once they broke apart, Scorpius took Rose's hands in his, mindlessly playing with the ring he had given her. "I hope you know that I never meant to pressure you into telling me something you weren't comfortable with," Rose said to him. She hadn't been sure if bringing this up again was the right thing to do, but she didn't want to have it weighing down the air anymore.

"I know," Scorpius said, nodding. "And I hope you know that…" But he was interrupted by the sound of the door opening. Quickly, Scorpius dropped Rose's hands and turned to see who it was.

"Psst," Al said, peaking his head into the room. "They're all about to go unwrap the gifts. You two had better come before they start wondering where you are." He then turned and left, heading back to the living room.

Rose sighed, and said to Scorpius, "Tell me later?"

Scorpius nodded, and let Rose leave the room a few moments before him so as not to make it seem like they had been alone together.

Back with everybody else, the Potters and Weasleys began their round robin exchange of gifts. Ron, being the main host, went first, handing out a crumpled present to everyone, not including Scorpius, to whom he merely said, "I wasn't sure if you'd be coming or not. Sorry."

Nearly all of Ron's gifts were either Weasley products or various sorts of Quidditch gear, except for the beautiful necklace he gave Hermione. It was simple but thoughtful at the same time, with two silver charms hanging from a metal string. One was a tiny otter; the other was a little dog.

Hermione went after Ron, but was interrupted by a ring at the doorbell just as she was handing over a small box to Ginny. Ron left the room to answer it, only to reappear with two extra members: a red-haired Teddy Lupin, hand in hand with his glowing, gorgeously blonde wife, Victoire.

Upon seeing them, Harry and Ginny rushed up from their seats and greeted their godson. "Happy Christmas, everyone!" Teddy called out to the rest of the clan. "Thanks for inviting us."

"It was our pleasure," Hermione replied, greeting them and thanking them for the bouquet of flowers they had brought her.

Once they settled in, Hugo began pestering Teddy to demonstrate his metamorphmagus abilities to him. Without much of a say in the matter, he obliged, changing hair colors while simultaneously turning his nose into a duck beak before quickly switching it to a pig snout. Meanwhile, Victoire, who was now nearly five months pregnant, was subjected to answering all of Hermione and Ginny's questions about the baby. With nothing else to do at the time, Rose listened in on their conversation.

Apparently, the couple had yet to come up with any names, though Teddy was adamant about honoring those of his parents in some way. As Victoire came to this explanation, Teddy turned away from Hugo and added in, "Actually, with the two of us so focused on the coming months, I've sort of taken it upon myself to look into everything that happened with my parents… how they died."

Harry went very pale as Teddy explained how he had been looking for evidence of which death eater(s) may have killed Remus and Tonks, but relaxed once he revealed that he hadn't found anything. "Nobody seems to have seen it happen," he said.

Victoire took his hand as Teddy sighed, and then addressed everybody again before saying, "But we did find out that we're going to be having a little girl."

Everybody smiled at this, and the mood was instantly lightened. Harry and Teddy were grinning like the proud fathers they were, and the women were all on the verge of tears. Rose wasn't as emotional about it, but she did find it nice to know that she would soon have a niece to babysit.

Eventually, they all returned to the pile of gifts they had to get through, and began a miscellaneous round, opening various letters and packages that had been sent from other friends and family. Both James and Hugo received interesting letters, to which they had surprising reactions. James left the room with his, not telling anybody whom it was from. Hugo, on the other hand, told them that his was from Nigel and that it wasn't important, but Rose could've sworn that she saw his hands shaking as he read it.

The next round was Harry's, and he had a gift for everybody. Rose was the last to receive one, and just as Harry was handing her a bag, his eyes caught onto her hand and he asked, "Rose, where did you get that ring?"

"What?" Rose asked, baffled by the fact that Harry seemed to recognize it. She quickly put the gift down by her side and covered the ring with her other hand. To her left, Scorpius shuffled in his seat.

Harry was still looking intently down at Rose as everybody else in the room turned toward her to try to see the piece of jewelry he was referring to. Lily, who was on Rose's other side, stood up and looked down at Rose's hand before furrowing her eyebrows and asking, "Oh, did Scorpius give that to you?"

"What?" Rose asked again, even more nervous now. She hadn't told Lily about her and Scorpius, nor had she ever mentioned the ring, though it was clear that Lily somehow knew about at least one of these secrets.

"Scorpius?" Ron asked, standing up from his seat now, his eyes wandering back and forth between his daughter and the son of Draco Malfoy. "Why would Scorpius give you a ring?"

"I can explain," Scorpius offered, his hands in the air as if pleading his case at a crime scene. It seemed necessary too, considering the look Ron gave him as soon as he tried to speak.

"They're together, aren't they?" Lily asked, looking to her uncle.

"Lily!" Rose snapped, glaring over at the face that still looked like the naïve, young girl that Lily was, but that Rose could tell was hiding a smirk behind those mouse brown eyes.

Ron's face had gone bright red now, and Hermione had stood up next to him, staring cautiously at his angry face. Still on the couch, Ginny, Al, Hugo, Teddy, and Victoire were trying to remain perfectly still so as not to get involved. All of them, along with Harry, Rose, and Scorpius, were looking to Lily for an explanation. Rose was praying that she didn't actually have one.

"What?" Lily asked, looking from one confused face to the next. "I mean, I didn't think it was some big secret. Blimey, they were holding hands the entire time we were at the train station."

Rose closed her eyes then, taking one last gulp and waiting for her father's reaction. Next to her, she could hear Scorpius's breaths growing shorter and shorter.

Slowly, Rose heard Ron walking toward her, until he was just in front of her, and asked, "Rosie, is this true? Are you really with… _him?"_

Rose opened her eyes to her father, who looked both enraged and genuinely hurt. She had never meant for him to find out this way, but it seemed as if Scorpius had been right: telling him about them, in any way, shape, or form, was a terrible idea.

Trying to ignore everybody around her, including Scorpius, who now seemed to be holding his breath in fear, Rose whispered, "Yes. It's true."

Ron's eyes suddenly widened a great deal, and he turned his gaze over to Scorpius, to whom he yelled, "That's my daughter, you _ARSE!" _before leaping forward at him and grabbing Scorpius by the shoulders.

Luckily, Harry was there to try to hold him back. James came in then too, and immediately rushed over to help, for Ron was much bigger than Harry.

"Dad, _STOP!"_ Rose yelled, trying to get in front of him so that she could gain his attention.

Scorpius was trying his best to fight back, all while mumbling, "Please, I didn't do anything. Please!"

Hermione was helping Rose now, and as soon as Harry and James were able to pull Ron completely off of Scorpius, Hermione used a defensive charm to create an invisible wall between the two of them, with only Scorpius on the other side. She then put her hands on Ron's face, pointed him away from Scorpius and toward her, and said, "Ronald, at the very least, just hear them out."

"They lied to us, Hermione," Ron whimpered. "And do you have any idea who his family is?"

"Of course I do!" yelled Hermione, looking angry herself now. "I have the scars to prove it," she said, and suddenly Ron understood.

Rose didn't know what Hermione was talking about, but both Ron and Harry seemed to, as Harry loosened his grasp on Ron, letting him take Hermione's hand as he told her, "I'm sorry."

Hermione nodded, and then stepped aside, her hand still locked with Ron's, and motioned to Rose, who was standing beside her father. Ron followed Hermione's motions and asked his daughter, much more calmly now, "When exactly did this happen?"

"November," Rose answered. The look on Ron's face still scared her, and she was beginning to wish that she could be standing on the other side of the wall with Scorpius.

"And you really have feelings for him?" Ron asked, though he had to say each word very slowly in order to get them out.

"Of course I do," Rose answered. She couldn't even begin to explain how strongly she felt about Scorpius, and she knew that no matter what she said, her father wouldn't believe her.

Across from Rose and Ron, Scorpius was standing as still as he possibly could, not daring to move anywhere or say anything.

Ron was back to shaking his head in frustration now, as he said through clenched teeth, "He's a _pure_blood, Rose!"

"And so are you!" Rose yelled back, aggravated by her father's hypocrisy. He was determined to believe that all pure-blood families were prejudiced against Muggle-borns and half-bloods, and yet he was just as prejudiced against them.

"Not like _him!_" Ron yelled, pointing a finger down at Rose.

"You don't even know him!"

"I know enough," Ron stated back at Rose. He was using his most authoritative voice, and no matter how many times Rose told herself that he was just trying to protect her, it felt like he didn't trust her, or her judgment.

"I know about his father," Ron continued. Before Rose could reply, he added, "and I know what happened with his family this summer."

To this, Rose was left speechless. Ron, along with Harry, was one of the top Aurors working at the Ministry. For her father to have been involved with the Malfoys in any way would have meant that whatever had happened had been very dangerous. Realizing all this, Rose looked over to Scorpius, who was staring at Ron with more fear than she had ever seen him wear.

"I don't want you anywhere near him," Ron said, signaling for Rose to turn back to their yelling match, which had now become more like a one-sided conversation. "Are we clear?"

"Ron," Hermione breathed from beside him, about to defend Rose.

"No, Hermione," he said. "It's not safe. I was just barely able to tolerate them being friends, but I can't stand by this."

Hermione sighed, and then Harry approached his best friend and said, "Ron, come on mate, he's a good kid. Just give him a chance."

Rose glanced at Scorpius again, only to find him looking down at the floor now, completely ashamed. She then turned to her uncle and said, "Thank you, Harry, but I can handle this on my own."

Harry nodded and stepped aside, and then Ron and Rose turned to face each other. Ron opened his mouth to say something, but Rose got to it first. "No. No, you don't get to have a say in this. Now I don't know what happened this summer, and that's fine, because I don't care. I don't care who his family is, or how _dangerous_ they may be. I don't care about _them_. I care about _him._

"Unlike you, I've taken the time to get to know him. I've been his friend, even when everybody around me warned me not to, and I don't regret it. He has never reflected badly upon my blood status, nor anybody else's, and I know he cares about me just as much as I do him. I mean it's obvious, considering that he is willing to put up with _my _family, when they appear to be just as _dangerous_ as his."

Rose took the time to pause here, allowing her harsh words to sink in. She never liked to fight with anyone, especially her own dad, but he was being way out of line.

Yet again, Rose looked to Scorpius, staring straight back at her now, then turned back to her father and added, "I love him, and if you can't accept that, then I suppose you'll have to see just how dangerous _I_ can be." She then walked away from her him and everybody else, avoiding all eye contact, and waited until she was alone in the downstairs bathroom to burst into tears.

Sitting on the floor with her back against the door, Rose let out everything that she had been keeping in during the yelling match with her father. Her thoughts were going a million miles a minute, racing from Lily's unexpected revelation, to Ron's frightening reaction, to her own confession. She did really love Scorpius, but she hadn't wanted him to find out in that way.

Rose spent a good while sobbing before a knock was heard at the door. She quickly wiped her face and asked between inhales, "Who is it?"

"It's James," a voice said from behind the door. "Now let me in."

Rose took a few deep breaths before standing up and opening up for her older cousin. Upon seeing her swollen face, James opened his arms and said, "Come here," letting Rose collapse on him.

She held tightly onto him for what felt like an eternity, letting him stroke her hair as her cries became weaker and weaker. They were back on the floor, Rose's head on James's shoulder, when she managed to say, "I'm sorry. I should be stronger than this."

"Hey," James said, and Rose could feel his head shaking. "You don't have anything to apologize for. "At least you told the truth. You stood up for yourself."

Rose lifted her head off her shoulders then and looked to James. "Who was the letter from?" she asked. Something was going on with him, and after all that he had done for her, she owed it to James to reciprocate.

"This conversation was supposed to be about you," James said with a crooked smile.

"Don't worry about me," Rose replied. "Now who sent you the letter?"

James looked down, embarrassed, and answered, "Cassidy Finnigan."

"Cassidy?" Rose asked. "I thought you were with Caitlin…"

"I was," James answered. He then looked up at Rose with eyes that told all he couldn't say.

Sighing, Rose said, "James, you didn't?"

"I did," James admitted. He wasn't proud or disgusted by it, but seemed to be more in between the two.

"So, what does this mean?" Rose asked. "Did you tell Caitlin? Are you with Cassidy now? What about Sam?"

"I dunno'," James said before Rose could ask anything else. "I mean, Caitlin doesn't know, and neither does Sam. Cassidy apparently wants to keep it that way."

Rose nodded, before asking, "Do you?" She had always admired Sam and Cassidy, but at this moment she didn't care about them. She just wanted what was right for James.

"I dunno'," James answered, a favorite reply of his it seemed. "I mean, I never really liked Caitlin…"

"And what about Cassidy?"

"I dunno'. I don't really know her well enough, I guess," James replied honestly. After a moment longer he added, "Hey, you're a girl," looking at Rose.

"Oh, well spotted," she joked.

"No," James said, laughing. "What I mean is, would you want to know? If you were Caitlin."

Rose thought about this for a minute. She couldn't imagine how hurt she would be if Scorpius was ever with somebody else, especially if it were a close relative. Still, the pain of knowing about it would be better than being kept in the dark. "Yeah, I think I would."

James nodded before saying, "Well I guess I've got some explaining to do then."

Rose smiled in encouragement, knowing that the conversation he would have with the Finnigan girl would not be pleasant.

"Thanks, Rose," James muttered. He then stood from where he was sitting, held out a hand for her and said, "Here, I'll help you up."

She took his hand and he pulled her to her feet. He then opened the bathroom door for her and said, "I'm sure Scorpius is waiting for you. I might have seen Al go upstairs looking for him before."

Rose nodded, then left James and looked around quickly to see that no one was there. She could hear voices coming from the living room, but luckily she didn't have to pass by to get to the stairwell. Instead, she merely had to walk a little further down the hall, in the opposite direction of where she knew her father was.

Once on the third floor, where only her room was located, she could hear the familiar voices of her two best friends. Without bothering to knock (it was her bedroom, after all), she opened the door and stepped inside. Scorpius had his back to her and was sitting on her bed, something that he had never done before, though he had been in her room on countless occasions. Al was standing across from him, leaning against Rose's dresser.

As she came in, Al looked up at her and motioned his head for Scorpius, who turned in his seat to face her. "Rose," he said quietly. Rose was sure that he could tell she had been crying.

"I'll guard the door," Al offered before walking around the bed and out of the room, squeezing Rose's shoulder on the way to let her know that he was there.

As soon as Al had shut the door behind him, Rose walked over to Scorpius. He was about to stand up when she sat down next to him, took both of his hands in hers, and said once again, "I love you." She wanted to make sure that he had heard it, and that he understood that she hadn't just said it to spite her father. She meant it.

Scorpius gulped, looked down at their entwined hands, and said, "My mother… she tried to kill herself this summer."

Rose could have sworn that her heart stopped upon hearing this, if only for a second. She had never felt closer to him than during this one moment, but she had also never felt further away. What he was telling her was something she could never have imagined, and she no idea what to say in return.

She didn't have to say anything just yet though, since Scorpius went on to explain, "The week I got back from school, she was already going crazy. I don't know why, and neither does my dad, but she kept mumbling things to herself, all about somebody, or something, that she needed to find. Something she had lost a long time ago. At one point, she got so angry with herself that she started destroying everything in site. Anything she saw, she'd turn into dust.

"My dad tried to control her, but nothing seemed to work. A couple of Aurors got involved, but nobody as high up as your dad or Harry. They must not have been brought in until after."

Scorpius took a long pause then, and Rose could tell that the next thing he had to say was the most important. Eventually, he continued, "Then one day, my dad told her that she wasn't the same person anymore – that she wasn't his wife anymore. And then, that same night, she put him under the Imperius Curse."

Rose thought she knew where this was going, but wasn't sure if she wanted to hear it out loud. Still, she wasn't about to walk away from Scorpius, and it didn't seem like he was going to stop telling the story.

"He fought it, but she was really strong. She had been practicing; it was her perfect plan. This way, they'd all think it was him, and he'd go off to Azkaban. Only, it didn't work out the way she had hoped, because she had forgotten one thing."

Rose didn't like where this was going. She didn't like this at all.

"She had forgotten that I was supposed to be asleep in the next room. I heard her whispering the curse to my dad through my bedroom wall, and so I decided to sneak up on her. I didn't want to have to use any magic, because I couldn't get kicked out of school, so I just walked into her room really quietly, after I made sure she wasn't looking in my direction, and I hit her onto the floor so that I could collect her wand. Once I got hold of it, the spell broke and my dad apparated with her to St. Mungo's."

St. Mungo's Hospital was home to many witches and wizards who were mentally unstable. Rose hadn't known of anybody who been a patient there… until now.

"Once my dad got back to the house, he sent me away. Told me to get as far as I possibly could, and uh, I didn't know where else to go but Al's." Scorpius was crying softly now, as was Rose. Slowly, he turned back to her, squeezed her hands and said, "Your dad's right. I don't know how it happened, but somehow my mum got out of the hospital, and that can't be good. Rose, please, we can't do this anymore. My mother's never agreed with equality for all blood statuses, and my father doesn't seem to approve either. With her out there, and if she possibly found out about us… you're just not safe with me."

Rose wanted to agree with Scorpius. She wanted to take the easy way out. She wanted to, but she couldn't. She was already in too deep, and so was he. "No," she said defiantly, looking straight at him.

"Rose, please," he begged. "I don't want it either, but we can't."

"No," Rose said again. "I love you."

When Scorpius didn't reply, Rose repeated, "I love you. I love you, and I told you that I would never let go."

"I'm giving you an out," Scorpius said. He sounded angry, but Rose knew it was just a cover. "So take it."

"NO!" Rose shouted. "I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you…" Rose kept repeating the three words, waiting for Scorpius to accept them. Both of his parents had treated him like he wasn't important, and like they didn't want him anymore. Rose refused to do the same.

Scorpius was breathing very heavily now, trying to look away from Rose, whose hands had moved to his face, in an attempt to pull him toward her. Eventually, she accomplished this, and said one last time, with him looking deep into her, "I love you."

Through the power her eyes had over him, he suddenly leaned forward and kissed her, one of his hands clasped around her neck and the other at the small of her back. It was more passionate than they had ever kissed before, and Rose let Scorpius take complete control. When both began to lose their breath, Scorpius finally pulled away. He then said to Rose, "I love you."

Rose smiled in between her tears, and upon seeing his fearful expression, pulled Scorpius close to her and held him tightly. They stayed like this for quite some time, until Rose was fairly certain Scorpius had fallen asleep in her arms.

When a soft knocking was heard from Rose's bedroom door, Albus came in to inform them that his family was leaving. Rose said goodbye to both Al and Scorpius from her room, hoping that Harry, Ginny, and James would understand why she wouldn't want to come downstairs to see them off (Teddy and Victoire had already left by now). It was once again difficult to say goodbye to Scorpius, particularly with him in such a fragile state, but he promised Rose that he would tell Al everything so that he wasn't alone, and that he would tell Harry that he had seen Astoria at King's Cross. Once they had left, Rose laid down and closed her eyes, still hiding from her father.

Hermione came in soon after and sat next to Rose on her bed. For a while, she didn't say anything, but just kept her company. Then, while she was stroking her hair like mothers do, she said quietly, "Your dad would like to apologize, but if you're not ready to hear him out, I'd be happy to tell him that you're already asleep."

Rose took a deep breath upon hearing this. She wanted nothing more than to hear a sincere apology from her father, but she also didn't want to forgive him that easily. He had tried to deny her of the only thing she had ever wanted, and so she needed more than an apology. She needed to know that that would never happen again.

Sitting up to face her mother, Rose replied, "You can let him in. But I can't promise that I will."

Hermione nodded and said, "That's fair. I'll go tell him." She then stood up and left the room.

When Ron appeared, he opened Rose's bedroom door very slowly, making a creaking sound as he stepped in. He had his hands stuffed in his pant pockets and was hunching his shoulders up, making him look like one of those giant rugby players that Muggles were so fascinated by. At first, he just stood there, looking down at the floor and biting his bottom lip. After a long moment of silence, however, he made his way over to Rose, who was now sitting at the side of her bed with her arms crossed against her chest.

Taking a seat beside her at the foot of the bed, Ron's legs stretched out twice as far as Rose's. Both of them stared at this, Ron marveling over how small Rose still was, and Rose wondering why, even after all these years, her father always seemed so big.

"So, you love him?" Ron finally asked, breaking a bit of the tension between them.

"Yes," Rose said without hesitation. Now that she had admitted it, she felt proud to say it, like it meant that she wasn't a child anymore.

Ron took a while to process this before he said, "I don't want to see you get hurt, Rosie. By him or anyone else."

Rose was still waiting for the apology, but a part of her couldn't help but feel sorry for her father. "I know you don't," she said to him. "But Dad, he's been one of my best friends for over four years, and he's never once hurt me. If anything, I think _I_'m the one who's hurt him." She was thinking about all the months during which she had been pretending to date Lysander, of course.

"And his family," Rose added, "Has never been there for him. So imagine what it would be like if I went and left too. Imagine how alone he'd be." She knew that saying something like this would hit a soft spot for Ron, after what she'd heard about him leaving Hermione before the battle. He was the only person she'd had, other than Uncle Harry, and it didn't sound as if it had been easy on her to be without Ron for so long.

"I know," Ron said. "I'm sorry about what I said before. You were right. I don't know him."

Rose smiled up at him, and was about to thank him for owning up to what he had done, but didn't get the chance to, as Ron continued, "But Rose, I do want you to be careful. His father has really screwed us over a couple of times, and I don't want you to ever have to be in that sort of position."

"Alright," Rose promised. "I'll try to steer clear of Scorpius's family. They're not the ones that matter to me anyway." Ron was patting her on the back now, but Rose wasn't quite ready to let him off the hook.

"But Dad," she added, "You have to promise me something in return."

Ron looked skeptical, but nodded nonetheless.

"You have to promise that from now on, I get to make my own decisions about what I want to do with my life. And if I choose wrong, you have to let me figure that out for myself. I am so grateful for having the family that I have, but you can't protect me from everything," Rose concluded. After hearing about some of the terrible things that had happened within people's families, from Holly, to Colin, to Scorpius, Rose did realize just how lucky she was. She had also realized however, that she couldn't stay sheltered forever.

Ron sighed, clearly not thrilled about the compromise. Still, he kissed Rose on the forehead and said, "I promise."


	7. The Clearing

**_Note: _**_Make sure to 'author alert' me, because I have another one-shot coming up next that will follow this chapter, from a different character's perspective of course._

_-Hailey_

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**7 – The Clearing**

Hogsmeade was packed with people at every corner, the third and fourth years buying candies at Honeydukes, the teachers stopping inside The Hog's Head bar to get warm, and the older students all at The Three Broomsticks for a pint of butterbeer. Rose and Scorpius were doing just that, walking through the light February snow, on their way to a double date with Lucy and Lorcan. Rose had practically dragged Scorpius outside to get him to go with her, and he still wasn't happy about it.

"I just don't understand why we suddenly need to socialize more. I mean, why can't we just have a drink with Al like we normally do?" Scorpius whined. He was walking a few steps behind Rose, still hoping that she might change her mind and let him go back to the castle.

"Because," Rose spat at him. "You've been cooped up in school for weeks, babbling non-stop about your _poor_ arm." Scorpius had broken his arm during his Quidditch match against Ravenclaw a few weeks ago, thanks to one of Lysander's bludgers. It was to be expected, and Scorpius was still able to catch the snitch after knocking Abby Chang-Turner off her broom within the first ten minutes of the game. Slytherin won, and Scorpius's arm was magically healed by the next morning, but he still used it as an excuse not to go into Hogsmeade with Rose.

Ever since Lily had spread word about them to the entire school, it hadn't been easy to find much privacy, and Scorpius argued that it was just better for them to remain inside on the weekends. Rose, however, was beginning to miss the rest of her friends, and needed to get out.

"But you know what Scorpius," Rose continued, nearly yelling at this point, though not in a violent way. "You are _fine!_ You're just making excuses."

Scorpius stopped walking then, and Rose turned to face him as he shrugged his shoulders, lifted his arms, and said, "Yeah, and I was beginning to wonder why… until _NOW!"_

"Oh please," Rose sighed. "Tell me, what is so bad about talking to other people? And they're not even strangers, they're my friends."

Scorpius rolled his eyes and answered, "Rose, they are _not_ your friends. Al and I, we're your friends, but Lucy and Lorcan? They barely even talk!"

"No, that's only because you've never been near enough to hear them!" Rose yelled again, before turning around and continuing to walk toward the café.

"Rose, wait!" Scorpius called, running after her. Once he caught up, he grabbed her shoulder to make her stop again and turned her toward him. "It's not that I don't like your friends, it's just that I don't really like anyone… except you, that is. And really, what else do I need?"

For a moment, Rose listened to him and contemplated his words. Scorpius had a way of being extremely convincing when he wanted to be, but Rose refused to buy into his act. In retaliation, she looked up at him with a sorrowful expression and sighed again, this time acting apologetic. As he smiled back at her, she opened her mouth and slowly changed her expression to one full of arrogance as she said, "Oh, you're going to have to do a _lot_ better than that if you expect me to turn around now."

Scorpius shut his eyes and inhaled deeply, leaning his head back in frustration, but Rose continued on her way, knowing that he would follow. As he did so, he called from behind, "You do realize who Lorcan's twin brother is, don't you?"

Rose didn't blame Scorpius for wanting to avoid any sort of interaction with Lysander, the other Scamander, but from what Rose knew of Lorcan, he was the complete opposite of his brother: humble rather than conceited, quiet rather than loud, and sweet rather than satirical. Of course, Scorpius wouldn't believe her even if she tried to explain this to him.

"Why yes, I am well aware actually," Rose replied, if just to cause Scorpius a little bit of grief. She couldn't help it; seeing him scramble was quite entertaining, and after all that they had been through lately, they needed some light-hearted arguments in their lives.

"Oh, great," Scorpius said sarcastically. "That's perfect."

Rose giggled and waited for him to catch up some more as she stood just outside the crooked, brick building. Once he approached, he reluctantly opened the door for her and she walked inside.

The old restaurant looked just the same as it always had. On the far side of the main room was an enormous fireplace that provided the perfect amount of heat to counteract England's winter weather. Above it was an array of various stuffed animal heads and antlers, while the room itself was filled with dark wooden tables and chairs, most already occupied by other Hogwarts students.

Still in the entryway, Scorpius pulled off the striped, knitted hat Rose was wearing by its pom-pom as Rose asked, "Do you see them anywhere?"

Looking around, Rose and Scorpius took note of everybody who was there, most of whom were already staring at Hogwarts' newest couple. Maddi Bulstrode and best friend Patty Parkinson, two 5th year Slytherins, were over by the bar, and were making an obvious attempt to role their eyes at Rose, who was standing with the boy they had been gawking over for years. Perhaps the only people who weren't looking over at them were Hugo and Nigel, who seemed to be having an argument by the window, and James and Caitlin Finnigan, who were speaking to one another very seriously at a table under the stairs. James hadn't yet told Caitlin about what he had done with her sister, but Rose suspected that he might be doing so now. Lucy and Lorcan, however, were nowhere to be found, until Scorpius pointed up at the second floor and said, "There they are, just up there."

Rose nodded and then followed him up the staircase and to the table where the other couple was seated. Lucy immediately stood up and ran over to Rose to give her a hug, but the two blonde boys merely nodded at each other.

"It's about time we did this," Lucy exclaimed as everybody sat down, she and Lorcan on one side and Rose and Scorpius on the other. "Ever since you two got together, I feel like I haven't been able to see you at all!" she added to Rose.

"It really hasn't been that long," Scorpius mumbled, to which he received a sharp jab to his side by Rose.

"I know what you mean," Rose took over, ignoring Scorpius and focusing on Lucy. "But you're the one who's been distracted all year."

Lucy giggled then and Lorcan said, "Oh, I suppose that's my fault, isn't it?"

Rose laughed and replied, "It's quite alright actually, I don't blame you for it. Anyway, before you came around, she was just some girl who was always hiding out in the greenhouse." Lucy's favorite subject was Herbology, and she used to spend a lot of time outside class tending to her dear plants.

Everybody laughed at this, Lucy blushing slightly. Scorpius, however, remained completely silent next to Rose as he looked over the railing and down at the bottom floor, eyeing the door with extreme interest. When a waiter appeared, he perked up a bit and ordered four butterbeers for the table.

"So Rose, ready for the match coming up?" Lorcan asked. He was a Beater and Captain of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team, just like Lysander was for Ravenclaw, and Gryffindor was playing them at the end of the month.

"I think so," Rose replied, Scorpius rolling his eyes in her peripheral vision. James had been working the team hard lately, and Scorpius was well aware of this, and the fact that Rose was clearly downplaying it to her competition. "How about you?"

"As best we can be," Lorcan answered. "But our team's struggling a bit this year, that's no secret. I guess that's what happens when half the team graduates and has to be replaced." The Hufflepuff team was largely seventh years last season, and Rose remembered how intimidating they seemed. Now though, most of them were fourth years who were no bigger than Rose herself.

"It's really just the luck of the draw, I suppose," Rose said, Lorcan nodding in agreement.

It was only a few moments later when Scorpius shifted in his seat abruptly, turned to Rose (ignoring Lucy and Lorcan), and said, "I'd like to leave. Now." He was raising his eyebrows and motioning toward the door behind him, but it was too late for them to go. Just as Rose spotted Lysander, he too spotted her, and was headed for the stairs.

As Lucy and Lorcan looked too, the latter of them sighed and said, "Oh god, I'm sorry. He doesn't look happy."

Sure enough, Lysander approached as if in a rage, looking straight to Lorcan as he tried to mask his anger and asked, "Well, well, what do we have here?"

"Lysander, I can explain," Rose begged, but he wouldn't look at her.

"Lysander man," Lorcan said to his twin brother while standing up, "Come on, it's nothing personal."

"Oh yeah, I know," Lysander brushed it off. He then turned to Scorpius, "How's your arm? Better?"

Scorpius stood then as well, pushing his chair back and ready to lunge at Lysander, but luckily the table was in the way. They had drawn a large crowd at this point, and even people from downstairs were staring up at them. Realizing that there was nothing that he could do, Scorpius leaned toward Rose and whispered, "Let's just get out of here."

She nodded and began to gather her things, but Lysander said, "Oh, don't leave on my account. I mean, it's not like I'm the only one who disapproves…"

Scorpius shuffled slightly as he said this, but Rose pushed him out of his seat and led him to the staircase. She was just waving goodbye to Lucy and was about to descend when Lysander called, "Just look around you!"

As they jogged down the stairs, Rose couldn't help but notice that all eyes were on them. Lysander had a point. Though they didn't necessarily _dis_approve, it was true that people seemed to be thoroughly fascinated by the prospect of a Weasley-Malfoy couple.

Once finally away from them all and back on the main road, Scorpius put Rose's hat on her head and said, "Well that was fun, wasn't it?" He was teasing her, and clearly wanted her to admit that he had been right about not wanting to come.

"Alright," Rose sighed, brushing a strand of curly, red hair out of her face. "I see your point."

"Thank you," Scorpius said. "Now can we please go back to the castle?"

"I suppose," Rose answered. "But I mean, even there we won't have anywhere to go. We can't exactly be in each other's common rooms." It was clear at this point that they needed to find somewhere they could be alone, but there were only so many places at Hogwarts that remained completely empty, and most were empty for a reason.

"I know," Scorpius replied. "But we'll think of something," he said as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and began walking back toward Hogwarts. "That is, as long as you promise not to go on any more double dates."

"Hey, it could have been Al and Abby," Rose joked.

Scorpius immediately tensed upon hearing this and said through clenched teeth, "That's not funny," to which Rose burst out laughing.

With no ideas of where they could possibly hide, Rose instinctively headed for the library. She was going to find a copy of _Hogwarts, A History,_ to see if there was a detailed map of the castle in it, but she thought it best not to tell Scorpius this until they got there.

Of course, when they arrived, things only got worse, as they found Albus perusing among the potions section, with Abby only a few yards away, lounging on the couch in front of one of the fireplaces. Scorpius groaned upon seeing her, but it would be rude to ignore their mutual best friend, so both he and Rose walked over to them.

"Hey, what are you looking for?" Rose asked as she approached Al, who hardly ever came to the library. Scorpius was hiding behind her with his head down. He could be over-dramatic sometimes, but when it came to Abby, it would be more of a shock if he _didn't_ act this way.

"Oh, hey," Al said, noticing her, but not too surprised by the matter. "Um, Professor Pontner recommended a potions book for me, so I'm just looking for it."

Rose nodded and looked up at the large shelf of books that reached all the way to the ceiling. He would be hard-pressed to find a single book if he kept on looking one at a time. "You know, you could just use a summoning charm," Rose suggested.

"Oh, right," Al agreed. "Um, Accio _Moste Potente Potions…"_ he said with a flick of his wand, but nothing appeared.

"Huh, that's rather odd," Rose said. "Are you sure it's not in the Restricted Section? Did she give you a note for it?"

Albus thought for a moment before answering, "Yeah, she did actually. I'll go look over there." He then left for the area of the library furthest from its entrance. The Restricted Section wasn't as frightening as Madame Pince made it out to be, though. In fact, Rose had read many of the books found behind its rope fence, and most were just advanced literature, not necessarily dangerous.

With Albus gone for the moment, Abby turned around on the couch and faced Rose and Scorpius. She then held up a cup of tea and said in her best attempt at a British accent, "Sipping tea by the fire is swell, isn't it?"

Rose chuckled and nodded as Abby turned back around, but Scorpius rolled his eyes and mumbled under his breath, "Pushing people in is fun as well."

Rose was about to push him back for saying such a thing, but he was saved when Al reappeared, a book in his right hand. "I got it," he said. "Thanks Rose."

Hearing her queue that they were ready to leave, Abby stood from her spot on the sofa and walked around it next to Al. "What are y'all looking for?" she asked, back to her normal southern self.

Scorpius held his breath so as not to say anything uncalled for. He couldn't stand Abby's real accent. Across from him, Al asked, "Oh yeah, what happened with your double date?"

When Scorpius winced in embarrassment, Rose answered, "It didn't pan out. Actually, we're trying to find a map of Hogwarts or something. We've been feeling a little claustrophobic lately."

"You could ask James for his map, you know," Al suggested, but Rose merely shrugged. James had enough on his plate right now, and she didn't want to bother him, even if it was just to take a peak at his prized Marauder's Map.

"Well, there's always the Room of Requirement," came a high-pitched but quiet voice from behind one of the stacks of books. All four of them turned to see who it was, only to find Holly Longbottom walking around the corner, her hands full of books from the Herbology section.

Albus, Abby, and Scorpius looked thoroughly confused, but Rose's face lit up with excitement. "Holly!" she exclaimed. "That's brilliant! Gosh, why didn't I think of it before?"

"Well, if I may," Holly replied. "You're just not as good a finder as us Hufflepuffs."

Everybody was even more confused now, but Rose ignored Holly's comment. "But wait," she asked. "Do you know where it is, the room? I always thought it was hidden somewhere."

"Of course it is," Holly agreed. "But only from plain sight. I use spectrespecs though, which make things much clearer." She could have just explained that she had found the room through spending so much time at Hogwarts, since she lived here year-round with her father, but this seemed much too simple for her.

"Can you take us there?" Rose asked, getting antsy.

"Yes, of course," Holly nodded. She then looked around the room, trying to figure out where to leave her books, before spotting Albus standing right in front of her, and shoving them all into his arms. She then walked out of the library, and Rose grabbed Scorpius's arm as she followed, waving to Al as they left.

On their way out, Rose noticed a girl sitting at a desk by the library's entrance. She was the same girl Rose had noticed back in the beginning of the year, standing just outside of the hallway brawl between Albus, Scorpius, and Vincent Goyle. Now, she was alone, writing what looked like a letter and not taking her memorable, bright green eyes off of it for even a second. For some reason, Rose was curious about her, but once again she didn't have the time to introduce herself, as Scorpius yelled at her to catch up. Apparently, Holly was oblivious to the pace of others.

Holly informed them that the room they were looking for was on the 7th floor, so they would have to walk up three flights of stairs to get to it. Once they arrived, they bumped into Hugo and Nigel, both of whom were still dressed in their winter clothes and had red cheeks from the cold that perfectly matched their ginger hair. They must have just gotten back from Hogsmeade.

The boys were whispering to each other, clearly not wanting anyone to hear them, hiding behind a tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy trying to teach trolls how to dance ballet, which was a little ways down the hall from the portrait hole that led to the Gryffindor common room. As they spotted Holly, Rose, and Scorpius, they stopped talking and walked into the middle of the corridor.

"Hey Rosie," Hugo said, acting completely normal, even with Nigel standing behind him saying nothing and looking as if he was about to cry. Rose would have asked him what was wrong, but she was too focused on the task at hand.

"What are you doing?" Hugo asked, curiosity taking full control over him.

"You know, I'd like to know that myself, actually," Scorpius chimed in, holding up an arm and looking pointedly at Rose, who had forgotten to explain herself to him.

As Holly started randomly walking back and forth across the hall, Rose said impatiently, "Just hold on, you'll see."

Then suddenly, the wall opposite the tapestry started to move, and right in the middle of it, from the floor up, grew an extremely large door with beautifully patterned engravings all over it. When it nearly reached the ceiling, it stopped, cemented its place in the wall with a large bang, and then opened itself up in front of the five students.

Holly walked right inside, but the rest of them stood in the hall for a short moment, Rose and Scorpius gaping up at it, Nigel backing away in fear, and Hugo smiling from ear to ear. "Wicked," he laughed, before following Holly through the open door.

Rose and Scorpius looked to each other and shrugged before they too walked under the archway, Nigel close behind. As soon as they were all in, the door closed shut once more. It didn't disappear from their sight, but Rose could hear something moving again from the other side of the wall.

"Okay, now tell me what this place this exactly," Scorpius said, staring around at the room they were in. It was enormous, the size of a large cathedral, and had high windows on every side, though there wasn't a view of the outside world through any of them. Inside the room, piles upon piles of objects were spread about the floor, from a stack of old, broken furniture, to heaps of books that looked as if they had been nearly burnt to a crisp.

"The Room of Requirement," Rose stated. "Also known as the Come and Go Room. The Room of Requirement only appears when a person has real need of it, and is always equipped with the seeker's needs." She too was marveling at what Holly had found for them, though the shape it had taken seemed rather odd.

"So, say you really needed a toilet…" Hugo inquired.

"Charming, Hugo. But yes, that is the general idea," Rose answered.

"It's brilliant!" Scorpius said. He had always admired places that worked as good hiding spots. Rose supposed that this was only normal, considering that he had grown up in an enormous mansion with hardly anybody ever at home but him.

"But if it can take the shape of anything," Nigel said from behind them. "Why does it have all this stuff in it?" Rose had been wondering the same thing.

"This is the way I found it the first time," Holly explained. "I was looking for a place to store some Devil's Snare I was growing, and this is what it gave me. It seems like this is the place it shows anybody wanting to hide something, and apparently people have been doing just that for years."

"It must have burnt in the Battle of Hogwarts though," Scorpius said, noticing the books that Rose had eyed before. "There's even ash all across the floor."

"Years?" Hugo asked, looking excited. "I bet there's loads of cool stuff in here…" He then jet off behind some giant stuffed troll to explore.

"Hugo!" Rose called after him, but he was already long gone. She hadn't wanted her and Scorpius's private place to include her little brother, but Hugo had a way of showing up at awkward times, whether he was wanted there or not.

"Don't worry, Rose," Nigel said. "He'll tire eventually."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Rose replied. Still, she decided to look around as well, since there was nothing better to do. Nigel and Holly stayed by the door and sorted through the books while Rose followed Scorpius through an aisle of bloodstained swords and axes.

After passing a large mirror with gold embellishments, Scorpius stopped and pointed to a cage with an odd-looking skeleton in it. "Here, look at this," he said, motioning to it for Rose.

She walked over and made a disgusted face as soon as she saw the five-legged pile of bones. Just as Scorpius was about to continue walking however, Rose spotted an old cupboard behind the cage that still looked perfectly in tact. "Wait, what's that?" she asked, signaling for Scorpius to come back over.

Together, they pulled the cage out of the way, revealing the dark cabinet that looked as if it was blistered by acid. Atop it sat an ugly warlock with a dusty wig on its head. Rose couldn't explain why she was drawn to this object, out of all of the rest in the room, but it did seem to be one of the only ones that hadn't been at all plagued by the fire.

Slowly, Rose opened the door of the cupboard, which did in fact feel very sticky, like some strong potion had been poured all over it. Sure enough, the inside was just as untouched, and on the top shelf laid a book that wasn't at all tarnished, though it still looked old and ratty.

Rose grabbed it and closed the cupboard. Turning to Scorpius, she opened the front cover and read, "_This book is property of the Half-Blood Prince_."

"The Half-Blood Prince?" Scorpius asked. "Who's that?"

Rose shrugged and answered, "I've no idea. It looks just like the textbooks all the N.E.W.T. students have for Potions class, but there's writing all over the margins of every page."

"Huh," Scorpius said, not all that interested. "Maybe we should just give it to Al then… it wouldn't be useful to any use to us."

"That's true," Rose agreed, holding on to the book.

A few minutes later, Hugo called out that he hadn't found anything that interesting, and that he was bored (though his pants and jacket looked abnormally bulky when he appeared). They all left the room then, Hugo skipping off to Gryffindor Tower with Nigel trailing behind him. Rose and Scorpius stayed behind to thank Holly, but then she too left for her own common room. It was already late, and the five of them had missed most of supper while searching the Room of Requirement, so Rose and Scorpius gave each other a kiss goodnight and then headed off in their separate directions.

* * *

Later that week, it was St. Valentine's Day at Hogwarts. Rose and Scorpius, as usual, didn't have any special plans for it, but Rose was slightly disappointed as her last class of the day came to a close, and she realized that she had hardly even seen Scorpius, let alone wish him a Happy Valentine's Day.

It had been a relatively hectic week leading up to the holiday, with the castle being decorated in floating heart balloons and love potions, and all the kids sneaking out to buy last-minute gifts in Hogsmeade for their secret valentines. Rose had had to help plan all of it, along with the other Gryffindor prefects. This, combined with an enormous Defense Against the Dark Arts essay that the fifth years had been assigned in preparation for their O.W.L.'s had kept both Rose and Scorpius fairly busy, so they hadn't gotten to try out their new alone space yet.

Today though, Rose had been hoping to do just that, but Scorpius was nowhere to be found. He had come in late for DADA, and so he sat in the back, too far from Rose and Al to sneak in any conversation. Afterward, Rose had had Herbology with the Hufflepuffs, in which Lucy chatted up a storm about the surprise gift that Lorcan had bought her, but Rose couldn't even remember what it had been. She had eaten lunch alone with Albus as well, and had then made her way to Muggle Studies, a class that Scorpius didn't take, which was just finishing now.

As the class was dismissed, all the students quickly filed out, a good half of them already hand in hand and rushing off together. Rose wasn't one for tacky holidays, but she was still a romantic. She herself was just about to leave when Professor Weasley, Rose's grandfather, stopped her and asked, "Rose, would you mind if I spoke to you for a moment?"

Rose looked around at the empty room, and Arthur shook his head, saying, "I know, I know, it's Valentine's Day and all, but I'll be quick, I promise."

Arthur Weasley was an adorable man, and was one of the few reasons why anybody took Muggle Studies anymore, as he was so enthusiastic when he taught. Now, he was standing behind his desk wearing a worn-out suit and fidgeting with his spectacles.

Rose, suddenly worried, as she was not the type of student who would be called to speak to the teacher after class, asked, "Is something wrong?"

Arthur looked confused, but then laughed and said, "Oh no, no, of course not. You're my very best student Rose, you know that. No, this is not school-related at all."

"Oh?" Rose asked curiously as she took a seat in a swivel chair, one of the ones Muggles apparently used in their offices, in front of her grandfather's desk.

"Actually, it's about Hugo," Arthur stated.

"Hugo?" Rose asked in surprise. Hugo didn't take Muggle Studies, and definitely didn't hang around classrooms unless he absolutely had to. "He's not even one of your students."

"Yes, I know," Arthur went on. "But you see, ever since the beginning of this year, I've been discussing some things with him. Things that he has chosen to keep secret from you and your parents."

"Secrets?" Rose asked, still confused and now worried as well. She had had enough secrets this year for a lifetime, many of which were still unresolved. She didn't need another.

"I'll let him tell you when he's ready," Arthur explained, trying to switch subjects. "But I actually wanted to speak to you about his upcoming birthday."

"Oh, I'm pretty sure his friends are planning something," Rose said. Hugo would be turning fourteen on the 29th of February, though of course that day would not actually occur this year, which is why Hugo liked to argue that it be celebrated on both the 28th as well as March 1st, just to be fair.

"Oh, good, I'm glad," Arthur sighed. "I just wanted to make sure. You know how sensitive he gets about these things, and I can't help but worry about him lately."

Rose laughed and said, "Don't be, he always has quite the celebration." Hugo's birthday was normally a weekend-long event, and this year would be taking place just after the Gryffindor vs. Hufflepuff match at the end of the month.

"Splendid!" Arthur exclaimed. "Well, Rose, it's been nice talking to you. Now Happy Valentine's Day!"

"Happy Valentine's Day, Granddad," Rose said back as she gathered her books and walked out of the classroom. It had been an odd conversation that she didn't completely understand the point of. But come to think of it, Hugo had been acting strange lately, during Christmas break and now as well. Determined to uncover her brother's secret, Rose stomped up the stairs toward the common room.

Once on the seventh floor though, Rose didn't get the chance to go through the portrait hole, since Scorpius was waiting for her in the hallway. "Hey," he said, smiling like he had something up his sleeve. He also looked somewhat wet, as if he had just been outside in a rainstorm.

"Hi," Rose said, approaching him. "I haven't seen you all day. Where have you been?" This was her way of saying that she missed him, without actually sounding so cliché.

Scorpius smiled, knowing exactly what she meant. "I've missed you too, but I've been working on something that I think should make up for my absence."

"What?" Rose asked, but then Scorpius backed away and began pacing back and forth in front of the wall, just as Holly had done before. Once again, a large door appeared in front of them, and as it opened Scorpius gestured for Rose to head inside.

At first sight, Rose was sure that she had entered into a different world, or time, or both. What was once a cathedral filled with lost items had been transformed into a beautiful clearing in the middle of a forest. The floor was now a field of wild grasses, a mixture of different shades of green and brown. Around it, instead of tall windows, were equally large trees, covered in leaves of gold, orange, and red. Scorpius had made the Room of Requirement into the perfect representation of Rose's favorite season. Best of all though, it was raining.

The ceiling had been replaced with clouds similar to the ones found in the Great Hall on Halloween. Tiny raindrops were falling from them, slowly so as not to leave anything soaking wet, but still strong enough not to turn to mist once they reached the ground. Through it all, sharp rays of sunlight were piercing down upon everything.

Rose smiled and shook her head in disbelief. The only thing she could think of to say was, "I've always loved the rain."

"I know," Scorpius said from beside her. "Happy Valentine's Day, Rose."

After all of Scorpius's surprises, Rose should have expected something like this from him, but she was still in shock. "How did you do this?" she asked. From what she had read, the Room of Requirement couldn't quite grow itself an entire woodland, even if somebody asked for it.

"Well," Scorpius laughed. "It took some time, but I was able to get a pretty empty looking space from it after a while, only I had it filled with a few objects. Then I transfigured them all to make them seem like trees, and I had to do the floor to. The clouds and the rain, though, well you taught me that. Back when we were in our –"

"Second year," Rose answered for him. "I remember." To this day, it was one of her favorite charms, because it almost seemed more magical than others. Scorpius had had particular difficulty with learning it, and Rose had helped him practice for weeks to make sure he got it in time for his exam.

"So then," Scorpius said warily. "Does it look okay?"

Rose shook her head once again, now in even more disbelief over Scorpius's anxiety about his gift for her. Since she knew that words might not do the trick, she quickly walked toward him, grabbed hold of his wet hair, and kissed him. Being caught off guard, he didn't have time to reciprocate before Rose broke away and said, "I love you."

Scorpius smiled. "I love you too."

The two then made their way to a spot underneath one of the very realistic maple trees, where it was relatively dry. Rose could still see and hear the rain, but now it didn't have to get in the way.

As Scorpius sat down against the tree's trunk, with Rose close beside him, he started fiddling with his wand, making butterflies out of strands of grass. "What is it that you find so interesting about transfiguration?" Rose asked him, leaning against his shoulder and watching one of his creations land on his arm. It was the one subject that he had ever shown any interest in, and Rose had never understood where it came from.

"I dunno' really," Scorpius answered. "I suppose I just like the idea that you can take any little, insubstantial object and make it into something important, or something beautiful. And then, just as easily, you can make it disappear."

"Do you ever wish that you could make yourself disappear?" Rose asked, thinking about what had happened with Scorpius's mother this summer.

"All the time," Scorpius answered honestly. He wasn't usually this open about things, but Rose could feel him relax whenever she held his hand. "Don't you?" he asked.

Thinking about this, Rose too answered honestly, "All the time." She had been trying to ignore any more thoughts or dreams she'd been having about Filch's murder, but they tended to creep up on her when she least expected them to.

"You know, Al and I haven't given up," Scorpius reassured her. "We're still trying to figure out who it was."

They were no Aurors, but Rose was appreciative of having them there to protect her. In fact, one of the reasons she had been so attached to Scorpius lately was because she always felt safer around him. "I know," she said. "Me too."

Rose and Scorpius remained in their tiny oasis for a few more hours, until both became too hungry to ignore supper. After a nice meal with Al though, they went straight back.

* * *

"And _GRYFFINDOR_ gains another ten points from Chaser Lily Potter! A tiny ball of fire she most certainly is," Lila Jordan announced from the stands. "That makes the score so far forty to zero for Gryffindor."

Rose, who was floating calmly on her broom just in front of the highest goal post, shivering from the cold, rolled her eyes at the way the Quidditch game was going so far. Lorcan, who flew beautifully on his own, had assembled quite the team this year. Rose didn't recognize any of the players, as they were all much younger than her, and none seemed to be able to get past mid-field. She was beginning to wonder how they had ever scored against Ravenclaw, as they hadn't yet gotten anywhere near Rose, and it was looking like they never would.

The Gryffindor team, on the other hand, seemed to be in complete harmony, which Rose was thankful for, considering all of the drama that could easily have made its way onto the field. As it turned out, James hadn't told Caitlin about Cassidy at all, nor had he even requested to meet her in Hogsmeade that day Rose had seen them there. In fact, Caitlin had asked him to come so that she could break off their relationship. Of course, this meant that James no longer felt the need to be honest with her, and so Caitlin had no apparent reason to be angry with him or her sister, and nor did Sam. The only visible tension within the team seemed to be between Rose and Lily, whom she was still angry with, but luckily they didn't have to work together much.

"And yet another goal for _GRYFFINDOR, _made by our veteran Chaser, Cassidy Finnigan!" yelled Lila, just after Cassidy had scored an easy goal, throwing the quaffle past an absent-minded Keeper who looked like he was about ready to puke for fear of heights.

They had only been playing for about a half an hour at this point, but it was already a blowout. Even the Hufflepuff students from the crowds below had resorted to cheering for Gryffindor, as it seemed pointless to do otherwise. Rose could have been standing on the ground, and it wouldn't make a difference. All this was actually quite sad, Rose thought as she watched Lorcan make an impressive pass of the bludger, only to have Sam hit it straight back after flying in front of Hufflepuff's other Beater. They obviously had no chance, and it now looked as if James had already spotted the snitch.

James had been scouting only a few yards away from Rose for most of the match, just waiting for the snitch to appear. Now that the team had earned a fair enough amount of points, it was safe for him to go after the golden ball once he saw it. As soon as he did, he was off.

Now, James was diving past Rose, the Hufflepuff Seeker still having failed to notice his opponent on the move. As he continued to gain ground on it, chasing after the ball in the wide open air, the other side of the pitch was crowded with all the players but James and Rose. She couldn't see through them very well, but it sounded from Lila's commentary that Lily had hold of the quaffle yet again.

Sure enough, Gryffindor scored their sixth goal a few seconds later, not long before James caught the snitch, signaling the end of the match. "Congratulations to _GRYFFINDOR_ withtheir second win of the season, beating Hufflepuff two hundred and ten points to nothing!"

The crowd cheered then, though they weren't as enthusiastic as they usually were. It had been a pretty boring match, and hadn't lasted long at all. After the two teams shook hands, the Gryffindors headed to the locker rooms to change. While the Chasers plus Sam and Fred talked about all the goals they had made, Rose walked up to James and patted him on the back in congratulations.

"Looks like you're back in the game," she said. "How does it feel?"

James smiled fully, something that Rose hadn't seen on him in a while. It hadn't been hard for him to catch the snitch, having had barely any competition, but Rose knew that didn't matter. Looking around the locker room, James answered, "Feels like I never left."

The two walked out together, until Rose found Scorpius waiting for her by the bottom of a goal post, his footprints having left a trail in the snow for her to follow. "I'll see you up there," James said to Rose as he noticed Scorpius, before catching up to the rest of the team to follow them back to Gryffindor Tower.

"Congratulations," Scorpius said as Rose neared him. She exhaled strongly, thinking about the fact that she hadn't even needed to move throughout the entire game.

Looking back at Scorpius, she noticed a slight smirk on his face and said, "Hey, don't be too happy. I know we have less points than you right now, but it won't stay that way for long." Slytherin was in the lead against the other houses after winning the Ravenclaw match, with a total of 420 points, as opposed to Gryffindor's 410.

"Oh, come on, at least let me have the pleasure of being in the lead for a minute. You guys have been hogging the title for years," Scorpius whined. He did have a point though, considering that ever since James had come around, Gryffindor had won the Quidditch House Cup every year.

Still, this didn't mean that Rose was just going to hand it over to the next-best team. "Never," she answered smugly.

Scorpius laughed and suggested, "How about we discuss the matter over a walk?" He was referring to them going to their newly improved Room of Requirement hideout. Rose was tempted by the offer, but she had other plans.

"I can't," she answered disappointedly. Seeing Scorpius's questioning expression, she said, "Hugo's Birthday Celebration, remember? It's starting now, and lasting through tomorrow as well. I would invite you, but the first part of the extravaganza is taking place in our common room." Even more importantly, Rose thought to herself, she had yet to discover what was going on with Hugo, and now would be the perfect time to keep a close eye on him.

"Oh, right," Scorpius said, remembering that Rose had told him about it earlier. Moving closer to her, he put his hands on her waist and asked, "Tomorrow then?"

"Definitely," Rose nodded, giving him a kiss. "You can even come to the snowman building competition," she added as he let go of her.

"There's a _snowman competition_?" he asked in surprise.

"Of course," Rose answered while walking backward across the snowy field. "It's tradition!"

Scorpius rolled his eyes before kinking his eyebrows and running after her while asking, "Will you be building one?"

"I might be," Rose answered as she faced forward again. "In fact, I might even be the reigning champion, but I wouldn't dare tell you that unless I was sure you'd join in, of course."

"Oh I'm joining," Scorpius said. "And you just wait, because you know which spells are perfect for building snowmen?" He didn't even give Rose the chance to respond before answering himself, "Transfiguration."

Rose stopped walking then, gaping at Scorpius and asking, "Is that a threat?"

Mimicking her, he turned around to walk backward, shrugged, and answered, "It might be." She then ran after him and starting hitting him repeatedly with her broom the whole way back to the castle.

By the time Rose had bid Scorpius farewell for the day and hauled herself up to the top of the castle, the common room was already packed with people. It was decorated with red and gold as was the norm after every Quidditch match, but also had banners reading 'Happy Birthday Hugo' pinned up on the balcony, and some even hanging in mid-air.

As she squeezed her way through everyone, most of whom were chatting with their small groups of friends, Rose noticed that Hugo, who was normally the center of attention (particularly on these two days), wasn't anywhere in sight. She did, however, bump into Nigel, who was standing alone in the corner, not far from Fred and Lila, who seemed to be dueling with each other.

"Nigel!" She exclaimed, practically yelling to make sure she was heard over the rest of the students. "Where's the birthday boy?"

Nigel shrugged, looking worried. "I haven't seen him since the match ended."

This was particularly puzzling to Rose, since Hugo never missed a celebration. It may have been probable if he had lost one of his Quidditch bets, but he nearly always put his money on Gryffindor, especially when Hufflepuff was involved, so he couldn't have lost anything today.

Thinking back to what her grandfather had told her, and to the row she had witnessed between Hugo and Nigel the other day, Rose asked, "Has everything been okay with him lately?"

"Well I – I mean, I – I think so," Nigel answered, reminding Rose of his older brother's persistent stuttering. He was looking away from her as he said it, and she couldn't help but assume that there was in fact something wrong, and that Nigel at least knew more on the matter than she did. Even if that was the case though, he didn't seem to want to tell her anything.

"Well, what about Lily?" Rose asked, hoping to get some answers. Lily always knew everybody's secrets, and apparently didn't have much of a problem with sharing them.

Nigel shrugged again, unable to point Rose in the right direction. She was about to ask Fred or Lila when Nigel nudged her arm and said, "Rose, if you find Hugo, could you tell him that I'd really like to talk to him?" He looked hurt and helpless, and Rose wanted nothing more than to give him an enormous hug.

Instead, though, she settled by saying, "Of course I will," before moving on. She was hesitant to get in between Fred and Lila at this moment, as they seemed to be quite focused. Still, Rose knew they were only dueling for fun, as she had done many times before with Al, so she stood just outside their range of fire and waited for one of them to notice her.

After Lila hit Fred with a stunning spell, knocking him across the room and against Sam Thomas's back, she smiled with pride and then turned to Rose. "Hey, you need something?"

Rose hadn't interacted much with Lila before, though she seemed like a nice enough girl. She had been best friends with Fred ever since she was little, as their parents were quite close, and both she and Fred were known to have impressive senses of humor. That was why Hugo admired the two of them so much, though he was closer with Fred's younger sister, Roxanne, who was in Hugo's same year.

"Yes, actually," Rose answered. "Have you seen Lily anywhere?"

Lila looked around for a moment before pointing to the far side of the room, where Lily and Roxanne were making their way down the staircase from their dormitory. "She's over there," Lila said.

Rose quickly spotted her cousins, and said thank you to Lila before heading toward them. As she approached, she heard plenty of giggling coming from the two 3rd years, and Rose knew right away that she would not serve as a pleasant interruption into whatever insignificant conversation they were having.

"Oh, Rose," Lily said as she made her way down the last step. "Hi." She was already speaking with a condescending tone. It had always been difficult for Rose to stay angry with people, especially close friends and family, but she did resent Lily for what she had announced to everyone on Christmas. Her relationship with Scorpius had not been Lily's secret to share, and Lily should have realized this.

"Rose," Roxanne said, much more cheerfully. "Congrats on the match! Hopefully that'll be me next year."

Rose smiled and nodded. Roxanne would be after Cassidy's Chaser position once the Finnigan girl left school. "You've got a good chance, I suspect," Rose said.

Turning back to Lily, she continued, "Look, have either of you two seen Hugo anywhere?"

Roxanne shook her head, and Lily answered, "No, not for a while anyway. I walked back with him after the game, but he said he needed to go somewhere before we got to the Fat Lady." While most referred to the painting in the hallway that acted as the door into Gryffindor Tower as the portrait hole, Lily tended to be more blunt in expressing such things. Rose supposed that sort of thing happened often when a girl grew up with multiple older brothers.

Rose, still not sure where Hugo had gone off to, asked, "He didn't say where he was going?"

"No," Lily replied. "He just started walking in the other direction once we got to the floor."

Suddenly, Rose knew where her brother was. The only other place to go on the seventh floor of the castle was the one place that few people knew about, but that Hugo had discovered at the same time as Rose: the Room of Requirement. Nodding to herself, Rose said to Lily, "Okay well, thanks anyway," and then turned and left.

Once again, Rose had to push through the crowd, this time to get away from everybody, but luckily she didn't bump into any distractions along the way. Once in the hall, she walked a ways until she found Barnabas the Barmy and looked around to make sure no one was watching. She then walked back and forth in front of the wall three times, concentrating all her thoughts on the only place Hugo would have known to think of: that same room where all of the objects had been hidden, and where she and Scorpius had found the potions book that they had later given to Al. She supposed that he might have wanted a change in scenery, but if he had asked for such, it would have been nearly impossible for him to be found by anyone. He may not have admitted to it, but Hugo always wanted to be found.

As soon as the door appeared, Rose rushed into the room and nearly tripped over the pile of burnt books that was still sitting by the entrance. "Hugo!" she called, not seeing him anywhere. "Are you in here?" In order for the room to have opened, it meant that Rose had to have been right about Hugo choosing this particular room, or that nobody was inside after all.

She didn't get a response though, and she was beginning to feel uneasy. She was responsible for Hugo when they were at school, and if anything were to have happened to him, physically or emotionally, she would never be able to forgive herself for not having not protected him.

Walking around the pile of books, Rose retraced her footsteps from the time she was in here before, making her way over to the cabinet she had opened. She kept her eyes peeled as she went, and was just about to pass the golden-bordered mirror when she spotted her family's signature red hair just in front of it.

Hugo was sitting by the enormous piece of glass, a few old armchairs stacked behind him that Rose would have to crawl under. She did so, not bothering to say anything, since Hugo would be able to hear her coming, and came out the other side only to see a reflection in the mirror that she hadn't expected it to show.

Scorpius had his hand clasped around hers, and both of them were smiling. Centered around them were their parents, Astoria Malfoy on the outside smiling down at her son, Draco next to her laughing. Hermione was on the other side, behind Rose and holding onto her arm. Finally, Ron was beside her, and had one hand on Rose's shoulder and the other on Scorpius's. He too was laughing, as if he and Draco had just shared a joke with each other.

Rose turned around instinctively, but she already knew that what she saw wouldn't be there. "It can't be…" Rose marveled, forgetting for a moment that there was another person beside her.

"The Mirror of Erised," Hugo finished her thought. He was sitting in the same spot Rose had seen him in before, and was staring at the mirror not with wonder, but with what looked to Rose like indignation.

"You don't mean…?" Rose had read about this mirror, but she thought it had been destroyed.

"_I show not your face but your heart's desire_," Hugo stated. "It's inscribed in the frame."

Rose looked up at the gold adornment and read to herself from the very top, _Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi._ She didn't understand it at first, until Hugo said, "Try reading it backwards," after which Rose found the exact phrase that Hugo had just expressed.

"So," he said then. "Let me guess… you and Scorpius?"

Rose nodded as she sat down next to her younger brother and said, "Sort of."

"I came back here after we'd left that day, and I found this," Hugo explained. From his serious tone of voice, Rose could only assume that what he was looking at in the mirror was not just him inheriting their Uncle George's joke shop or winning the Quidditch House Cup as the Gryffindor team Captain, both of which he had always aspired to. It sounded like there was a lot more to it than that. Thinking about what Hugo might desire most, Rose had the sudden urge to ask, "Is Dad in it?" If she had anything in common with her brother, it was that they both desperately wanted to please Ron, though they achieved this in very different ways.

Hugo finally looked away from the mirror to face Rose, and then nodded. "What else do you see?" she asked quietly.

He was sniffling now, and Rose could see his eyes watering as his cheeks once again turned to the same color as his hair, so much so that his freckles were barely visible anymore. "I'm not supposed to be like this," he said, staring at his hands that were fidgeting in his lap.

Rose bit her lip, waiting for him to say what he needed to say. Just like her grandfather had told her, she couldn't pressure him. He needed to be ready.

"I'm supposed to be the Quidditch player that he's always wanted to be," he said, making Rose shift positions guiltily. "I'm supposed to be an Auror, just like him." Hugo had always looked up to Ron more than anyone, just like Al looked up to Harry. Only in this case, Ron was childish enough to actually be disappointed if his only son didn't turn out to be the man he had hoped for.

"Hugo, you can still be an Auror," Rose said, trying to cheer him up in the only way she knew how. She had never seen him like this, and didn't know exactly how to handle it.

Hugo shook his head, looking aggravated. "I'm not going to be an Auror. I can barely keep my wand in tact. Can you imagine if I tried to use it to save somebody's life or arrest a criminal? I'd probably kill the person!"

Rose chuckled. She didn't believe what Hugo was saying about himself, but she didn't protest either. It wouldn't be worth it.

"Do you want to know the worst part?" Hugo asked. "My best subject right now is History of Magic!" He sounded disgusted, and Rose could tell that he was trying to make light of their somber conversation.

Rose smiled at this, as it was so like Hugo. Anybody else would be thrilled to have marks that were above average in Professor Binns's class, as it was the most difficult learning environment combined with the strictest teacher. Hugo, however, had always had a secret talent for memorization, one of the few traits that he had inherited from Hermione rather than Ron.

"So obviously," Hugo continued, getting back on course now. "You would think that my heart's desire would have something to do with being the best at Defense Against the Dark Arts or Charms instead, or to even finally get on the Quidditch team…" He trailed off after this, as if it he didn't know how to tell Rose what he had actually seen in the mirror.

To try to help him along, Rose asked, "What did you really see, Hugo?"

After another long moment, Hugo finally answered, "Nigel."

This was a reply that Rose hadn't seen coming. Though Nigel raved about Hugo whenever he had the chance, Hugo had never reciprocated the gesture. Still, they were best friends, and with Hugo's popularity he could have chosen to be best friends with anybody.

"Rose," Hugo said, turning her back to him. He had let a tear trickle down now, and Rose's heart ached just by looking at him. "I think I might be gay."

Now, Rose was caught even more off guard. Hugo was so young, only fourteen on this day, and he acted even younger. So while he hadn't ever shown much interest in girls, nobody had questioned it, assuming the feelings might take some time to show themselves.

"How – How long have you felt like this?" Rose asked, wanting more information while at the same time trying to keep talking so as not to make Hugo more uncomfortable than he already was.

"I dunno'," Hugo said honestly. "I mean, I've never really felt otherwise."

Rose nodded. She was still trying to take it all in, but she already knew that it wouldn't change anything. It was difficult for her to wrap her mind around the news, but when she looked at Hugo, he was still the same immature yet lovable kid that she had always known him to be. Rose was good at refraining judgment, something that she had learned from her mother.

"And how does Nigel feel?" Rose asked. She figured the best way to approach this revelation, being that Hugo was so worried about it, was to treat it like it was any other crush. She also thought that this would bring the best possible results, since she was pretty sure (considering how Nigel had acted at Hugo's party just from not seeing him there) that he felt exactly the same way Hugo did.

"I think we both sort of realized it at the same time, but he seems to be handling it a lot better. He's already told his family and everything." This must have been what the letter at Christmas had been about.

"Is that what you two have been fighting about lately?" Rose asked.

Hugo nodded. "It sort of started a few months ago, when I broke my wand. Lily had dared me to try out this spell, only it was really tricky and she said that if I messed it up, it could make the whole compartment explode or something. Of course, I didn't believe her, but Nigel did. He tried to stop me, but I did it anyway, and it sort of rebounded onto my wand. That's how I broke it.

"That night, I asked Nigel why he had cared so much, and he told me then. I didn't really know what to think of it at first, but then Granddad found me in the Great Hall one day and asked me what was wrong. I've been talking to him a lot lately, him and Nigel."

Listening to Hugo's story, Rose was beginning to wonder how she could have missed all of the signs that now seemed so obvious. Hugo had been struggling the entire year, yet Rose had been too concentrated on her own problems that she had failed to notice any of his. Of course now that she looked back on things, she remembered thinking how odd it had sounded that Cow, Hugo's miniature owl who was so small he could fit in the palm of Rose's hand, could have possibly broken Hugo's wand just by biting it. She wasn't happy with herself for being so oblivious, but she knew that there was nothing that could be done to change that. At the very least, she could try to be the sister she had always meant to be from this moment on.

"So, if you two are on the same page, what were you arguing for?" Rose asked concernedly.

"Whether or not we should tell everybody," Hugo said, adding, "Whether or not I should tell you."

Rose understood now that Hugo had been the one who had wanted to keep things secret, but that Nigel had convinced him to do otherwise. And so here Hugo was, waiting for her in a place where only she could find him.

"He's been asking me to for weeks," Hugo continued, "And Granddad's been telling me that it'll all work out and everything, but I didn't want to.

"Then I saw this," he gestured to the mirror. "It's not just some silly thing, Rose. This is who I am."

Remembering how the conversation had started, Rose asked, "And Dad, you said he was in the reflection as well?"

"Yeah, he's on my other side, saying he's proud of me." He was crying more intensely now, barely able to get out the words as he whimpered, "How am I going to tell him, Rosie?"

Rose didn't answer, even though it was clear that it wasn't a rhetorical question. Hugo really wanted to know, and she was the only person who would have any sort of answer, but she still didn't know what to say. He had put so much pressure on himself just writing to Ron that he had broken his wand, and this would be a thousand times harder.

"After what he said to you at Christmas," Hugo sobbed. "I can't have him look at me like that."

Nodding, Rose pulled Hugo into her arms, making him look away from the mirror and bury himself in her shoulder. "I know," she said. "I know."

Seeing people in pain wasn't something that Rose could ever seem to get used to. She cared about everybody who was a part of her life, so much so that each time one of them came to her for consolation, she ended up feeling like she needed somebody to comfort her back. She was glad that people trusted her enough to share their secrets, but she was so close to them that there were times when it felt like doing so was an extremely heavy burden.

This didn't mean that she was ready to abandon any of them, though, because they had never abandoned her when she was most in need of support. So as she pushed back the water that was beginning to form behind her own eyes, she said to Hugo, "You know, they say that the happiest man on the earth would look into this mirror and see only himself, exactly how he is.

"I know that our father acts as if he expects certain things from us, like he expects us to be great, and accomplished, and talented, because that's all that he has ever wanted. But he's also a parent, and I know that deep down, the only thing he and Mum really want is for us to be happy – for us to look into this mirror and see only ourselves, exactly how we are.

"If this is who you are, Hugo, if this is what makes you happy, then he'll have to accept that, and I really believe that he loves you enough to do that. Because if he didn't, then why would we ever try to impress him so much in the first place?"

Both were laughing lightly now, because each of them understood how much they loved their father, and how much he had always loved them. He could be selfish at times, but he worshipped Rose and Hugo just as much as they worshipped him, so Rose knew he'd come around eventually.

Rose stood up then, offering a hand for Hugo, but he refused to take it. Instead, he got up on his own, took out his wand and said with a flick and a swish, "_Wingardium Leviosa!" _moving the chairs out of the way so that he and Rose could walk straight through.

Chuckling to herself, Rose said, "See, that's one spell I've always had trouble with."

"Really?" Hugo asked. "Huh. I think it might be the only one I've ever been any good at."

Rose smiled and said jokingly, "That may be true, but you do have many other talents."

Hugo looked to her in confusion, and Rose said, "You can eat more in one sitting than anyone I have ever met."

They started to crack up at this, and Rose was happy to see that Hugo would be okay. "Which is why," she continued. "You'd better get to the common room before you miss out on your own birthday cake."

Widening his eyes, Hugo went straight into panic mode, and gave Rose a quick hug before racing out the door to get back to his celebration. Rose followed at a much slower pace, trying to leave the room as stealthily as possible.

Upon exiting though, Rose discovered that Scorpius was sitting against the wall at the other side of the corridor, waiting for her like he seemed to be doing so often these days. This time in particular, Rose was immensely grateful for his presence. Sometimes, she could have sworn that he could tell the exact moments when she needed him the most.

Rose approached slyly, surprising him since he had his head down, directed at the floor. "Have you been here all afternoon?" she asked, waking him up and making him lift his head to see her standing right above him.

Scorpius pulled himself up to a standing position before answering, "I just thought I might check and see if you'd changed your mind about the party."

Smiling at Scorpius's pathetic excuse, Rose said, "I missed you too."

They kissed then, and as soon as they broke apart Rose hugged him tightly, closing her eyes and smelling the fresh, clear, and rainy scent of his skin.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Scorpius whispered in her ear.

"Nothing," Rose answered, not wanting to tell Hugo's secret before he was ready for other people to know. "Not anymore."

Scorpius then pulled her apart from him momentarily, only to take her hand and lead her in a pace across the hall. This time, when the door opened, Rose was met not with a space filled to the brim with thousands of unwanted items, but instead a perfect clearing in the middle of a forest, as fresh and pure as the lightest possible drop of rain.


	8. The Relaying of the Wand

**_Note: _**_If you haven't already noticed, I have written a oneshot following Hugo Weasley, which is meant to be concurrent with the last chapter, Chapter 7 - The Clearing. If you haven't read it, I hope that you take the time to now. Afterward (or if you choose not to), feel free to continue on to this chapter, #8. Happy reading!_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**8 – The Relaying of the Wand**

Rose's feet were flying down the hill, lightly brushing against the newly thawed ground that formed the pathway from the Hogwarts courtyard down to the Forbidden Forest. Her legs had taken on a life of their own, and she could feel them swinging back and forth faster than she would have thought they could go. Right behind her, she could hear the slightly louder stomps of two other pairs of legs, heading in the exact same direction as her own.

Rose had rushed out of Charms class to catch up with Albus and Scorpius, as the trio had planned to meet Hagrid at his hut for lunch. Once they had left the castle walls, Rose had suggested that they race down, an old pastime that was always fun to revisit. Now, Rose was in the lead, but she could hear Scorpius's calm, steady breathing right behind her. He had always been the fastest of the three.

As they came closer to their destination, Rose pushed forward, but Scorpius was still able to pass her, zipping by nonchalantly until he arrived at Hagrid's door, just barely out of breath. Rose appeared only seconds later and all but collapsed into Scorpius's arms as she had little time to slow down beforehand. He caught her willingly and brushed a few strands of her wild, fiery hair out of her face as she came to once again.

Albus joined them soon after, his glasses about to fall from their crooked position on his nose. As Scorpius knocked on the door for the three of them, Al squinted and adjusted his spectacles, exclaiming, "That was hardly fair. I couldn't see a thing!"

"No excuse, mate," Scorpius mumbled, shaking his head. "No excuse." Rose chuckled from beside him.

Before Al could make an attempt at a comeback, the enormous Hagrid opened his door and pulled all of them into a hug, saying, "I've missed yeh three!" They hadn't come down to visit him in quite some time, though they had seen him plenty during their Care of Magical Creatures classes.

"Alright, alright," Albus said as he tried to push away. "Need to breathe." Hagrid then let them all go and they made their way into the tiny shack that seemed ironically small to be the home of such a large person.

"What have yeh been up to?" the half-giant asked as Rose, Al, and Scorpius sat down at the table. Rose was in between the two boys, Scorpius on the inside by the window and Al on the outside, closer to the door. Next to the latter of them sat Hagrid's questionably large boarhound, Saber. He was a beautiful golden color, but also happened to be incredibly lazy, and enjoyed drooling at all times, whether awake or asleep. His favorite of Hagrid's guests though, had always been Al, and Al had an equal amount of detestation for the dog. Saber was already slobbering all over Al's robes, his head resting on his knee, and Al was staring down at him with a look of pure disgust. He didn't complain though, since he had too much respect for the dog's owner to upset him in any way.

As Rose eyed Al and decided that he was too distracted to answer Hagrid's question himself, she replied, "We've been alright. School's beginning to get a bit stressful of course, with exams on their way, but…"

"But we're trying not to think too much about that," Scorpius finished for her. Rose tended to go on for a while whenever the topic of exams was brought up, and Scorpius had learned over the years to stop her before she got out of hand. He would let her stress when the time came, but it was only April now, so they still had over a month to study for their OWL's.

Rose nodded and gave Scorpius a thankful smile. Sometimes she wondered what she'd do without him there to tone down her exhausting thought process.

"Oh right, yeh've got yer owl's comin' up, haven' yeh? Well Rose, I'm sure yeh'll be fine. Yehr mother most definitely did well on those when she was 'ere," Hagrid reassured Rose as he handed her a cup of tea, which was more like a large bowl. She smiled back and took it gratefully as he handed a cup each to Al and Scorpius.

Then, sitting down on his own chair, Hagrid sighed heavily. He was nearly always tired these days, and Rose couldn't help but wonder how old he was now. Of course, giants lived longer than normal witches and wizards, so Hagrid probably still had at least a few years left on him.

"No kidding," Scorpius said anxiously, bringing Rose back to the conversation. "I wish I had your genes."

"That'd be a tad awkward, don't you think?" Al asked, Rose slapping him in return. Of course Scorpius hadn't meant what he said in that way at all, though Al enjoyed poking fun at the two of them whenever he got the chance.

"Very funny," Scorpius said. "But that still wouldn't be as awkward as you and Ms. '_Howdy y'all'_" he teased, mimicking Albus's girlfriend, Abby. He still hadn't warmed up to her, and Rose had given up trying to be the buffer between the two of them.

Even Al was starting to get annoyed by the obnoxious character that Abby was, Rose noticed as he grimaced slightly and said, "Well, I suppose you've got a point." The two had been going steady for a while now, but Abby was beginning to grow increasingly clingy, and her less-than-intelligent sense of humor, which Al had originally deemed as cute, was now just irritating.

"What's tha'?" Hagrid asked, suddenly very curious about his students' personal lives. He already knew that Rose and Scorpius were together, but hadn't heard about Al's new fling.

"Oh, nothing," Al shrugged it off as Saber gave a loud snore. He had fallen asleep quickly, looking perfectly comfortable with his head nuzzled on top of Albus's thigh.

Hagrid looked hurt for a moment, thinking that he wasn't being let in on the joke, but Rose distracted him by asking, "How about you, Hagrid? Any news on Colin?" From what Rose knew, Hagrid had been writing letters to the Ministry to try to get Colin Creevey, who had been suspected for the murder of Argus Filch, released from his home-arrest state, but Rose feared that it may not be going well. After all, Hagrid was just barely literate, so a letter may not be the best way to go about in rescuing his old assistant.

Just as Rose asked the question, she could feel Scorpius shift in his seat beside her, but she didn't get the chance to ask if he was okay before Hagrid answered fervently, "Well, I thought tha' I might get him back with my last talk with Shacklebolt, I did. But o' course, they keep tellin' me tha' it's all up to McGonagall. I jus' don' understand why she'd want to keep him away fer so long is all."

"Well, they do have their reasons," Al answered. "I mean, I think he's innocent too, but there's not exactly anybody else for people to blame." He had been offering alternative offenders to Rose for weeks, but there hadn't been evidence to support any of them. Meanwhile, Rose had her own suspicions.

"That's not entirely true," Rose said quietly, since she knew that Al wouldn't want to hear it.

"Oh, not this again," Al whined, though Scorpius remained silent. He supported Rose in her theory, but didn't like to come in between her and Albus.

"What?" Hagrid asked. "What d'yeh know?"

"Nothing," Rose answered forcefully. "It's just a hunch is all." Al tried to interrupt her, but she continued on, if only because of Hagrid's look of longing. "See, when I was there, with Colin, Professor McGonagall came to inspect everything, but she wasn't the only one. Professor Shunpike came too, and he said something really odd at the time, and I can't think of anybody else who had been acting so strangely."

"Rose, it wasn't Shunpike!" Al said loudly, nearly waking Saber. "He's a teacher; why would he ever do something like that?" Albus always defended Shunpike, if only because he was his favorite professor, and had helped him rise to the top of the class in DADA.

Rose ignored Al and looked to Hagrid, whose forehead was creased as he contemplated to himself. "I don' know Rose," he finally said. "Al here has a point. Shunpike's a teacher, he wouldn't ever hurt one o' his own." Hagrid had a way of speaking about everything and everyone as if it was an animal, and it made him forget that humans weren't always as loyal to one another as their wilder counterparts.

"But you two weren't there," Rose said, frustrated that they didn't believe her. Of course, she hadn't mentioned that Shunpike had also appeared in the recurring dream she had had, but she still wanted them to be on her side. "There was nobody else around, and Filch was _dead_, and Shunpike acted as if it was all completely normal."

Scorpius, though still silent, took her hand from under the table and squeezed it tightly, letting her know that he was there for her, even if Al and Hagrid weren't. He seemed to understand better than anybody how scared it made Rose to think about what she had witnessed in the fall, if only because he had witnessed an event that summer that could have been very similar if he hadn't put a stop to it himself.

Looking down at Scorpius's hand around hers for a short moment, Rose tried to gather herself and added, "Nobody's ever going to find out the truth unless we start to question things more closely."

At that, both Al and Hagrid smiled guiltily, for they agreed with Rose on this front. They all wanted to make it safe for her and for the rest of the school, and they all wanted Colin's reputation to be redeemed, but none of them seemed to know where to start.

After a little while longer at Hagrid's, Rose, Al, and Scorpius said goodbye (Scorpius having to momentarily turn Saber into a goblet in order for him to let Albus leave) and made their way back to the castle for their next class, which was, of course, Defense Against the Dark Arts with none other than Professor Shunpike.

As soon as they took their seats, Rose and Al at a table up front and Scorpius just behind them, Shunpike stammered in from his office. He looked disheveled, as was usual, and Rose sighed with discontent, for a double period of DADA was never pleasant. For some odd reason, she had a feeling that today would be even worse than usual.

Shunpike was quiet as he approached his desk, and all the students from Gryffindor and Slytherin waited for him to address them. He was staring down at the fifth year textbook, and was flipping through it, looking for a particular lesson. They were due for a new topic, now that they had gone through all of this year's jinxes, and Rose was curious to see what it would be.

"Um, all right everyone, please turn to page 394," Shunpike directed, looking slightly nervous about his order.

Rose immediately opened her book and did as he told, but quickly regretted it. She recognized the page she was staring at as soon as she came across it, for she had studied it in detail the morning after Filch's murder: this was the chapter on the Unforgivable Curses. She quickly flipped through the section to find that it was the last in their book, but it was quite lengthy all the same.

Suddenly Shunpike was staring down at Rose, having noticed that she was no longer on the page he had asked, but was instead getting a sneak peak at what was ahead. "I said turn to page 394, Ms. Waslib." His voice was not harsh, but did feel rather patronizing. He then pointed his wand at Rose's book and it turned back to the correct page. She looked up at him, expecting a challenge, but he had already turned away.

Now back in front and facing the entirety of the class, Shunpike began his explanation, "Now I realize that you had an introduction to this subject last year, but the Ministry seems to feel that it is of utmost importance that you be fully prepared to defend yourself against these dangerous spells if need be." He looked much less cheerful than he normally did, as if speaking of such spells pained him.

"Who can name me the first of these spells, please?" Shunpike asked, and Rose raised her hand high, though she knew that he would never call on her.

Al too had raised his hand to answer, but Shunpike was staring down at another. Turning around in her seat, Rose's heart quickly sank as she looked to Scorpius, who had his head down in agony. "Mr. Malfoy?" Shunpike asked.

Scorpius refused to answer, and looked as if he had gotten lost in his own nightmare, which was only to be expected. Wishing to take away his pain as best she could, Rose looked up to Shunpike and said, "Stop it!"

"Speaking out of turn yields twenty points from Gryffindor, Ms. Wesley. I would advise you not to do so again," Shunpike said to her. He was acting more crossly than he had ever been before, and the entire class was looking up to him with slight fear, even Al.

"Mr. Malfoy, please?" Shunpike asked again, and no one dared to raise their hands so as to offer their own answer. Shunpike seemed determined to receive a response from only Scorpius.

Rose looked at the boy she loved once again, and he was trying to hide his eyes, which were sure to be watery. She wanted to reach out and hold him, and to wipe away any thoughts he may be having of his mother, but she knew that she couldn't. With everybody else in the class silent though, Rose had to do something, so she turned to Shunpike yet again and this time yelled fiercely, "STOP IT! Can't you see it's bothering him? STOP IT!"

Shunpike turned directly to Rose and spat out, "Rose Weasley, shut your ungodly lop-sided mouth and quit interrupting; twenty more points!" This time, he had said her name correctly, but the effect had only made his words sting even more.

Upon noticing Rose's pained expression, Scorpius mumbled, "The Imperius Curse." He didn't look to his teacher, though. Instead, he only looked to Rose, and she looked back at him.

"Thank you, Mr. Malfoy," Shunpike said quietly. "The Imperius Curse," he announced more clearly, "Is a spell that one uses to possess the form of another. They can control all of their actions, making them do things that they otherwise would not." He was looking down at the floor, and as Rose turned away from Scorpius, she could sense the tension in the room reaching an ultimate high. Something was definitely off with the man, though Rose couldn't tell what it was.

"Of course," he continued, still not making eye contact with his students. "The Curse is illegal to perform at any time, so I will not be teaching any of you to perform it yourselves. However, the Ministry has granted me permission to test the spell on of those of you who are willing to undergo it. I understand if you are not." Finally, he finished speaking and looked to the class.

Everyone was in a state of shock, none more so than Rose. The Ministry had always been against the use of students for the demonstration of any curse, let alone an Unforgivable one. Such things were completely frowned upon, and it seemed odd that this strict rule would suddenly be altered. Thinking about this, Rose only became more suspicious of Shunpike, who seemed less and less normal every day.

"I'll do it," Al said then, and for a moment Rose didn't know what he was referring to. When he got up from his seat and stood in front of the professor though, she realized that he had volunteered himself to serve as the first demonstration.

"Al, you can't!" Rose whispered, but he silenced her with his eyes, which looked prepared and powerful. She should have known that Al would never back down to such an opportunity to prove himself.

Shunpike looked to his favorite student and nodded sullenly. He then instructed to the rest of the class, "I am about to put Mr. Potter under the lightest possible version of the Curse that I can, and he will try to resist by fighting against whatever I order him to do." He then turned back to Al and said more quietly, "Albus, let me know if and when you'd like me to stop."

Listening to Shunpike, Rose always became so confused. One minute, she was sure that he would have sentenced Filch to his death without blinking an eye, and the next he seemed so innocent and pitiful, as if he would never hurt anyone unless he had to.

Watching closely, Rose, along with everybody who sat behind her, stared at Shunpike as he pointed his wand at Al and whispered, _"Imperio."_ At first it seemed as though nothing had happened, but then Albus began to lean forward, his front side being pulled closer and closer to the floor as if a large weight was being pushed against his back. Al was breathing hard, panting against it, unable to bring himself back up. Eventually though, he shut his eyes, squinted, and then screamed through clenched teeth as he forced his body to shift about a centimeter back toward its upright position. As soon as he did so, Shunpike released him from the spell and Albus fell to floor uncontrollably.

Rose immediately stood from her seat and leaned across her desk, looking to see if Al was okay. Shunpike had bent down and put a hand on his shoulder in comfort, as he said, "Well done! That was a tremendous effort! What resistance!"

When Al smiled back and pulled himself off the ground, Rose sighed in relief (and she could hear Scorpius do the same). Al then walked back to his seat beside her, and she asked, "Are you hurt at all?"

Al shook his head and said, "No, not hurt really. It was more like pressure… but a strong pressure."

Rose was infuriated by Shunpike then, and she didn't understand why Al had gone along with this absurd notion. "To perform such things in a classroom," she breathed, but Al interrupted.

"Rose, this is important. We need to learn how to protect ourselves, don't we?" he asked, still quietly so that Shunpike wouldn't overhear.

Rose didn't reply, but she didn't agree either. For the rest of the period, she and Al did not speak, and Shunpike performed the spell on many other students, all volunteers, and Rose watched as none of them came close to resisting his control over them.

Toward the end of the class, most of the students, except for a few timid girls, had participated, though both Rose and Scorpius had not. With no other offers, Shunpike walked to Rose and asked, "Ms. Weabley?" but she shook her head in response, her eyes facing straight forward. In her right hand, she was clasping her wand tightly, fully prepared to use a counter-jinx on Shunpike if she had to.

As her hand began to shake though, Shunpike gazed down at it, and whispered, "That really is a lovely ring you have on." He said it with an admiring tone as he looked upon the black, slightly cracked stone that she barely ever took off, though Rose was sure there was a hidden meaning behind his words.

"Thank you," she said, looking up to him. He was smiling, but didn't look anything more than curious.

"Where did you find it?" he asked.

Rose didn't understand where this was coming from, but she thought it best to answer honestly. If he really was as dangerous as she was beginning to believe that he was, then she wouldn't want to seem like she had anything to hide. "I didn't. It was a gift."

She could hear Scorpius let out a sharp breath, and Shunpike turned to him and smiled. "Well that was very considerate of you, Mr. Malfoy," he said, before addressing them all and saying, "Please continue to read through the chapter, as we will move on to the second curse next week!" After they had been given the assignment, Shunpike dismissed them from his class.

Rose quickly gathered her books, anxious to speak with Scorpius about what had taken place, and was just about to turn to him when she found Shunpike there instead. He had a hand on Scorpius's shoulder and was asking, "If you don't mind, I'd like to have a word." He then steered him into his office, Rose watching them go.

"He'll be fine," Al said, seeing Rose looking worried. "Just leave them be for a while." He then walked out of the room, and Rose followed slowly, wondering what Shunpike was telling Scorpius alone in his office.

Once out of the room though, Rose turned her attention to Al and decided that this might be the perfect opportunity to convince him of Shunpike's criminality.

"So do you see what I mean now?" she asked her best friend. "The Unforgivable Curses, Albus, and he performed them on _students!_"

Al furrowed his eyebrows as they walked, and he replied, "I know what you're thinking Rose, but I honestly don't see it. He wasn't being hard on us, and it didn't look easy for him to do it either. He had to."

"He didn't _have_ to!" Rose yelled, stopping Al in his tracks.

Albus turned to face her and asked rhetorically, "Would you rather he just have us read about them?" Continuing, he said, "I mean, did you ever think that maybe the Ministry ordered him to do it _because_ of the murder? Maybe they're actually trying to protect us."

"Why do you trust him so much?" Rose asked. Shunpike was the only suspect she had left, yet Albus would still rather have Colin locked away for a crime he didn't commit.

"Because my father trusts him," Al stated. The two of them were not alone in the hallway, but Rose felt like they were. She hated fighting with her friend, especially when it turned into something more.

Rose nodded, not wanting to argue more over the matter. She didn't think that Al's excuse was good enough to put an end to the argument, for Rose didn't exactly trust Harry, Al's father, but she didn't say so to him. If Shunpike was guilty, he'd prove so on his own accord eventually. Still, she didn't want to be around Al at the moment, so without saying anything, she stomped off toward the moving staircases, headed for the library.

Nigel Creevey greeted her when she came in, Hugo at his side. "Hey Rose," he said, "You know I've got a good feeling about today. I think we're really going to find something this time." He and Rose were still meeting as often as they could to continue their research on wandlore, and now they had pulled Hugo in on the mission as well. He was far less interested in the matter, but he seemed to enjoy just keeping Nigel company.

Rose tried to mask her irritated mood as she followed the young boys to the middle of a long aisle of books. She preferred the comfort of Scorpius at a time like this, and she knew that he needed her as well, but she supposed that the books would have to do, with him being otherwise occupied.

Hugo took a seat at a desk, Nigel across from him with a huge pile of literature to sort through. Rose, knowing that she couldn't very well stay still at the moment, began pacing back and forth through the aisle, speaking aloud to herself. She was trying to get Shunpike out of her head while going over everything that they knew so far about Albus's uniquely powerful wand. "So we're sure that the Wand of Destiny is the same as the Death Stick," she said, Nigel nodding and Hugo laying his head across the desk in boredom. Nigel had come to Rose a few weeks earlier with this new information, which put quite a few estranged pieces of their puzzle together, but they had since reached another impasse.

"The maker was, of course, Gregorovitch, but _The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore_ said that Gellert Grindelwald stole the wand, and then used it in his duel against Dumbledore," Rose went on, knowing that the next part was where they had gotten stuck. "This would mean that Dumbledore had the wand next, but all of the information we've found says that it was buried with him, which would mean that it would be impossible for Al to have it."

"But he has to have it," Hugo perked up suddenly. "How else could have won the duel?" Over the course of Hugo's Birthday Celebration in early March, he had hosted a duel tournament for all of his guests in the courtyard, and Al had won easily after meeting Rose in the final round. Hugo had been determined to gain the title for himself, and he couldn't seem to let it go.

"Or mended your wand?" Nigel asked, thinking much more logically. After all, it would have been perfectly possible for Al to win an amateur duel even if he hadn't had what was said to be the most powerful wand in the world. On the contrary, though, everything that Rose and Nigel had read clearly stated that it was impossible for any average wand to repair another perfectly. Hugo's was working as good as new, and Al had somehow been able to mend it. The only explanation any of them could think of was that his wand was uniquely powerful, and the Wand of Destiny seemed to be the perfect match.

"Except for the fact that the Wand of Destiny must be mastered, and Dumbledore died with it," Rose mumbled, stating the obvious. They had searched everywhere they could think of, but each text said the same thing: that the wand had died with Dumbledore. As far as they knew, there wasn't any other wand like it, and so they had come to a dead end.

All three of them sighed with disappointment, Hugo going back to his previous position and closing his eyes against the desk, and Nigel opening a large book on the life the late wandmaker, Ollivander. Rose, however, remained standing and thought to herself. Lately, she felt as though she had many mysteries to solve, and yet none of them seemed to be coming together. Although, there was nothing to prove against her suspicions of Shunpike… at least not yet. And with that mystery, there had been, and there still was, a much foggier path to the truth.

"Do you think that maybe we're looking at all of this the wrong way?" Rose asked, realizing that they had continued to walk in the same direction when it hadn't been getting them anywhere. Perhaps going backwards was the perfect alternative.

"What do you mean?" Nigel asked, glancing at Hugo as he snored and drooled across the table. The boy could fall asleep anywhere, anytime, as long as there wasn't any leftover food to be consumed.

Walking past Hugo and hitting him on the head lightly to wake him up, Rose suggested, "Well, we've been tracing the wand up to Dumbledore, and we can't seem to get any further." Looking to Nigel, she said, "And we are sure that this is the wand that Al must have, yes?"

"As sure as we can be," Nigel answered.

"Absolutely," Hugo answered right after. "What else could it be?"

Rose nodded. "If Al has the wand, then he must have gotten it from somebody. So what if instead of tracing it _up_ to Dumbledore, we try to trace it _down_ from Al?" She wanted to solve this, once and for all, and she knew that Nigel did too. After all, he could have given up ages ago, but he was still here, too invested in the wandlore to just let all of his hard work go to waste.

"But who could have given it to Al?" Nigel asked, as Rose and Hugo made eye contact with each other. Nigel sometimes forgot that Al was the son of the world's most famous wizard.

"Harry," Rose and Hugo said in unison. "Harry Potter."

Nigel smiled, glad to finally be on to something again. "Of course," he said. "So we just need to connect Harry to Dumbledore."

"Well that should be easy," Hugo said, sounding excited. "Mum always said that Dumbledore was Harry's mentor or something, didn't she?"

"Yeah, she did," Rose said. "But if that's true, why would Harry ever take the wand from his mentor's own grave?"

They all thought for a moment, disappointed yet again. "Why don't we just ask Al?" Hugo said. "He obviously knows Harry the best."

Rose had been contemplating asking Al about his wand for a while as well, but she had decided that it couldn't possibly bring good results. After all, either Al knew exactly how powerful his wand was, but had decided not to tell anybody, or he had no idea, and would feel betrayed by Rose for going behind his back. With all of his jealousy issues, Rose just didn't relish in the thought of upsetting him in any way, though admittedly it had been very difficult to keep everything a secret from the person she normally told everything to.

"No," Rose stated. "Al can't know. Not yet."

"Well, we're going to need some more information if we want any sort of answer," Hugo said, having gone from excited to frustrated.

"I know," Rose said. "Look, I'll figure something out." She already had a plan, but didn't want to tell Hugo and Nigel in case it didn't pan out. "Meet you back here tomorrow, same time?" she asked.

Hugo shrugged and Nigel nodded, and then Rose was off. Luckily, Al wasn't Harry Potter's only son, and Rose knew that James wouldn't even ask what she was up to if she came to him for information.

They didn't have Quidditch practice today, since Hufflepuff was training for their match against Slytherin, so James would most likely be in the Gryffindor common room. Rose found him right away, lying across the couch in front of the fireplace, staring at somebody in the corner while he pretended to read his Charms textbook.

"James," Rose said as she approached him, signaling for him to make room for her. He brought his legs onto his side to do just that, and Rose sat on the empty spot, back straight and eyes wide open. She probably looked positively frightening, but she didn't care. Her extreme focus was the perfect distraction from worrying about Shunpike or Scorpius.

"Rose," James replied slowly, looking over his cousin questionably. Rose didn't know it just yet, but she had broken his concentration on a different, but very admirable subject. "What's going on?" he asked, not sure what else to say.

"Um, I was just wondering," Rose started, but James looked distracted as his gaze kept drifting back to the corner behind Rose. She tried to ignore this by going on to say, "Do you know anything about why your father may have, er –" she tried to think of a word that wouldn't give too much away, "inherited Albus Dumbledore's wand?"

"What?" James asked, looking very confused. "Um, I've never heard of anything like that, no."

Rose sighed. She had been hoping that James at least knew something, but now it appeared as though he was just as oblivious as she was. "Well, do you know where I might be able to find something like that out?" she asked, hoping that he had an answer to her back-up question.

"I dunno'," James answered. "Why don't you just ask Al?"

Rose closed her eyes, as she didn't want to have to explain this to James. When she opened them again, she replied, "Because he'd think it was more important than it is." Al took anything having to do with his father very personally, so Rose hoped that James would accept this as an excuse.

Luckily, he did, as he nodded and said, "Right." He then took a deep breath before suggesting to Rose, "Maybe ask Scorpius then? He and my dad talked a lot this summer, that much I know. I doubt he'll have any ideas about Dumbledore, but he might know of a place where you could figure it out."

Relieved, Rose sat back in the couch. Scorpius would be the easiest person to ask, and she could finally fill him in on why she had been jetting off to the library all those times that she could have spent with him. She would have gone to ask him now, but she thought it best to give both him and Al some space until morning. It killed her to not know what Shunpike had said to him after class, but she told herself to be patient.

So instead of going back down to the Great Hall for supper, Rose decided that she would stay with James and help him write a paper he was working on. While she wrote for him though, he continued to drift off into a mindless stare toward the corner. Becoming more and more curious as to who he was looking at, Rose turned around to find Caitlin Finnigan, his ex-girlfriend, sitting by the window with Bobby Dormer, Rose's fellow prefect.

Turning back to James and noticing now that his light brown eyes were filled with envy, Rose hit him on the arm with her scroll to gain his attention before whispering, "James! I thought you were done with her!" She loved James with all her heart, but he had no right to be envious of Caitlin talking to another boy when he had slept with her sister while they were still together, and had then failed to tell her about it before they had broken up.

"I know," James said. "I mean I am." He was still staring at Caitlin though, with a look of longing that he had never had for her when they had actually been together. "But-" he started, but didn't finish his sentence.

Rose leaned forward and her forehead creased. James had barely noticed Caitlin before, and now she was all he saw. "What changed?"

He shrugged and answered, "I dunno'. Maybe I had to see her from a distance, but she's smart…" he sighed.

"She's not _that_ smart," Rose snorted. She tended to get a little defensive whenever anybody called someone intelligent other than her. She liked to think that that trait was under reserve for only herself.

"Funny…" James offered, picking up where he left off, as if Rose had never said anything to the contrary. "Attractive."

"Attractive?" Rose asked. Caitlin was pretty, yes, but James hadn't expressed this before. In fact, he had always said that her older sister, Cassidy, was much prettier, with a red tint to her hair rather than plain mouse brown, and bright blue eyes rather than mahogany.

"You know," James continued. "She's got nice… skin."

"Skin?" Rose asked. "So you're suddenly attracted to her because of her skin?"

"Well," James started, looking flustered. "I'm just saying that it could be a contributing factor.

Rose laughed, but then gave it some thought and smiled to herself as she whispered, "Scorpius has got nice skin."

The next morning, Rose woke up early to look for Scorpius. She hoped that she could talk to him before their first class, and he tended to be an early-riser. She checked the Room of Requirement first, but he wasn't in their clearing. Afterward, she passed by the Great Hall, but he wasn't there either. Then, noticing how nice a day it was outside, she decided to check if he had gone out to the courtyard. Once she got there, he was still nowhere to be found, but she had a feeling that she was closer than she had been before.

He wouldn't be in the Owlery, Rose thought, since he barely ever sent letters home. She didn't think that he would have gone to see Hagrid alone either, but she supposed that was a possibility. Following in the previous day's footsteps, she started walking down toward the forest, but stopped when she noticed a relatively tall figure standing in the opposite direction, just on the shore of the Black Lake.

It was impossible to tell whether or not it was him just by looking, but Rose could feel that it was. When she came closer, she was reassured when she saw Scorpius's familiar blonde hair that was being blown out of his face by the wind. He was already dressed in his uniform, though his robe was sitting on a rock behind him, leaving him with only his white, collared shirt on, and well-adjusted tie. He was always dressed very properly, but never liked to wear a sweater or even his robes. He liked the cold, and Rose knew that he felt lighter when he had less layers on.

Scorpius was completely alone, standing very close to the calm water and throwing stones out at it. None of them were skipping though, just sinking down into the abyss. Rose approached quietly, trying not to disturb him, but did make some noise when her teeth chattered from the chill of early spring.

As soon as he heard somebody there, Scorpius turned around and looked over at Rose. "Hi," he said. "How'd you find me out here? You're never up this early."

Rose took a deep breath while rubbing her arms for warmth and answered, "I was looking for you. And I must admit," she added more lightly, "I'm glad I found you, because you really need to learn how to skip stones properly."

He smiled at her and bit his lip, watching as Rose knelt to the ground and looked for the perfect rock. Once she got one, she held it up for Scorpius to see, and explained, "The flatter the better, but not too small. Round too, with no jagged edges."

Scorpius nodded, and then Rose began to get her stance ready. She stood with her legs about shoulder-length apart, her left side facing the water, and took the stone in her right hand. Then, bending low to the hard ground, she shot out her arm and sent the rock spinning onto the surface of the water, where it skipped across and made four large ripples before disappearing below the surface.

"Wow, you're really good at it," Scorpius said genuinely, squinting at Rose through the sun.

"Always the tone of surprise," she said back, giggling to herself.

Scorpius chuckled back, and then picked up a rock of his own and gave it a go, asking, "So how, like this?" as he yet again threw the rock down at the water, causing one great splash instead of many soft splatters. Looking back to Rose, Scorpius hung his head down in embarrassment.

"No," Rose answered, laughing. She then walked over to him, handed him a fresh rock, and said, "Here, follow my lead." Then, gently, he wrapped his arms around her waist as she clasped her hand around his right wrist. Together, they knelt down and leaned away from the water before moving back toward it. "And just a flick of the wrist," Rose said, directing Scorpius's hand to motion sharply toward the lake. As soon as he let go of the rock, it flew out atop the water where it made two perfect ripples.

"Two," Scorpius shrugged. "Not bad."

"You're getting there," Rose agreed as she threw her own rock and watched it surpass Scorpius's next one, making a full six ripples as opposed to his three.

"Where'd you learn this anyway?" Scorpius asked as he threw another.

"My dad taught me," Rose answered. "You know, out at the creek by my house." Scorpius had walked there with her a couple of times, but it had always been during the summer, when the water was too aggressive to skip stones on.

Scorpius nodded, and for a moment Rose was reminded of the very different childhoods they had had. She shivered at the thought of growing up at Malfoy Manor, a large and imposing building that Rose had only seen in pictures, but that she feared nonetheless. Thinking that she was cold, Scorpius came closer to Rose and pulled her into his arms, rubbing her side as he led her to a seat on the rock where he could gather his robe to rap it around her shoulders.

"Are you okay after everything that happened yesterday?" Rose asked with concern. She had worried about him, but was still proud of herself for keeping away until now. Scorpius needed his space sometimes, and she wanted to respect that.

"I'm fine," Scorpius answered. "He told me he didn't mean to make me uncomfortable."

Realizing that he was referring to his talk with Shunpike after class, Rose asked, "Why'd he do it then?"

"He said he thought it was out of a sign of respect, because I knew better than anyone else what the curse felt like, or at least what it looked like," he said.

Thinking of Astoria and how she had used the curse on Scorpius's father, Draco, Rose asked, "But how did he know?" Rose couldn't help but look for more evidence to use against Shunpike.

Scorpius shrugged and mumbled, "Harry must have told him or something."

Seeing this as an opportunity to steer the conversation toward Harry, Rose sat up and faced Scorpius, saying, "Speaking of which, I've been meaning to tell you something."

Scorpius looked worried for a moment as he cocked his head to the side slightly. "What?"

"Don't worry, it's nothing serious," Rose answered. "It's just, do you remember when Albus fixed Hugo's wand?" Once Scorpius nodded in acknowledgement, Rose continued, "Well Nigel Creevey, one of Hugo's friends, was really curious about it, because he's apparently interested in wandlore. He didn't seem to think that it was possible for a wand to be repaired like Hugo's was, so we started doing some research about it in the library."

Scorpius looked as if he was still following, but just barely. Picking up the pace, Rose went on to explain all that they had found out since, along with their increasing supposition about Al because of Hugo's tournament, until she reached the part about having traced this famous wand up to Dumbledore, but no further.

"So you think Al is the master of this Wand of Destiny, or whatever it's called?" Scorpius asked, having not expected any of this.

"We're pretty certain," Rose answered. "We just need to make sure that it really is possible, and we think that the missing link may be between Dumbledore and Harry."

"Harry?" Scorpius asked. "You think he had it before Al?"

"Well, how else would Al have gotten it?" Rose asked. Once she was sure that Scorpius agreed, she got to the main point, "Scorpius, I was wondering if maybe you knew anything about it? Or anywhere where we could get some information about Harry and Dumbledore, because we can't find anything written anywhere."

Scorpius thought for a moment before answering, "I can't really think of anything right now, no."

Rose dropped her head in dismay. Scorpius was her last hope of figuring this out, and he didn't know anything.

"Why is it so important anyway?" Scorpius asked.

Before Rose could stop herself, she began to breathe harder and faster as she let out frantically, "Filch was murdered _months_ ago, Scorpius, and they still don't know who it was. No matter how sure I am that it wasn't Colin, he's still paying the consequences for it, and I can't do anything to help. But this, this wand, I can solve this. I mean, if Nigel and I are right about this, do you have any idea how powerful that would make Al?" The Wand of Destiny had been passed on through generations, and not by inheritance, but by death. The original use of the wand, from what Rose had read, was to kill. It was powerful enough to do so easily, and in many different ways. It was dangerous.

Scorpius pursed his lips before saying, "Well, I'll help you then. As best I can." He then kissed Rose on her forehead and pulled her up to a standing position. Their first class would start soon, but they still took their time in walking back to the castle, Scorpius's arm around Rose as she leaned on his shoulder.

They came into the Transfiguration classroom and found two seats near the front. It was Scorpius's best class, and the only one where he didn't enjoy hiding in the back. Al, on the other hand, was no good at it, and normally sat over to the side with some other Slytherin who always came in late.

Once most of the class had arrived, Rose and Scorpius turned to the desk up front and watched Professor McGonagall transform from the brown tabby cat with spectacle eye markings into their tall, old Headmistress dressed in tartan plaids and wearing square glasses that covered her beady eyes. Though most Hogwarts professors did not continue to teach if and when they became Headmaster or Headmistress of the school, McGonagall always said that she couldn't very well give up her position until she found a suitable replacement. Apparently, no such person had appeared in the past 25 years.

Rose noted Scorpius's smile as he watched his favorite teacher change out of her animagus state. He had always admired McGonagall, and she too had the utmost respect for him, ever since he had proven himself a worthy student back in his very first year at Hogwarts when he had transformed a dull match into the sharpest needle on his very first try.

"Today, we will continue our work on the Vanishing Spell, as it will be extremely important in order to be successful on your exams," McGonagall announced. Being one of the hardest Transfiguration spells there was, the fifth years had begun working on it in September, using invertebrate animals, and were just now finishing up on vertebrates. With a few swishes of her long, thin wand, McGonagall sent the animal cages that had been stacked at the back of the room onto the students' desks, one per person. Albus received a pudgy old rat, while Rose was given a beautifully patterned parrot. Scorpius, however, was left out of the mix when his desk remained empty.

"You all know what to do," McGonagall announced, paying no attention to Scorpius. She was normally very organized though, so Rose only assumed that there was a reason for not giving Scorpius an animal to practice on like the rest of them. "I will be circling around the room as you practice, and I expect that by now you can make the animal, whichever kind you have, disappear completely. The largest mistake I will tolerate is a leftover eyebrow, whisker, or claw, but that will be all."

All the students went straight to work, as most knew that they had not yet acquired such skill as McGonagall had just described, but Scorpius looked to Rose in confusion. "You can use mine," Rose offered, though Scorpius hardly needed the practice. He had already performed the spell flawlessly before they had even gotten to school that year, and every lesson since had been a breeze for him.

"Mr. Malfoy won't be using any animal today," McGonagall suddenly announced from above them. She hadn't been so close before, but was now staring down at Scorpius with a large smile on her face.

"But Professor," Scorpius started, but did not continue when McGonagall held up her index finger, signaling for him not to protest.

"Don't worry, you are well prepared for your exam," she said with confidence. "Having you continue to practice would be a waste of some of the most promising talent for Transfiguration that I have come across in quite some time."

Scorpius blushed bright red, for McGonagall rarely gave compliments, particularly ones that were so meaningful. Even Rose found herself feeling slightly jealous. She had been told the same by Professor Flitwick on numerous occasions, but he was a much easier teacher to please.

"Which is why I would like you to spend the period reading this," McGonagall suggested, still smiling, as she held out her hand to Scorpius. She was holding a large book that looked quite old, and as Scorpius took it from her, Rose could just make out its title etched in dark ink on the front: _Theories of Transubstantial Transfiguration._ It was not a book that Rose recognized, which meant that it was not just the N.E.W.T. level guide to Transfiguration, but was probably even more advanced. "I have marked a few chapters inside that I think you will be drawn to. For today, I'd like you to focus on the Vanishing Spell," she said, adding after another moment, "For humans."

Rose gasped slightly as McGonagall walked away. She had heard that it was possible for a person to vanish themselves, to the point where they could basically fashion their own cloak of invisibility, but such cases were extremely rare. In fact, the only person she had read about who had been able to do so successfully was Albus Dumbledore, who had once been a professor of Transfiguration himself. Of course, now it seemed that McGonagall could do so as well.

"She can't be serious?" Rose asked, ignoring her parrot, which was squawking at her, saying continuously, "For humans! For humans! For humans!"

Scorpius was smiling from ear to ear as he flipped through his gift, until he stopped on a certain page and began to read.

Curious, Rose asked, "What? What does it say?"

"It's just a note from McGonagall," Scorpius said, without revealing anything more on the matter. He seemed very interested in whatever he was reading, as his eyes were ablaze with wonder, but Rose didn't understand why.

"Well, it was nice of her to give you a book, wasn't it?" Rose asked, trying to examine Scorpius's reaction.

Suddenly, Scorpius's head shot up from where it had been buried in the pages, and he turned to Rose with a sense of accomplishment written across his face. "A book; that's it!" he said.

Rose squinted and asked, "What do you mean?"

Scorpius didn't get the chance to explain though, since McGonagall was heading back toward them. "Never mind, I'll fill you in later," he said quickly, before pointing his wand at Rose's parrot quickly, not saying any words, and watching it disappear completely before their eyes.

"Very good, Ms. Weasley," McGonagall said as soon as she saw Rose's empty cage. Scorpius winked to her, and Rose couldn't help but smile, her heart full of fake pride.

After class, Rose split up from Al and Scorpius for Charms with the Ravenclaws. Afterward, she met the two of them in the Great Hall for lunch, but Scorpius quickly stormed off, saying he needed to find something. Rose only assumed that it had to do with his brief epiphany during Transfiguration, but he didn't explain before he left.

Once Rose was alone with Al, things immediately became uncomfortable. With their argument still in the air from the day before, along with Rose's secret suspicions of him, neither knew what to say to each other to smooth it over. Rose was saved from starting the conversation though, when Al opened his mouth and said, "I'm sorry. About yesterday."

Rose, who had been sitting very tensely and holding in her breath, released it upon hearing this. "It's alright, I understand why you trust him."

"Thanks," Al said, but he was shaking his head. "But I should have listened to you. I mean, he isn't exactly very respectful of you, and it's not like you did anything wrong. I'll admit he seems a little precarious."

Rose smiled, because it felt good to hear that Al was on her side after all. "And it's not like we have anybody else to blame, right?" she asked, teasing him for what he had said at Hagrid's.

Al laughed and said, "Yeah, exactly."

Following Al's apology, the two ate their lunches in harmony. Once they were finished, and with Scorpius still missing, they decided to head to Potions class early. Rose had asked Al to help her with her Draught of Peace potion, which was ironically frustrating to brew, but they came into the classroom only to find that they were in fact not the only ones there.

Sitting at the far end of the room was a girl with her back to them, looking very concentrated on the large goblet in front of her. She was dropping a pinch of some herb into her potion, and did so with the lightest touch and without any hesitation. Potions was a very complex subject, and Rose knew that the slightest wrong measurement or ingredient could have disastrous results, yet this girl looked as calm as could be.

Both Rose and Al had stood silent for a moment as they spotted her, but they were now making their way over to their quad table, where they had a much better view of the girl, who seemed completely oblivious of them. As they sat down though, the girl turned to see who was there, and Rose was met with those astonishingly green eyes that she kept bumping into. The girl's dark curls were perfectly framed around her marble-white skin, and she had thick bangs that nearly fell in front of her eyes, making her seem as if she didn't want to be noticed. This though, Rose thought, was impossible, as she was strikingly beautiful without even having to try.

As Rose looked at the girl whom she still didn't have the name off, she noticed that the girl was not looking back at her, but rather at Al. Turning to her friend, Rose noticed Al's hypnotized look, as his eyes, so similar in color to those of the girl, locked with hers. The girl quickly turned back to her potion upon seeing him, but Rose was fast enough to note that she was wearing a Slytherin tie. This was odd, considering that Albus didn't seem to recognize her.

The girl was putting away her ingredients and was standing up, ready to walk away, when Al spoke up and said, "Wait! Who…"

The girl turned back to them when she got to the door of the classroom, but at the moment the door opened from the other side and Scorpius rushed in, running over to Rose once he saw her. Rose tried to turn to her side to get one last look at the girl, who disappeared behind the door as soon as Scorpius had replaced her.

"Who was that?" Al asked, his eyes fixated on the spot she had left from.

Rose didn't know what to say, but was distracted when Scorpius pulled her aside and whispered in her ear, "I found something. About Harry." Her eyes widened at this, and she looked up at Scorpius, who raised his eyebrows at her. "Meet you in the library later?" he asked, since it was nearly time for class to begin, and they didn't want anybody to overhear.

Rose nodded, thinking that this would be perfect, since Nigel and Hugo were already scheduled to meet her there anyway. She then took a seat next to Scorpius at the table, wondering to herself what he had found. Meanwhile, out of the corner of her eye, Rose saw Al sit down looking very dizzy, as if the wind had just been knocked right out of him.

Following Potions was Herbology, and Professor Longbottom was kind enough to let Rose out early after she had successfully tended to one of her Fanged Geraniums. From the greenhouse, she practically ran up to the library, she was so excited to hear what Scorpius had found.

Of course, Scorpius wasn't there yet. He would be coming from History of Magic, and Professor Binns would never dismiss a class early. Nigel and Hugo were there however, waiting in the same spot they had met Rose at before.

"So did you figure it out?" Nigel asked eagerly. Hugo was next to him, leaning against the desk, and looked just as curious to hear what Rose had to say.

Rose thought about her answer before saying, "Possibly. I asked Scorpius about Harry, and he said he might know something, but he didn't say what. He should be here any minute."

"Scorpius?" Hugo asked, sounding unsure about his motives. "I thought you didn't want Al to know; wouldn't Scorpius just tell him?"

Rose didn't even consider what Hugo said, because Scorpius would have known to keep Al out of it. "No," she answered. "He wouldn't'."

Hugo raised his eyebrows and then sat down, but they didn't have to wait very long before Scorpius showed up.

Walking down the aisle toward them, he had a book in his left hand and was saying, "There you are! I was over in the Historical section."

Rose gave an apologetic smile for having forgotten to give details about their meeting location, but he wasn't at all upset. He actually looked slightly exhilarated as he greeted Rose with a hug, and nodded to Nigel and Hugo. "So what is it? What did you find?" Rose asked once they had broken apart.

"This," Scorpius answered, handing his book to Rose. "Getting that book from McGonagall reminded me that I had seen a copy of this in the Potters' living room at Godric's Hollow. It was pretty buried in their bookshelf, but I was helping Ginny look for something and came across it. Of course I'm not sure how accurate it is, but it's a start."

As Rose read the title of the book, she smiled. This was exactly what they needed. "_Undesirable Number One: Unraveled_, a biography of Harry Potter by Rita Skeeter!" she announced to the group.

"I didn't think Harry had a biography!" Hugo exclaimed, snatching the book from Rose to look at the cover, which had a rather large photo of Harry, his face continually breaking into pieces and then gluing themselves back together again like the motions of a flipbook.

"I don't think he really wanted people to know about it," Scorpius said. "It is Rita Skeeter, after all." She was a very famous journalist who had recently retired, but was known to stretch the truth if need be. There were most likely many fictional tales in this book that Harry wouldn't want people to read about. Still, Skeeter was one of the few writers who seemed to know all the details, never leaving anything out. At least that was what Rose had concluded upon reading her biography of Dumbledore.

"Well who cares? Let's see it!" Nigel said suddenly, and everybody turned toward him to see if he had really said such a thing. He was normally so sweet and quiet, and it felt unnatural to see him act frantically like this. After a short laugh at his behavior though, they all gathered around Hugo and began to search through the book.

"Woah, look!" Hugo exclaimed. "There's a whole chapter here about Mum and Dad!" He was staring down at a page labeled, '_Saint Potter, the Mudblood's Friend', _sitting above a photo of Harry and Hermione. Rose was immediately pained from seeing her mother called by such a terrible name, but she tried to look past it.

"Hugo, do you really think that's important right now?" Rose asked sarcastically, turning the page for her little brother.

Eventually, they came across a chapter detailing Harry's relationship with Albus Dumbledore, and everybody became even more interested. "Hey, did you know that Dumbledore was apparently gay?" Hugo asked.

"NOT THE POINT!" The other three all yelled at him, and Rose was so fed up that she took the book for herself.

"There's nothing in here about any sort of wand," Rose said, scanning the pages as fast as she could. She was nearing the end of the chapter, and she hadn't come across anything that seemed at all promising.

"What about the duel with Lord Voldemort?" Scorpius suggested. "If Harry had the wand, he must have had it by then, or maybe he even got it from him?"

"You know, that's really quite brilliant," Rose said as she looked up to Scorpius.

"Always the tone of surprise," he chuckled, making Rose smile before she continued reading.

As she turned to a page showing a picture of Harry and the late Lord Voldemort in battle against each other, Nigel pointed just below it and said, "There, look!" He then began reading from the caption, "_'During the famous duel, Potter and You-Know-Who argued over whom they believed was the true master of the Elder Wand. Though it appeared that the Dark Lord had possession of it at the time, it was Potter who won the wand when it flew over to him whilst in combat.'"_

"The _Elder_ Wand?" Hugo asked. "Are we sure that's the same one?"

"I can't remember," Nigel answered, shaking his head. He then rushed over to a pile of books and sorted through them until he found a relatively small one labeled, _Details of the Deathly Hallows_. He then flung it open on the desk and searched through the middle of it until he found a page with the heading '_The Elder Wand'_.

"'_The Elder Wand'", _Nigel read. He began nodding quickly when he continued, _"'Otherwise known as the Wand of Destiny.' _It is! It's the same one!"

The four of them all looked to each other then, slowly realizing what all of this meant. "There's even a picture," Nigel noted, and he made room for Rose and Scorpius to take a look.

As soon as they did so, the two of them turned to each other in shock. "That's his. Al most definitely has that wand," Scorpius said. It was true, Rose thought. The wand was unmistakable, with its abnormally long length and small humps along it that looked as if they had been engraved with tiny bubbles. The wand was much more elegant than most others, but it bore the usual golden wood color. Al's looked exactly the same, and he had been using it since the beginning of this year.

"But this means…" Rose started to say, though she couldn't seem to get the right words out. Scorpius and Hugo had similar surprised expressions, and had also fallen silent.

"Wait," Nigel said, stopping everybody's trains of thought. "This still doesn't explain how Albus could have mastered it. It says that the wand would work the same as any other unless won by a new master. Even if Harry had mastered it somehow, through Voldemort or Dumbledore or anybody else, wouldn't he have just given it to Albus?"

Scorpius looked thoughtful of this, for he too didn't understand how Al could have inherited the full power of the wand. Still, it seemed obvious that he had, since he wouldn't have been able to fix Hugo's wand without it.

Rose, on the other hand, knew exactly how Al had gotten it, and this scared her even more. "No," she said. "He made Al duel him for it."

Scorpius, Nigel, and Hugo turned to her, waiting to hear more on the matter. After taking a breath, Rose continued, "He mentioned it this fall. Al won a duel against Harry this summer. He must have given him the wand then."

They had been standing up until now, but all four simultaneously sat down then. After a long while with none of them daring to say anything else, Hugo asked, "If this is the most powerful wand in the world, why would Uncle Harry want to give it up?"

Rose shook her head, for she didn't have an answer; none of them did. She kept thinking about how much power Al had with this, and what he could do with it… what he might have already done with it.

"Do you think he knows?" Scorpius asked quietly.

"Does he know that he holds the most powerful wand ever made?" Rose asked. She paused for a moment before adding, "I hope not." Albus had always craved to have that kind of power, if only because of his jealousy of Harry. There was no telling what he would do with it.

And what about Harry? Harry had practically handed over the wand by losing the duel, knowing full well what he would be giving to his youngest son. With Al's words replaying in Rose's mind, she couldn't help but think that Harry's actions no longer seemed very trustworthy. And if this were the case, then surely Shunpike, whom Harry deemed to be a family friend, wasn't entirely honorable either. And yet, all this time, Al had been defending him over Rose. Though there was no real reason to think of things this way, Rose had the odd feeling that the two were connected.

As if the same exact thoughts were running through his own mind, Scorpius shifted in his seat so that he was closer to Rose, and he then reached out and took her hand. Across from them, Rose caught a glimpse of Hugo doing the same for Nigel from behind their chairs. They had all expected this for some time, but it felt odd to finally prove it to themselves. Now that they had, they didn't need any words to express what each of them felt: that Hogwarts, their home and school, had never felt so unsafe, so dangerous... so frightening.


	9. The Quidditch House Cup

**9 – The Quidditch House Cup**

"Alright, I've got one for you," Al said, Rose already nervous for the upcoming question. "What exactly is the effect of the potion, Draught of Peace?"

The two of them, along with Scorpius, were quizzing each other in preparation for their OWL's, which were now fast approaching. Albus was helping Rose with Potions, while Rose was helping Scorpius with Charms, and Scorpius was helping Al with Transfiguration. They made the perfect team, each bringing a different skill to the table, and using each other's strengths to balance their own weaknesses.

Rose smiled now, for she knew the answer. "It calms anxiety and soothes agitation," she answered, thinking that she could use some right about now. Still, it wasn't the memorization that she would have a problem with on her Potions exam, but rather the practical section.

"Correct," Al nodded, leaning over in his seat to read more on the potion from his textbook. They were at one of the long tables in the Great Hall, one of many small groups of nervous fifth and seventh years, all of whom were preparing for one of the two most important exams of a wizard's career. "Ah, _but,_" Al continued, "Which of said potion's ingredients is actually poisonous?"

"Oh gosh, I know this one," Rose said to herself, closing her eyes as if to search her mind for the answer. Luckily, it seemed to work, as a moment later she shouted out excitedly, "Hellebore!"

Al held up a hand, and Rose gave him a high-five while smiling. She had just gotten through the majority of all possible questions that could be asked in her written exam, and had done surprisingly well, considering that Potions, along with Divination, was one of her worst subjects. Just as Rose touched Al's hand, though, she was reminded of everything that he had been hiding from her over the course of the year.

She and Scorpius hadn't yet asked Al about his wand, but Rose had been trying to gain some sort of sign of whether or not he even knew what the Elder Wand was. She still hadn't come to a conclusion on that front, though, and so her suspicions continued to tell her that he did know, that he had been lying, and that he and Shunpike were somehow behind Filch's murder. It felt odd to think of such things about her best friend, but for some reason her mind always went there. It seemed logical, considering that Al had continued to defend Shunpike, whose behavior was most definitely not normal. Plus, Rose kept remembering the sight of Al in her dream, and how the ghost of Filch had pointed to him, saying continuously, "_You know who did it." _This part Rose kept to herself though, not even telling Scorpius, since he had also taken part in the nightmare.

"Okay, my turn to show off," Scorpius said then, waking Rose from her trance. "Al, name an example of a Cross-Species Switch using the Switching Spell."

Al sighed upon hearing this, as he nearly always forgot the definition of a Switching Spell, and giving an example was even more difficult. "Bloody hell, I don't know," he said. "Are we even required to know that?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Scorpius replied. "But it would be understandable if you passed just by doing well on the practical." Rose looked up from her pile of books at this, since Scorpius was clearly insinuating that Al would do well on his practical, not thanks to any skill he had in Transfiguration, but just because of his superior wand.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Al asked. "We all know it'll be a miracle if I get anywhere above 'Dreadful' on this one. And even if I somehow get an 'Acceptable', McGonagall will only accept '_Exceeds Expectations'. _I might as well kiss all my Auror dreams goodbye now." Transfiguration was a very important class for those who were hoping to become either Healers or Aurors, and it was true that McGonagall would only accept N.E.W.T. students who got a very high grade on their OWL exam.

Rose and Scorpius looked to each other curiously as Albus responded, having a silent conversation amongst themselves. Albus hadn't said anything about his wand, nor had he caught on to Scorpius's comment. As Scorpius widened his eyes to say that he thought Al really didn't have any idea about the wand, Rose shrugged slightly but looked away, telling Scorpius that that didn't mean that they should tell him.

"Could you just tell me?" Al asked, catching the two off guard.

Once Scorpius realized that he was only talking about the Switching Spell question, he answered, "A guinea fowl into a guinea pig, a beetle into a button. Either would work."

Albus nodded and then sat his head down in defeat. "Why can't I just take the Potions one? I could do that in my sleep," he complained.

Then, figuring that Al didn't want another question, Rose asked Scorpius, "What's the incantation for the Silencing Charm?"

Scorpius breathed a sigh of relief, for this was an easy question. "Silencio," he answered.

Rose smiled and nodded, before asking, "And which animals can it be best practiced upon?"

"Er," Scorpius said, scratching his head. "I know a raven's one, and some sort of toad, maybe?"

"Close," Rose said. "A bullfrog."

Scorpius nodded. "Right," he said. "A bullfrog. Got it."

Rose then turned back to Albus, as it was his turn to ask her a question. He still had his head down though, and his eyes almost looked sad, as if he was thinking about something that he deeply missed. "Al," Rose asked, leaning toward him from across the table. "You awake?"

Al sighed and said, "Barely." He seemed to be in a fowl mood lately, which only made it harder for Rose to trust him. As he sat up a little further, he asked, "Name the two ingredients of Strengthening Solution that are easily confused for the other."

Rose thought about it for a moment, as this was a particularly perfect question for her. If the two ingredients Al spoke of were added to the brew at the wrong time, the potion could turn out smelling of burnt rubber, which is exactly what had happened to Rose when she had first tried to make it. Recalling what she had done wrong, she answered, "Pomegranate juice and salamander blood. The juice is meant to be added near the beginning, but the blood shouldn't be put in until the end."

Al nodded and said, "Exactly. I think I'm starting to run out of questions for you, Rose."

Rose smiled with pride, but her moment in the spotlight was soon diminished when Al perked straight up and shifted in his seat, stretching his neck so that he could see over Scorpius's head. He didn't even bother to look back to Rose or Scorpius when he got up from his seat and said, "I have to go. See you later."

Following his motions, Rose and Scorpius turned just in time to see Al catch up with Abby Chang-Turner at the entrance to the hall, and Scorpius snorted with disgust. "When's he going to end it with her anyway?" he asked.

"Um, I think he might be doing that right now," Rose said with her eyebrows raised, noticing that Abby's eyes were transfixed on Al, growing wider and wider as she pouted her lips. A few moments later, she started bawling in front of the entire room. When Al began to walk in the opposite direction, she ran after him, calling out his name more loudly than Lila Jordan's magical megaphone. It was quite the scene, and most of the students who were in the hall were riveted by the distraction from their studies. Once the two quarrelers left though, everybody went back to work. It was well past supper at this point, but the amount of work that they all had at this time of year made it feel like the day was just beginning.

Scorpius mumbled, "About time," before turning back to a diagram of Chinese Chomping Cabbage that he was labeling.

Rose went back to work as well, asking, "Scorpius, do we need to know any of the Conjuring Spells?"

"Not for the practical," Scorpius answered. "Just a few of the incantations for the written."

"Sorry," he added, smiling as Rose sighed, since he knew how well she could conjure small flocks of canaries. She made them all the time when the two of them were in their clearing in the Room of Requirement.

"Oh, that's alright," Rose said. She then thought that she ought to get some sleep, but was put on hold when she heard a voice from behind her and Scorpius.

"Studying, I see?" Professor Shunpike asked them.

Rose and Scorpius both turned around to see their least favorite teacher staring down at their books, but failing to make eye contact with either of them. "Yes," Rose answered.

"Mmm," Shunpike said, looking at Rose and ignoring Scorpius's presence. "Well, good luck." He then walked past, leaving the two shaken by his mysterious behavior.

"Yeah, he definitely gives me the chills," Scorpius said about Shunpike.

"Agreed," Rose answered, too tired to think anymore about it. She yawned then, and rested her head against Scorpius's shoulder for a moment before saying, "I think I might head to bed."

Scorpius nodded, but told her, "I think I'll stay for while longer."

"You sure?" Rose asked, surprised. She didn't want to sound too motherly, but Slytherin had a Quidditch match against Hufflepuff the next morning, and Rose knew how important it was to get a good night's sleep before every game.

Scorpius nodded, pointing to his diagram and saying, "I just want to finish this." He had been studying more than either Rose or Albus, and had spent more time on the Quidditch pitch than the two of them combined. Rose was beginning to wonder if he ever slept anymore.

Still, she nodded and gathered her books before giving him a peck on the lips and saying, "Well, good luck tomorrow. Look for me in the stands; I'll be rooting for you."

* * *

The next day marked the perfect weather for a Quidditch match, with clear blue skies and just enough sun so that is was warm and lively, but the rays weren't too glaring. Of course, this didn't actually correspond well to how the penultimate match of the season, Hufflepuff vs. Slytherin, was going.

Nearly every Hufflepuff player had already received some sort of injury, most of them now flying around with black eyes or limp arms. All had been thanks to Slytherin's two Beaters, Vincent Goyle and Maddi Bulstrode, who seemed to relish in the act of inflicting physical pain on others. The Hufflepuffs, too young and naïve to fight back, were being taken advantage of, and it was becoming difficult to watch.

Rose was in the stands, and she was softly rubbing Lucy Weasley's upper arm in hopes to comfort her, as her cousin would hold her breath out of fear every time a bludger came anywhere near Lorcan. James was on Rose's other side, and he too, along with Lysander, was keeping a close watch on Lorcan, one of his best friends. In the row in front of all of them, Hugo and Lily were squealing with delight over such an exciting match, while Nigel had sat down and covered his face, not wanting to be exposed to any more of the massacre.

"Oh!" Lucy exclaimed, as a bludger flew past Lorcan's ear. She exhaled once it had passed, but the barbaric ball continued on and knocked a third year Chaser into a side tower.

"Wicked," Hugo and Lily said in unison, even though Rose assumed that they probably knew this boy. This being said, they didn't seem at all concerned about his wellbeing.

Upon hearing the screams from the crowd, Nigel whined, "Just tell me when it's over."

Rose sighed and added, "How aggressive do they need to be? This is worse than the professional leagues!" She was trying to be the voice of reason.

"Well it seems to be working for them," James mumbled. Slytherin was ahead by 20 points, and Hufflepuff's Seeker was massively injured, so they barely stood a chance anymore.

"Relax," Lysander said to James from his other side, sounding annoyed. "You're only ten points behind… unlike us." The Ravenclaw team had started off the year in the lead, but they'd lost it after their match against Slytherin. Now, the real question was not whether Slytherin would win today, or even if Gryffindor would win against Ravenclaw later that month, but rather which would win with more points.

As James raised his eyebrows cockily and shrugged his shoulders in agreement, Rose found herself torn between loyalties. James never wanted anything but to win, and wouldn't settle for second place in the House Cup, but Scorpius had been waiting for his own moment to shine for quite some time.

Looking up at the latter, who was scanning the pitch as usual, Rose found herself feeling guilty as she thought that it might not be so bad if Slytherin won, if only just this once. This feeling didn't last long though, since Rose knew that Scorpius would never want her to give up her own competitive spirit out of love for his.

Turning herself back to the rest of the match, Rose looked just in time to see Albus take a minor blow from Lorcan's bludger, causing the quaffle to fall into the hands of a Hufflepuff. They quickly scored, though it was Goyle's rebound hit that really caused an uproar from the stands, as he hit the bludger straight back at Lorcan and right into his shoulder. He seemed to be knocked out instantly, and fell off the side of his broom and onto the ground below him.

Lucy was speechless, but Rose could feel her entire body shaking, and Lysander and James were both looking down at the grass with worry. "And a fast bludger brings injury to _yet another_ Hufflepuff player, with Captain Lorcan Scamander knocked off his broom!" Lila Jordan announced from McGonagall's box.

As the entire crowd looked down to see the school nurse running onto the field to collect Lorcan, Lucy let go of Rose and started to head down to him, not saying a word of goodbye as she left. Lysander quickly followed suit, to whom James called after, "Let me know how he is! I'll come when I can!"

Once the ruckus had settled down, James shook his head and muttered, "It sure is working for them."

Rose didn't respond but held her breath as she watched Goyle's wrath take its next victim. Hufflepuff, against all odds, managed to score two more times, though both cases were out of sheer dumb luck. Afterward, the action subsided as the players grew more tired, and the crowd resorted to sitting back down and waiting for Scorpius to catch the snitch, which seemed imminent to all.

During this slow period, Rose noticed that James's eyes, which were normally so focused on the match, had turned toward the back of three Gryffindor heads sitting a few rows in front of him and Rose. Yet again, his gaze had been averted toward Caitlin Finnigan, only this time she was sitting with her sister, Cassidy, along with Sam Thomas.

"You can't do this to yourself," Rose said to James, waking him up from the daydream.

James, not bothering to try to hide his feelings, glanced at Rose and asked, "Why not?"

"Because," Rose laughed, "She doesn't deserve it. If you're going to keep moping about it, then you at least have to tell her what you did. I mean, I thought we agreed on that before." James had used Caitlin's breaking up with him as an excuse not to tell her about him and Cassidy, but now that guilt, along with his feelings for Caitlin that had finally come to light, were eating away at him.

"We did," James complied. "But it would mess things up for Cassidy, and she's been begging me not to say anything."

Looking back at the three of them, Rose noticed that Sam had his arm around the older Finnigan. "They're back together?" Rose asked.

James nodded. "Cassidy told him she'd had enough of a break. They made up last night."

Rose, confused by the complexity of what had become a love rectangle, shook her head as she tried to keep up. "How can she live with that lie?" she asked James, wondering how Cassidy could keep her secret from both her sister as well as Sam.

James shrugged and muttered, "It seems to be working for her." Sadly, he looked once again to Caitlin, who was shouting at her sister and pointing up at the sky.

Rose looked just in time to see Scorpius rush after the snitch, and in a matter of seconds he was holding it tightly in his hand, smiling cockily for his team's easy win. "And _SLYTHERIN _wins! Scorpius Malfoy has just caught the snitch, earning his team a total of 190 points, well over Hufflepuff's 40."

Instinctively, James turned his attention back to the game and asked Rose loudly so that she would hear over all the cheering, "How many have they got?"

Rose quickly calculated Slytherin's total points for the season, as this had been their final match. "610," she answered. "We'll need another 210 to win the cup." Gryffindor only had 410 points so far, and were expecting some tough competition from Ravenclaw in their upcoming match.

James patted Rose on the shoulder as they began their walk down to the field. "Well then, I guess we'll have to make that happen, won't we?" he asked.

Rose chuckled and replied, "I guess so."

* * *

The next few weeks went by quickly, as Rose was incredibly busy with extra-long classes, numerous study sessions, and late-night Quidditch practices. Scorpius, who was done with Quidditch for the season, used his extra hours cramming all the material he could into his mind, feverishly preparing to the best of his ability. Rose was impressed by his desire to do so well on his exams, but she was beginning to worry that it may be for the wrong reasons.

Rose's hunch regarding Scorpius's lack of sleep was growing larger and larger with every moment they spent together. He seemed relentlessly tired, and would always stay up even after Rose would leave for her dormitory. She hadn't yet asked him anything about it, but was waiting for the right moment.

On the night before the season's final match, Gryffindor vs. Ravenclaw, Scorpius, being the gentleman that he was, walked Rose to Gryffindor Tower before saying goodnight. He was carrying a large pile of books, with both his as well as hers, and walking up each staircase at a glacial pace.

"I am capable of carrying my own books you know," Rose said, feeling guilty for letting him waste his energy on her.

Scorpius cocked his head to the side and said, "Don't even try."

Rose, not wanting to pass up the challenge, refuted, "But it might tire me out for the match tomorrow, which would make it much easier for us to lose terribly, making _you_ the season's winner." Of course she wanted Gryffindor to win the Cup, but she figured that it was a good angle to use on Scorpius.

"My _team_ you mean," Scorpius corrected her, not wanting the credit even when it was well deserved. "And that's not entirely true, since you're not actually an offensive player. The worst you can do is have Ravenclaw score a load of goals, but you have no say in how many points your own team will get."

Rose sighed, letting him win this one. She had no comeback, and so had no choice but to surrender. When they finally got to the floor, however, she snatched her books from him and put them on the floor by her side.

"They're going to gather dust on the floor like that," Scorpius mumbled, staring down at Rose's books. He tended to be very neat, but Rose also theorized that some of her controlling ways had rubbed off on him.

"I wanted to let go of them," Rose said, "So that I could take three steps forward and wrap my arms around you." As she said the familiar words and began to walk closer to him, Scorpius chuckled and smiled crookedly.

When Rose put her arms around his neck, Scorpius reciprocated by putting his around her waist. She looked up at him with concern, but he failed to notice. There was a distance in his eyes, as if the ice had frozen completely solid, not a crack on its surface, failing to let any light in.

"I should go," Rose said quietly. She wanted to ask him if he had been sleeping lately, but she couldn't manage to get the words out. She knew that tonight of all nights would not be an easy sleep for any Quidditch player, especially him. It just wasn't the right time.

"Don't," Scorpius whispered, his forehead pressed against hers with his eyes closed. "Stay here with me. Forever."

Rose smiled at the idea, thinking of how much she wanted it to come true. "I will if you will," she said.

"I will. You know I will," Scorpius promised, leaning away slightly and opening his eyes again. He then leaned back in and kissed her softly. Afterward, they separated from their embrace and he knelt down and picked up her books to hand them over to her. "But we can't let them gather dust on the floor."

Taking her books back, Rose said, "No, I suppose we can't."

"Will you meet me for breakfast tomorrow?" Scorpius asked after a moment of silence.

"I will," Rose answered. "You know I will." She then turned away from Scorpius, gave the Fat Lady her password, and walked through the portrait hole into the Gryffindor common room, which was already decorated for tomorrow's match.

As soon as Rose entered the crowded room, the air around her changed from its previous serenity to a very perplexing chaos. All she could hear was yelling from every direction, some of which came from female voices, others from those of a male. Walking further into the room, she noticed that nearly all of Gryffindor house had gathered round, watching what appeared to be a fascinating row between their fellow students.

"How _could_ you?" Cried a girl's voice with an Irish accent. It was one of the Finnigans.

"It was an accident," her sister responded. "I never meant to!" Rose was beginning to understand what they were talking about, but continued to push her way through everyone, hoping that what she would see would not in fact be what she expected.

"An accident?" the first voice yelled angrily. This time, Rose recognized it as the rougher and less melodic of the two, which was most definitely Caitlin's. "How could this be justified as an _accident_?"

"She was upset," the male voice piped in. Rose finally had a good view, though admittedly she didn't need it to know that it was James. Sighing to herself, she wondered what had possibly given him the idea to tell Caitlin about him and Cassidy the night before a Quidditch match. For such a brilliant Seeker, he seemed to have terrible timing.

"NO!" Caitlin spat, turning around to James, who was standing off to the side, forming the final edge of their triangle. Rose was somewhere in between the two of them, with Cassidy across the room from her. "No," she continued, "You don't get to say anything!"

James, not normally one to abide by any rules, looked as if he was about to protest, but then shrugged and looked down to the ground. Rose assumed that he was trying to be cooperative, since he obviously wanted to be given a second chance with Caitlin. Looking over to the latter though, Rose didn't think that James would be forgiven any time soon.

Caitlin looked both furious and devastated all at the same time. Her face had gone bright red, and her eyes were puffing up. Her sister, Cassidy, kept trying to get closer to comfort her, but Caitlin would back away every time.

"Caitlin, please," Cassidy tried again, but this time she received a literal hit to the shoulder and was tossed aside.

"STOP!" Caitlin cried, and everybody went dead silent. She was shaking her head uncontrollably and was breathing so heavily that it would be difficult to get a word in edgewise. Eventually, she managed to, turning first to Cassidy and saying, "You are my _sister. _You're my _best_ friend. How could you do this to me?" She was crying now, but still refused to let any hand try to comfort her.

Cassidy thought for a moment and looked at Caitlin with the guiltiest of expressions before she said, "I'm sorry, Cait. I really am. Just please, if you could hear me out –"

"I've heard _ENOUGH!_" Caitlin screamed. She had her eyes shut tightly and her hands were held in mid-air. After a long pause, she gained the strength to say slowly, "You _slept _with my boyfriend, and then _lied _about it. That's unforgivable."

The silence around the room was frightening, and Rose felt as if one breath might seem intrusive. To Caitlin, Cassidy, and James, it was just the three of them, and yet they clearly had nowhere to hide.

This didn't last long, however. A voice from the entrance to the room said quietly then, "You did what?"

Everybody turned around at the same time to find Sam Thomas towering above the younger kids. He turned directly to Cassidy, the girl whom he had been in love with for as long as anybody could remember. His eyes, which were a striking blue that contrasted his dark skin perfectly, quickly went cold. Upon seeing this, and as if in unison, everybody turned to face Cassidy, awaiting her explanation.

"Sam," she whispered. She still seemed unaware of her audience as she began to explain, "We – we had broken up. I – it was after that fight we had. But it didn't mean anything, I promise. It only made me realize how much I wanted to be with _you_."

Rose knew exactly what Cassidy meant. It hadn't been that long ago that she had told Scorpius the same words about Lysander. Luckily, Scorpius had forgiven her, but she hadn't gone very far with Lysander, whereas Cassidy had done so with James. Looking over to the second offender, Rose saw that James was nodding. Though too scared to say anything, he felt the same way about Caitlin as Cassidy did Sam.

Suddenly, Rose noticed that Sam was beginning to look angry, and had his fists balled as he walked forward. "We were back together practically the next day!" he yelled at Cassidy. "And you didn't even think to tell me?" He was exaggerating for effect, as they hadn't actually gotten back together until quite recently. Still, he had a right to be dramatic.

"I –" Cassidy started, but Sam shook his head.

"And you?" he asked, after approaching James. "You think that you can get away with this?"

James's eyes widened immensely before he received a hard punch in the nose and was knocked down to the floor. The entire scene was very similar to the one Rose had seen between Cassidy and Caitlin only moments ago, but this time it was much more violent. There was a reason why Sam was a Beater: he was larger and stronger than any other Gryffindor, and was only smaller than Vincent Goyle when compared to the entire school. Off the field, he was polite and courteous, and did well in his classes, which was enough to earn him Head Boy. This, however, seem much more like he was _on_ the field rather than off.

Without giving it much thought, Rose rushed over to James to help him get back on his feet. She wasn't in agreement with what he had done, but he still needed support right now. As soon as he got up though, he pushed Rose away and faced Sam, who looked ready for another lunge.

At this point, Cassidy and Caitlin had come closer, and were watching the two boys anxiously. Sam was completely furious, but was now being held back by both Fred and Bobby Dormer. He probably could have whipped them off if he really wanted to, but Rose could tell that he didn't actually have the desire to hurt James; he just needed to get his anger out.

After a few more minutes of Sam panting and staring across at James, he turned back to Cassidy and said, "Fine. Let's talk upstairs."

Thankful, Cassidy smiled and followed Sam (who had been released by Fred and Bobby) up the spiral staircase to his dormitory. With less excitement, and with it being so late at night now, most of the other Gryffindors dissipated to spots around the room that were further away, some of them heading off to bed.

Rose stayed beside James, but had given him a fair amount of space around himself. Caitlin, who now looked exhausted rather than sad or angry, was on James's other side. She was wiping her face of her tears when she asked, "Why'd you even tell me at all? After all this time?"

James took a deep breath as Caitlin's eyes landed on him, looking around to make sure that there was nobody left to overhear. Bobby was tending to the fireplace, with Fred and Lila giving each other a hug goodnight by the staircase, and Hugo, Nigel, Lila, and Roxanne hiding in the corner. Those four were definitely still interested in James's conversation, as they looked as though they were spying, their four small heads, three freckle-faced and one a gorgeous shade of mocha, peeking around one of the Quidditch banners. Still, they weren't really worth worrying about.

With one last breath, James whispered to Caitlin, "Because I still care about you. Probably more than I ever have, actually." He swallowed hard before adding, "And I knew that I wouldn't stand a chance unless I at least tried to tell you the truth."

Caitlin looked shocked. Rose was proud of James for finally letting his feelings out in the open, but was immediately scared for him when she saw Caitlin begin to look dizzy. As she held her head to keep steady, she laughed slightly to herself and then turned around and slowly walked over to the staircase, without saying a word.

After a moment, James wrinkled his forehead and said, "Well that went well."

Coming up from behind him, Rose laughed, hit James on the shoulder with one of her books, and said, "I can't believe you!"

"What?" James asked her, though he wasn't rubbing his shoulder from the pain. Rose assumed that he had barely felt a thing. "You've known this whole time! It shouldn't have been that much of a shock."

Rose sighed, thinking to herself that James was right, it was bad enough that James and Cassidy had done what they had done. Still, the less empathetic part of herself could only think about what this would mean for tomorrow's match, rather than what it would do to Caitlin or Sam. Thinking that James of all people should understand this fried logic, she said, "You decide to tell Caitlin _now_, right before the match? Are you really that much of an _idiot_?"

James looked confused and said, "What difference does it make _when_ I tell her? She'll have a good cry over it and then move on. I mean you'd think a bit of Quidditch tomorrow would cheer her up!"

Rose chuckled to herself, amazed at how naïve boys could be, James being on the top of that list. Crossing her arms, she said to him, "Don't you understand how she must be feeling? Well, obviously she's feeling sad about you, and betrayed by Cassidy, and stupid for not noticing any of it before. Conflicted because you said you still have feelings for her, and frightened about losing tomorrow's match because she's so busy worrying about everything else!"

James was thoroughly lost now, as he exclaimed, "One person couldn't feel all that. They'd explode!"

Laughing now, Rose walked past James and gave him a pat on the back as she said, "Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have." She then went up to bed, leaving James to ponder all that he had done.

* * *

The next day was a blur. It all started when Rose woke up to find everybody packed into the common room, but none were cheering. Instead, they all looked tired and were frantically glancing over at their Quidditch team, worried about the repercussions of last night's quarrel. Following their gazes, Rose found Cassidy pinning up her hair by the stained-glass window, Caitlin huddled on the couch with her arms wrapped around her legs and looking as if she hadn't gotten any sleep at all, Sam on the chair beside her, rubbing his eyes to stay awake, and James in the center of the room fixing his goggles, looking in between Caitlin and Cassidy nervously. Fred and Lily weren't there, and had probably already left for breakfast.

As Rose tip-toed across the room, James saw her and said, "Rose! Good, okay, so you know all the plays, right? You're ready?" He seemed paranoid again, and Rose knew that he was asking her only because nobody else on the team was speaking to him.

"Yes, James, I know the plays," Rose answered. "Just make sure you catch that snitch, okay?" She wanted to tell him that she wasn't the one he should be worried about, but he didn't need to hear that right now. He needed to have as much confidence as possible going into today's match.

James nodded in response, and then Rose left him, again with a small smile. Walking into the Great Hall, Rose was finally met with the adorning fans that she should have seen earlier, as all students not in Gryffindor had no idea of the drama that had been building under the surface of their team. The first to see Rose was Holly Longbottom, who was once again dressed in red and gold, despite being in Hufflepuff. This time though, she had extra props, as trailing behind her was a large-looking pet that Rose could barely make out. As the two came closer, Rose saw that the animal had a mane, and was in fact a miniature lion, walking side-by-side with Holly as if it was, like in the Muggle world, her dog.

"Good luck today, Rose!" Holly exclaimed, but Rose couldn't take her eyes off of the real-life Gryffindor mascot.

Her surprise was only heightened when the lion opened up its mouth and said, "Yes, good luck." Rose was speechless as Holly and the talking lion then continued on their way. Telling herself, as she always did with Holly, not to question things, Rose shook her head in disbelief. She then watched as Nigel, who was wearing his usual lion head hat, saw Holly with her own cat.

Crossing his arms against his scrawny chest, Nigel asked shyly, "Where'd you get that?"

Ignoring his question, Holly looked at Nigel's head and said, "I like your hat. It's very cute."

"Cute?" Nigel asked. "Yeah, well, same to your… thing." He gestured to Holly's companion.

"Oh, him?" Holly asked, looking down at the lion. "He's nothing really. Just a lion… who can _talk_." She then passed by Nigel, once again leaving her audience speechless.

Rose laughed out loud before taking her seat at her regular table where Al and Scorpius were waiting for her. Out of good sportsmanship, both had red t-shirts on.

"Hello, stranger," Scorpius greeted Rose as he stood up and pecked her on the lips. He had large bags under his eyes, but still seemed a little more awake than he had in the past few days. Taking Rose's hand, they both took a seat on the bench.

"You ready?" Al asked, taking his face away from its previous state of being buried in his Potions book in order to look over at Rose.

Rose poured herself a bowl of muesli and answered, "I am. Though I'm not sure about everybody else…"

"What's wrong?" Scorpius asked with concern, though there was a hint of excitement in his voice, as if he thought this might mean that Gryffindor wouldn't be able to win the Cup after all.

"Nothing," Rose answered, not wanting to surrender. "It's not important. We could just use some luck is all."

Scorpius nodded and said, "I know what you mean. I'll be needing a lot of it this week." They were beginning their OWL exams on Monday, and the first was Charms, which was arguably Scorpius's worst subject.

"You'll be fine," Rose reassured him for what felt like the hundredth time. Scorpius didn't have time to contradict her before Lily passed by and told Rose to get a move on.

Following Lily's order, Rose stood up and headed out of the hall, Scorpius calling after her, "Look for me in the stands; I'll be rooting for you." Upon hearing his words, she smiled to herself, knowing that he was all the luck she needed.

The match got off to a fairly quick start, turning very interesting right away, though for all the wrong reasons. Ravenclaw seemed to be a bit off their game, with Abby Chang-Turner, their Seeker, barely hanging onto her broom in between her cries and sniffles, and with Lysander, Team Captain and Beater, apparently not willing to cross the mid-field line. Even when the bludgers flew way over toward Rose, Lysander stayed put on his side of the pitch, as if he didn't want to get anywhere near her.

Meanwhile, it took mere minutes for Gryffindor to become the complete mess that they were feeling like inside. Caitlin refused to pass the quaffle to Cassidy, and similarly would not catch it if Cassidy tried to pass it to her. Lily was trying her best to work with one of them at a time, but Rose could tell that she was finding it difficult to make it seem as though she wasn't picking a side by doing so. Eventually, the young Chaser took matters into her own hands and attempted to find a way to fly through the other players herself, holding onto the quaffle for dear life. Gryffindor had only scored once so far.

With Abby lost in her own world, Rose was happy to think that at least Gryffindor still had James. Of course, this prospect of hope was ruined when Sam started hitting the bludger frighteningly close to James on numerous occasions, even when he was miles away from anyone on the Ravenclaw team. It would be a while before James would be able to maintain his focus long enough to actually spot the snitch.

Rose was doing well from her spot in front of the goal posts, however. One of the seventh year Chasers had managed to get two goals past her, but Ravenclaw was known to be the highest scoring team, as they had consistently earned ten goals in each of their matches so far. Rose's only objective today was to make sure they earned less, and so far that was going well.

"And Lily Potter scores again for _GRYFFINDOR_, getting past Ravenclaw Keeper Pranav Patil and earning her team another ten points!" Announced Lila Jordan. She had gotten over her initial nerves about being the new Quidditch announcer after the very first match, and had been in love with it ever since. After all, it was in her blood.

The students in the stands cheered wildly, as most of them were rooting for Gryffindor. Rose didn't have time to look to them for Scorpius though, since that big Chaser was coming back her way now. He was a brilliant flyer, even without Lysander's protection. Swerving through Caitlin and Cassidy, and going right over Sam's head, he made it to Rose in no time and didn't give any hint as to which post he was aiming for. Quickly, he turned around so as not to let his face give anything away, threw the Quaffle in the air, and hit it toward Rose with the bottom part of his broom.

The quaffle was now headed for the ring to Rose's lower left, and she knew that she wouldn't have time to fly there and block it with her hands. Thinking quickly, she leaned over to the left and then spun herself around her broom so that she was hanging underneath it like a monkey. This way, the ball would hit her straight on the head. It did just that, and she knocked it away with her forehead, sending it spinning toward Lily, who was waiting way over by the Ravenclaw posts.

Yet again, the crowds went wild, for this was not only a good save, but also a highly entertaining one. Of course, now there was one slight problem: how to get back to her upright position on Rose's broom. She soon realized that this would pose a bit of difficulty, as her arms were beginning to get tired from holding on this way, and the ground was a long way down. Trying to reposition her legs so that they were fully hanging over the broom handle, she started swinging herself from side to side. She probably looked ridiculous, but it ended up working, and she was back to her normal position before too long. Unfortunately, she had lost a lot of her balance and felt a little dizzy, so she ended up missing a surprise goal by Ravenclaw's younger, female Chaser. It seemed that Lily hadn't been able to hold on to the rebound.

"And _RAVENCLAW _scores yet again! We're at 30-20 now for Ravenclaw!"

Rose groaned with distaste, as she never liked to hear that another team had somehow gotten past her. Trying to ignore her own thoughts, she watched all the action that was taking place on the other side of the pitch. Cassidy Finnigan had the quaffle, and was reluctantly passing it back and forth between herself and Lily. Behind Cassidy on the right side of the field was Sam, who looked less than happy to be hitting bludgers _away _from her. Across from him, sticking to Lily, was Fred, who looked extremely anxious as he kept his eyes on his fellow Beater.

As Cassidy gained ground on the rings, now keeping the quaffle to herself, Lysander threw a bludger toward her, which Sam hit right back, only it went flying over to James, who was situated higher in the air, near the Headmistress's box. For a moment, Lysander looked torn, as if trying to decide between protecting his friend, who wouldn't be able to see the bludger coming, or letting the opponent Seeker get hit and upping Ravenclaw's chances of winning ten-fold. Knowing him, Rose assumed that he would pick the latter. Even if Ravenclaw won today, they'd have no chances of winning the Cup and would sacrifice all of Gryffindor's chances as well, but Rose didn't think that Lysander would care about such things. This was why she was thoroughly surprised when he leaned forward on his broom and flew up to James while calling out his name. James, hearing him, looked just in time to catch Lysander's bat and knock the bludger out of the way.

Unfortunately, James didn't have time to aim anywhere, and so the little black ball went straight for the Ravenclaw goal posts. Cassidy, who had just thrown a quaffle through and earned Gryffindor another 10 points was hit dead in the chest by the ball, and her horrific scream could have been heard from miles away. Rose cringed upon hearing it, and then covered her mouth in shock as Cassidy went unconscious, fell of her broom, and fell toward the grass.

Looking back up for a moment, Rose saw Sam, furious and heartbroken all at once, right before he flew straight down after her, held out his wand, and performed a spell that lowered her gently to the ground, so that she wouldn't be hurt anymore than she already had. Right as the nurse came running onto the ground to help, however, Sam shot straight back up into the middle of all the players and made his way to Fred. Once there, he said something to the Weasley boy, who then handed him his own bat, making Sam have two. Then, Rose realized why, when she saw both bludgers coming at him. With a look of utter rage, Sam shot both his arms, a bat in each hand, behind him and then swung them forward again, hitting each bludger at the exact right time and directly toward James. It seemed as though Sam might be able to forgive Cassidy, but James was not in the running.

Rose held her breath as she watched James closely, praying that he'd get out of the way. This time, James knew that the bludgers were coming for him, and was looking right at them until the very last moment, when he swerved out of the way and picked up speed. He had saved himself from getting hit, and was also after the snitch. Of course, this meant bad news for the crowds, as the bludgers had nowhere else to go but straight through the bottom of the Headmistress's box, causing many fearful screams.

"Cassidy Finnigan has been hit, and it seems as if we here in the crowds have as well!" Announced Lila, though she sounded more excited than scared. The bludgers hadn't hurt anybody there, but they had probably torn apart the floor of the box pretty badly. "Now, Gryffindor Captain and Seeker, James Potter, has spotted the snitch, while Ravenclaw's Rich Patterson's got hold of the quaffle!"

Turning her attention back to the immediate task at hand, Rose prepared herself for another go at the seventh year. This time though, there would be no stopping him. He was already too close to the posts, and was aiming for the ring to Rose's far right. She was still floating by the left one, and she would never make it across in time. Ravenclaw scored again, giving themselves 40 points, as opposed to Gryffindor's 30.

Posing a much bigger problem, however, was James, who was going after the snitch like wildfire, though his timing was completely off. If he got it now, Gryffindor wouldn't win with enough points to beat out Slytherin for the Cup. Rose tried to yell at him to stop, but once again it was too late. Abby was behind him now, and if James suddenly stopped, then she would have the chance to catch the snitch instead, which would ruin everything even more.

Distracted yet again, Rose failed to notice that the quaffle was headed back her way, along with a freakishly fast bludger. Fred was on its tail, but Rose feared that he wouldn't show in time to hit it away, so she flew to the side to protect herself, letting the quaffle in for the fifth time this match. Even this didn't save her though, since the other bludger, which she hadn't seen before, was coming up from behind. Nobody else had seen it either, and all, including Rose, were focused on the goal that Ravenclaw had just scored. The ball was about to hit the back of Rose's head, right where she had hit the quaffle earlier, until she heard the sound of a bat hitting it, and then watched the ball fly back toward the Ravenclaw side of the field. Turning around to see who had been there to help, Rose was met with Lysander, who was panting heavily, his forehead creased with worry.

"How did you get here?" Rose yelled at him, not understanding how he had appeared so quickly, when throughout this whole match he had been glued to the other side.

"I Apparated," he replied, with what sounded like a sad tone in his voice.

"But you'll be disqualified!" Rose exclaimed, her thoughts already on the rules of the game, which clearly stated that all players, even if licensed and over 17 years of age, were not allowed to use Apparition during a Quidditch match. If they did so, their entire team would be disqualified from the match at hand, forfeiting all points received.

"Does it really matter?" Lysander asked before flying away from Rose. She didn't understand why he had done it, nor had she ever expected him to do so. When they had been 'together', all he had ever thought about was himself, and now here he was, protecting both James and Rose, two players who weren't even on his team.

Rose's thoughts were interrupted with the sound of immense cheering from the stands. Looking around to see what all the commotion was about, Rose saw James holding up the snitch at the other side of the field, Abby trailing behind him looking defeated. James had caught it, and he didn't yet know that it wasn't enough.

"And James Potter catches the snitch, earning _GRYFFINDOR _150 points! With a total of 180 points, and a disqualification of Ravenclaw's 50, _GRYFFINDOR _wins!"

The moment was bittersweet, and once again felt like a blur. Rose was the first to know what this meant, followed by the rest of her team members, who quickly realized that they for the first time in six years, they had been defeated. They had won the match, but they hadn't won the Cup. Around them, the crowds also began to realize the end results, as Slytherin started to cheer louder than anybody else, and the sighs coming from fellow Gryffindors could be heard across the campus.

James was the first back on the ground, and he looked as if he was in shock. Rose approached him as fast as she could, but didn't say anything. It was his first Cup loss, and it had been with what was arguably the best team Gryffindor had seen in quite a while. Of course, when they decided not to cooperate with each other, like they had today, they didn't stand a chance.

As Caitlin and Sam landed on the grass, they both wore expressions full of guilt, for it had been their anger at James and Cassidy that had resulted in the loss. Still, Sam didn't seem too concerned about it, and instead immediately ran off to the hospital wing to find Cassidy, whom he clearly still cared about. Caitlin, on the other hand, stood and watched Sam go with the same look of concern. She then turned to James, and back to Sam, and then to James again, trying to make a decision. Her sister needed her, but she had also betrayed her. James had at least told her the truth.

James was looking back at Caitlin now, and managed to get out the words, "Don't go. Please."

Rose, who was watching the two of them intently, knew who Caitlin would choose even before she knew herself. Family was somehow always easier to forgive than others.

"I have to," Caitlin whispered before she walked away, leaving James with nothing but the tiny snitch in his hand.

Rose was by his side instantly, letting him collapse onto her. Slowly, she led the heartbroken boy over the locker room, where Fred and Lily were waiting for them. Once there, he sat down on a bench and lowered his head onto his knees. Rose sat next to him, not yet saying anything, but just keeping him company.

Fred and Lily, who had both played brilliantly despite the drama, looked very upset. They had desperately wanted to win the Cup, as it was their first year on the team, and Rose could tell that their confidence had just been pummeled on.

Rose, who hadn't yet had time to reflect on her own emotions, was suddenly overwhelmed with that same loss. Their team had come so far this year, and they were so close to winning again. Now, they had lost to their enemy team by only 20 points. What made matters worse was that Gryffindor was clearly the better team of the two, as every one of their players was well qualified, and they had the best Seeker, Keeper, and young Chaser in the whole school. Slytherin couldn't say the same. Their team, with the exception of Scorpius, earned most of their points by bloodying their opponents. That was a part of Quidditch that Rose had never appreciated, and it seemed wrong for them to earn a trophy for their impressive display of violence.

Still, Rose reminded herself that Scorpius had been training the Slytherin team harder than any other, and that if anything, he alone deserved the Cup for all the work he had put in. She was happy for him, or at least she would be eventually. At the moment though, she just needed to grieve with the rest of her own team.

Thinking about this, Rose suggested to the other three, "Let's all go to the hospital wing."

Fred and Lily looked to her confused, and James looked as if he thought she had gone mental, but she had expected such reactions. "Look," she said, "We all lost today. I mean, we may have won the match, but in the grand scheme of things, we lost… all of us… the entire team. We should be together for this, no matter what."

She then took a deep breath and stood up, holding out her hand for James. "So let's go see Cassidy in the hospital wing," she said one last time. James looked up at her defiantly, but then sighed and slowly took her hand, following her out of the room with Fred and Lily close behind.

The four players were stopped mid-walk when they ran into a man waiting just outside the room. He smiled when he saw them, and had his eyes on James. He was dressed very formally, with a top hat and a nice suit, but then had a large pin on his collar. Looking closer, Rose noticed that the pin was black and white, with a small bird printed on it that she recognized as a magpie.

"James Potter?" the man asked, taking off his hat and holding it across his chest.

"Yes," James answered, still looking lifeless.

"Oh, what a pleasure," the man exclaimed, holding out his hand and shaking James's. "My name is Carl McLeod. I'm the manager for the Montrose Magpies Quidditch team. Would you mind if I had a word with you for a moment?"

Rose looked to James with excitement, as it was very rare for Hogwarts students to receive the attention of internationally recognized Quidditch scouts, let alone for the Montrose Magpies, which was one of the best teams in the league. He too looked somewhat excited, all things considered, as he nodded his head and said, "Er, sure." Then, turning over to Rose, he said, "I'll meet you guys there later then?"

"Definitely," Rose said, smiling. "Take your time."

Then, just as Rose was about to turn away with Fred and Lily (both of whom had wide eyes that looked as though they were about to fall out of their sockets), Mr. McLeod said, "Oh, Rose, isn't it?"

Turning back, Rose answered, "Yes, it is. Rose Weasley, sir." She then shook the man's hand firmly, trying to seem impressive. Why he had chosen to speak to her she had no idea, but she was thrilled nonetheless. Somehow, having a man like him take notice to the Gryffindor players made their loss feel much less important.

"Well Rose, you play beautifully," he said. "I'm sure we'll be in touch with you in a few years as well."

Rose laughed at him, since she couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Thank you, sir," she said. "I would be honored."

"As would I," McLeod said. "But you best be going. Congratulations on the win."

Finally, Rose turned and walked off with Fred and Lily, who both stared at her in awe. "Are you sure we shouldn't go back and ask for an autograph?" Fred asked, sounding completely serious.

"I'm with Fred on this one," Lily agreed, and Rose laughed at them both.

Once in the hospital wing, the three of them found Cassidy at a bed near the entrance, Sam and Caitlin by her side. She was in bad shape, still unconscious and bruised all over, but looked oddly peaceful at the same time.

"How is she?" Rose asked as they came closer.

"She'll be okay," Sam answered. "But she'll be here for a while."

Fred and Lily sat down then, as Caitlin asked them all, "How's James taking it?" She had noticed that he wasn't with them, and probably thought that he hadn't wanted to come.

"Oh, he's alright actually," Rose answered.

"More than alright!" Lily exclaimed. "He's off talking to the manager of the Montrose Magpies!"

"Really?" Caitlin asked, just as surprised as everybody else had been. "That's great!"

Rose nodded but added, "Yeah well, hopefully it'll cheer him up. He was pretty upset at first."

"It's all my fault," said Sam suddenly, looking back up from where he was staring at Cassidy. "I was acting out of anger, and I shouldn't have." He seemed to be back to his normal self now.

Rose smiled in return and said, "I'm sure James will understand. He's acted that way once or twice as well." James had nearly led their team to a loss in the match against Slytherin, all because he was so paranoid about Scorpius.

Sam nodded, though he still looked concerned. Then, they all turned their attention back to Cassidy, who was shifting in her sleep. At one point, she tried to speak, but nothing understandable came out. Finally, after many attempts, and still with her eyes closed, she said, "Sss – am. S – am. I so – ry, Sam."

Everybody smiled to see that she was okay, and Sam gulped upon hearing his name. He quickly took her hand in his and said, "It's okay, Cass. I'm here. I'm right here." Then, as a tear fell down his face, he added, "I forgive you."

After a quiet moment, Rose started to back away from the bed to give them all some privacy. She was just going to wait out in the hall for James, but was distracted when she heard a familiar voice coming from a bed around the corner. Drawn to it, she followed the voice to find Lysander standing at the edge of his brother, Lorcan's bed. Lucy was there as well, sitting up on the bed with Lorcan, who seemed to be doing much better since his own injury during the Hufflepuff match. Lysander, like Rose, was still in his Quidditch robes, and must have come here right after the game.

Lucy spotted Rose first, as she smiled and said, "Rose! We heard about the game; I'm so sorry you won't be getting the Cup. We were rooting for you."

Rose smiled and nodded, saying, "It's okay. Really, it is. And anyway, there's always next year." Ignoring Lysander somewhat, who had resorted to staring at her, Rose asked Lorcan, "How are you feeling? Better, I hope?"

"Loads," Lorcan answered. "I should be out of here by the ceremony tonight. Wouldn't want to miss it, after all." A dinner would be held later that evening to announce the winner of the Quidditch House Cup, and all the teams had to be there in order to receive their awards and have their pictures taken.

"That's great," Rose said genuinely, before turning over to Lysander finally and asking, "Lysander, would you mind if I talked to you for a minute?"

Lysander looked nervous, but acted as if it was nothing by shrugging and answering Rose, "Lead the way." He then followed her out into the hall, where he faced her and waited for her to say something.

Gathering herself and trying to think of where to start, Rose asked him, "What was all that? During the match, I mean."

Lysander bit his lip and answered, "It would have hit you if I hadn't been there."

"But before, you wouldn't come anywhere near me," Rose explained. She wanted some answers from him, as he seemed to be acting so strangely as of late.

Lysander didn't respond at first, but later said, "I promised myself that I wouldn't."

"Why?" Rose asked quietly.

"Because it's a lot easier to just stay away from you, Rose" Lysander answered. "A lot less painful, that is."

Rose was hit then with a giant wave of guilt, for she had never truly believed that Lysander had ever had feelings for her. It always seemed like some big game, and she figured that by the end he'd be able to move on to somebody else. Apparently, that wasn't the case.

"I'm not over you, Rose," Lysander continued, moving closer to her. "I still like you. A lot."

As Lysander took Rose's hands, she closed her eyes and took a step backward, pulling her hands away. She felt sorry for him, and she appreciated how loyal he was being. She liked the new, good side of him. Still, she didn't have any romantic feelings for him. She never had.

"I'm sorry," she said after she opened her eyes once more, "But I love Scorpius." Sometimes it felt as if Scorpius was fading away right in front of her, but these were the times when Rose knew just how much she loved him, because she wanted nothing more than to pull him back to the present. She knew that no matter what, she would follow him wherever he went, and that there was nothing anybody could do to change that.

Lysander nodded and watched as Rose slowly walked away, just as Sam and Caitlin had before, to find the one she truly loved.

* * *

"And with a grand total of 610 points, the Quidditch House Cup for the year 2021-2022 goes to… SLYTHERIN!" McGonagall announced, and there was clapping throughout the hall.

Rose watched intently as Scorpius, Albus, and the rest of the Slytherin team walked up to the front of the room. In alphabetical order, they each shook hands with McGonagall and received a gold medal. Then, much to everyone's excitement, McGonagall made a swish of her wand and uncovered a beautiful and very large gold trophy, which had been hidden beneath a green and silver tablecloth. On the front of the trophy, Rose could just make out the plaque with the team's names on it, the Chasers on the bottom, the Beaters on each side, the Keeper at the top, and Scorpius's Seeker right in the middle.

"And I award the Cup to this year's Team Captain, Scorpius Malfoy," McGonagall said, handing over the trophy to Scorpius. Rose cheered loudly for this, and smiled wide as soon as saw his proud expression. Scorpius deserved this moment, and he deserved Rose's support during it.

"Again, congratulations Slytherin!" And yet another round of applause was received for the house, even by the disappointed Gryffindors, six of whom had slightly smaller silver medals around their own necks.

Finally, the Slytherin players were dismissed from their spot up front and went to take their normal seats. As they did so, however, Rose couldn't help but notice Professor Shunpike, who was on the far side of the horizontal teacher's table, eyeing Scorpius with what looked to Rose like disdain. She didn't understand why Shunpike was doing so, especially after he had initiated what Scorpius described as a nice talk between the two of them a few weeks back. Nothing ever seemed to make much sense when it came to Shunpike, though.

Keeping an eye on Scorpius as he sat down at the Slytherin table next to Al, Rose also noticed him rubbing his eyes. She hadn't had the chance to talk to him since that morning, as she had run into James on her way back from the hospital wing. He had had great news, informing her that the Montrose Magpies had reserved a trial for him to replace their current Seeker, who was due to retire after next season. James would have to join in on a few of their practices next year as a sub, and then they would decide if they wanted to keep him around after he graduated from Hogwarts. He was thrilled about the possibility, and had spent the entire afternoon talking about it with Rose. Even now, he didn't seem very disappointed to have lost the Cup, since he knew that he had bigger prospects in store for himself. Rose too was overjoyed for him, but she was beginning to get even more worried about Scorpius.

When the incredible meal of various different foods appeared out of thin air, all the students quickly dug in, but Rose's eyes were locked on Scorpius, who was all the way across the room. He had passed the trophy around the Slytherin table, sharing it with all of his team members. (After the celebration, it would be mounted in the trophy room with the others from years before.) Now, he was leaning on the table, his head on his hand, and didn't look at all interested in the food. After a few short minutes, Rose saw him stand up from his spot, say something to Albus, and then walk away from the table to leave the Great Hall.

Rose, concerned, hurried after him, waving to James as she left and turning back for a split second to see Hugo steeling all the food off of her plate and transferring it onto his own.

It felt like a long way up the six floors to the Room of Requirement, and Rose hadn't realized how little energy she had left after such a long day. Still, she persevered, knowing that Scorpius would be in their clearing waiting for her. When she got to the floor, she began the routine pacing in front of the wall and thought only of a grassy meadow underneath fire-colored trees. After three lengths, an enormous door began to show itself in the middle of the wall, and it opened into the exact room that Rose had pictured in her mind.

Quietly, Rose walked onto the field of wild grasses, not bothering to look around to make sure that nobody else was there. Everyone was still at supper, and Rose knew that it was only them. Scorpius was sitting under a maple tree, the one that they usually sat under to shield themselves from the mild rain. He had a pile of books laid out in front of him, and was running a hand through his hair, something he always did when either frustrated or nervous.

"What are you doing here?" Rose asked as she sat down next to him, moving his Astronomy book over to make room.

"Charms is on Monday, Rose," Scorpius asked, not surprised to see her there. "And I'm nowhere near ready for it."

Rose laughed and said, "Scorpius, you just won the House Cup! You should be celebrating, not studying." This went against all logic for Rose, but it somehow seemed like the right thing to say.

Scorpius finally looked away from the book on his lap and answered Rose, "Yeah, but I really just wanted to celebrate with you, and that wouldn't exactly be fair. I mean, you wanted to win the Cup too."

Rose's heart fluttered with admiration. Scorpius could be so sweet sometimes, and nothing was ever about him. He only ever thought about others, never himself. Of course, this wasn't always a good thing. Sometimes he was so busy worrying about other people, including Rose, that he forgot to take care of himself in the meantime.

"Of course I did," Rose answered. "We all did. But it just wasn't our year, and it was yours. I want to celebrate that with you."

Scorpius smiled and said, "Thanks." Lifting his arm up, Rose leaned into his side and allowed his arm to wrap itself around her shoulders, where it fit like a glove. "You know I never thought we'd actually get here, especially with the team we've had this year."

"Well apparently you're a pretty good leader," Rose said. Trying to put some humor into her words, she added, "With the players you've got, Slytherin should have been a complete mess." Al was good flier, but the other Chasers were nothing impressive, Goyle and Bulstrode were just ruthless and intimidating, and Lindsay Doyle was no match for Rose.

"Oh, I don't know about that," Scorpius started to say, but changed his mind when he saw Rose's eyebrows raised at him. "Who am I kidding, you're completely right."

Rose laughed, and Scorpius did too. They sat there together for a while longer before Rose found the courage to ask him, "Why are you pushing yourself so hard for these exams, Scorpius?"

He took some time to think before responding, "Because I'm not like you."

"Don't try to tell me that you're not smart," Rose interrupted, leaning away so that she look at his eyes. "Because that's complete bullocks, and you know it."

"No, it's not that," Scorpius said. "It's just that, you and Al, you both have at least some idea of what you want to do in life, whereas I don't have any."

Al had wanted to be an Auror since he was a young boy, and Rose was pretty sure that she wanted to work somewhere in the Ministry, like her mother. Scorpius, however, wasn't very interested in either of those options. Continuing, he said, "I just need to do well on my OWL's, because I need to keep all my options open."

"They're not going to close just based off of one bad mark," Rose reassured him. OWL's determined which NEWT classes one could take, which ultimately determined which jobs they would be qualified for, but there were always ways around them. Rose's father, Ron, for example, along with Harry, had never taken their NEWT exams, and they had still managed to become Aurors. Thinking that there must be more to Scorpius's new studying habits, Rose asked, "What's the other reason? The real reason?"

Scorpius looked down in defeat. He clearly didn't want to face whatever fear he had, but Rose knew that it would be better for him to share his thoughts with somebody. He was so used to keeping things to himself, but it was always harder to be alone.

"It's my mother," Scorpius whispered. "Every time I close my eyes, she's all I can see. And now that Quidditch is over, I just feel like I need a distraction. Something to keep my mind off of the fact that she's out there somewhere, and that she's still not okay."

Rose nodded in understanding. She had started off the year having her own bad dreams, so she knew how hard it was to ignore them. "When was the last time you slept?" she asked.

Scorpius breathed deeply before answering, "It's been a while. Each time I try, there's this voice in my head that tells me to stay awake a little longer, because if I fall asleep I won't be able to hear her from the next room. If I fall asleep, she'll die."

Rose squeezed his hand as he revealed himself to her, and she was reminded of the night he had told her about Astoria. He had seemed so lost then, and he looked the same now. All Rose wanted to do was lead him back home.

"But she won't die," Rose said. "And you did save her. You did hear her. You don't have to be scared that it will happen again, because she's had the chance to try, but she hasn't done anything. She may not be completely all right, but she's still alive… thanks to you.

"And as for your exams, they're not going to go well if you don't have enough sleep beforehand," she added.

"I know," Scorpius said, once again rubbing his eyes. "But I just can't."

Rose, not sure what else she could say, decided to offer the only thing she had. "Look," she said, "You're not alone right now. I'm here, I'm right here, and I'll be awake. I'll be awake, so that if I hear anything I can tell you, and I can wake you up."

Scorpius looked to Rose longingly, but shook his head. "I can't ask you to stay here all night."

"You don't have to," Rose said. "I want to stay. I want to stay here with you forever, remember?"

Scorpius let out a half laugh and nodded. Then, leaning away from Rose for a moment, he lifted his arm from her shoulders and took the heavy medal from around his neck. He then lifted it above Rose's head and lowered it back down next to her silver one. "Take care of it for me?" he asked.

Rose nodded and said, "I will. You know I will."

Scorpius then knelt down to the ground, laid across the grass on his back, and rested his head on Rose's thigh. Closing his eyes, he whispered, "I love you, Rose," before he drifted off to sleep, Rose beside him, wide awake and waiting, more than willing to stay with him forever, no matter what.

* * *

Scorpius slept through most of that weekend, Rose by his side at all times. Luckily, it seemed to do the trick, as they both showed up to their first OWL exam, Charms, alert and ready early Monday morning. The first of many exams went fairly well, and Rose felt confident about it. She had kept an eye on Scorpius during most of the process, particularly in the practical section, but he was fine throughout. He did, along with Al, mess up on a few spells, but they had both been expecting that. Rose, on the other hand, got through it with flying colors, her proctor cheering for her each time she accomplished his given tasks with record precision.

The next day was Transfiguration, and this was Scorpius's time to shine. During this practical, Scorpius finished all of his tasks so early and impressively that his proctor asked him if he wanted to try something a little more advanced, just for kicks. Scorpius had gone along with it, and ended up using a Vanishing Spell that made half of his own body disappear. The proctor was astounded at his talent, as was every other student in the room, each of whom seemed to be slowly suffering just trying to make a bug invisible. Al had the hardest time with this one, and didn't even end up finishing all his tasks, while the ones he had done hadn't been completely successful. Rose thought she did all right, but was a little nervous going into it, and was admittedly somewhat distracted by Scorpius, so by the end she wasn't sure that she had done her best.

Herbology took place on Wednesday, and all three of the trio did well during this exam. It was one of the easiest classes they had, and Professor Longbottom had more than prepared them for the exam. Rose had also been proud to see Lucy show off a bit in this one, as Herbology had always been her best subject.

On Thursday, all fifth years had Defense Against the Dark Arts. This was one of the more difficult exams, as the written section was extremely long and the practical very demanding. While Rose finished the written part just in time, she struggled a little with the practical. By now, she had gotten a hang off the Patronus Charm, but it turned out to be very difficult to think of happy thoughts when Shunpike was circling the room and glancing over at either her or Scorpius nearly every minute. Eventually though, she had been able to produce her cardinal, and it lasted just long enough to earn the mark. Scorpius also took a few attempts to produce his falcon, but he too got it in the end. Meanwhile, Albus once again showed off by producing his hawk on his very first attempy and having it soar through the air for the rest of the test.

Scorpius and Al had a break that Friday, while Rose had to sit her Ancient Runes exam. This one did not have a practical section, which Rose was thankful for, and she had memorized everything that she needed to know perfectly, so she left the room sure that she had done well.

After a weekend of nothing but studying, with Scorpius and Rose once again falling asleep together in the Room of Requirement, Rose was met with the exam she had been dreading more than any other. Potions had always posed a giant fear in her mind, and Scorpius felt the same. Still, they had worked hard preparing for it, and Al had done his best to help them. Once again, Rose was unsure how well she had done, while Scorpius was sure that he had failed, and Albus seemed overly confident about what a breeze it had been for him.

Tuesday was Care of Magical Creatures, during which Rose and Scorpius had a great time riding a beautiful hippogriff while Albus had to retrieve a large group of pixies, nasty little buggers that were never easy to handle.

Wednesday posed a triple threat, starting with Divination and Arithmancy, and ending with Astronomy that evening. Divination hadn't gone well for any of them, but all three had never been big believers. In fact, Rose, who had gone in knowing that this exam would yield her worst grade, walked out of the exam with a very positive attitude, just happy that she would never have to take a class with Professor Trelawney again. Arithmancy, which neither Scorpius nor Albus took, went very well for Rose, since it was one of her best subjects. Astronomy was also fine, though both boys complained about being blinded by the amount of squinting they had had to do during the practical just to see through the telescope.

On Thursday morning, Rose woke already talking to herself, repeating various facts for History of Magic over and over again in her mind. This was the only way she knew to study for Professor Binns's class, but fortunately she wasn't too terrible at it. This test also didn't have a practical section, and so all the fifth years arrived in the Great Hall only to take a seat at one of the small, individual desks, and begin their test in complete silence.

After a few questions on the founding fathers of Hogwarts, which were fairly straight forward, there was another series of questions on Binns's favorite topic, goblin rebellions. This was the longest part of the exam, and Rose was right in the middle of it when she heard the double doors open behind her. Turning slightly in her seat, she saw that Shunpike, walking crookedly and his hair tousled as usual, had walked in, and was making his way through a row of desks to Professor Binns, who was floating around a giant grandfather clock at the front of the hall.

Rose watched closely as Shunpike whispered something to the ghost, who then turned to face his students and said, "Scorpius Malfoy? Scorpius Malfoy, where are you please?"

Looking at Scorpius, who was right across from Rose in the row adjacent to hers, she saw him reluctantly raise his hand for the two teachers. "Ah yes, there you are," Shunpike said as he began to walk back through the hall in the direction of Scorpius.

"Mr. Malfoy," Professor Binns began to explain. "Professor Shunpike has come to escort you to the Headmistress's office. I am told it is of the utmost importance, and thus you will not be permitted to finish your exam."

"But sir –" Scorpius started to say, but Shunpike had arrived by his desk and now held up a hand to stop him.

All across the hall, students began whispering to each other in surprise and curiosity, nobody having any idea what was going on, but clearly interested upon hearing how serious the situation was. With her eyes on Scorpius, Rose's mouth gaped open around the same time his did, but neither had time to say anything to the other before Shunpike had put a hand on his arm, pulling him up from his seat.

As the two started walking away, Rose craned her neck to watch Scorpius go, who kept glancing back at her, looking just as confused as everyone else. Once he had gone, however, Professor Binns stated firmly, "As for the rest of you, you may go back to writing your exams. I suggest that you do not dilly-dally any further, as no extra time will be allotted for this interruption." He then flew through the aisle between where Rose was and where Scorpius had been before, until he arrived at Scorpius's empty desk, where he pointed his wand at the incomplete test and caused it to burst into flames, leaving only a small pile of ashes as proof that it had ever even been there.

Rose gulped, not having any idea what to think, before she looked to Al, who was a few seats in front of her in Scorpius's old row. He too looked taken aback, and mouthed to Rose what she presumed to be, "What just happened?"

Shrugging, she mouthed back, "I've no idea." Knowing that there was nothing they could do or find out yet, both of them went back to their tests, though they were no longer thinking clearly. Rose, so worried about Scorpius, ended up splattering ink all over nearly ever page on the exam, making some of her answers unreadable. For once, this didn't even concern her, as she just wanted to finish as quickly as possible so that she could go off and find Scorpius.

After what felt like an eternity, all students were finally dismissed, and Rose and Al rushed out of the hall and made a run for McGonagall's office. Once up the six flights of stairs, some of which they had had to retake since they didn't go to the right place the first time, Rose and Al arrived on the seventh floor and turned in the opposite direction of the Gryffindor common room. A few steps down the hallway they found the large gargoyle that hid the spiral staircase that led to the office. Rose had only gone up the escalator-like steps once before, just after Filch's murder, and had a feeling that Scorpius's first time would be even more unpleasant.

"What do you think the password is?" Rose asked frantically, pacing in front of the gargoyle like a maniac.

"Don't bother," Al said as he sat down against the wall across from Rose. "I'm sure McGonagall's already sealed it. James said she nearly always does whenever's she's talking to a student inside. Nobody can get in and nobody can get out."

Rose shook her head in frustration. "No!" she cried. "There must be another way!"

"Rose, calm down," Albus said, reaching out his arms for her. She was beyond worried at this point, as it had been a long time since Scorpius had been taken from the hall, and there were already rumors all across the school that he was either being severely punished for something, or worse, expelled. There was no proof for any of this of course, but it had still managed to put Rose on edge. "They'll be out soon enough," Al added. "I think it's best if we just wait."

Finally listening to her best mate, Rose took a few deep breaths to try and calm down before she sat on the floor next to Albus and waited for Scorpius to show himself. "What do you think it is?" she asked quietly, fishing for an answer that might offer some sort of reassurance. All of the discomfort she had been feeling when around Albus for the last month had faded away now that they were reunited with the same goal of being there for Scorpius.

"My guess is as good as yours," Al said, "But it didn't look good."

Rose shut her eyes, since she knew that Al was right. McGonagall wouldn't have wanted Scorpius to be pulled out of an examination unless whatever it was she needed to speak to him about actually was of the utmost importance, and that was nearly always a bad thing.

The two of them, fully of mutual anxiety, sat together a little while longer, until finally they heard movement coming from behind the statue. Standing up, they faced the menacingly still, winged creature and watched it turn itself and present a familiarly handsome, blond boy, standing beside an equally unappealing, pimple-faced straggler. Once back on the ground, Shunpike pushed Scorpius off the steps and pointed his wand at his head, ready to lead him somewhere.

"What's going on?" Rose blurted out, making Shunpike and Scorpius look up to find her and Albus waiting expectantly for them.

Seeing Scorpius, Rose realized that any life left in his eyes was now completely gone, and he looked like somebody who had nothing to live for anymore. Underneath his eyes were tear-stained, rosy cheeks, and his light hair was falling down in front of his face. He was remaining silent, and Rose assumed that Shunpike had told him not to say a word to anyone.

"Scorpius, please," Rose begged of him, not backing down. Behind her, Al had a hand wrapped around her wrist, and was trying to get her to back off so that she could make room for Scorpius and Shunpike to walk past.

Keeping her eyes firmly on Scorpius, Rose shook Al off and waited for any kind of explanation that the former could give her. After a moment, Scorpius looked straight back at her and raised his eyebrows the tiniest bit, making Rose focus on only his face. Below it, his right hand had grabbed onto hers, and he was very subtly working his way up to her ring finger, where the black stone he had given her still laid. He then gently pulled the ring off, all without saying a word, and slyly dropped it into his pant pocket. Then, just before Shunpike put his hand between the two to break them apart, Scorpius leaned forward and touched his forehead to Rose's. It was the simplest of gestures, but somehow Rose knew that that was his way of telling her that he loved her.

Once Rose broke away, and just as Shunpike was about to lead Scorpius back down the hallway, Al put a hand on Shunpike's back, stopping him, and asked, "Professor, will you please tell us where you're going, and what's happening? He's our best friend." Al had a lot more leeway with Shunpike than Rose did, and he too was determined to get some answers.

"Mr. Malfoy," Shunpike explained, "Is being taken to one of Hogwarts' tower cells. I am sorry to report that he has been accused for murdering Argus Filch."

Rose and Albus went silent then, as they had never expected to hear such words about Scorpius. As he and Shunpike walked off toward the moving staircases, Rose stared after them and searched Scorpius's face for some sign of truth, but it was like trying to read a white blank page. He was just as clueless as any, and left Al and Rose with no idea what was going on, and no idea what to believe. She knew that Scorpius loved her, and she had promised him that she would stay with him forever, but forever had never felt so far away.


	10. A Veritable Theorem

_**Note: **__So, this is it: the final chapter of Part 1. As warned in the first chapter, there will be four parts to this story, so __**it is not over**__. Still, I will be switching POV's to Scorpius come Part 2. (Part 3 will follow Albus, for those of you who are wondering, and Part 4 I'll keep as a surprise.) Also, this chapter is _extremely_ long, so I've taken the liberty to split it into defined sections, for those of you who won't want to read the entire thing in one sitting. Hope you enjoy!_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**10 – A Veritable Theorem**

_Section 1_**  
**

"What did he just say?" Rose asked Albus frantically. She hadn't even had a chance to breathe yet, though Shunpike and Scorpius were already long gone. Now, she was standing exactly where they had left her in the seventh floor hallway, a few feet away from Al, hoping that everything that she had just seen and heard had been a dream. It just couldn't be real, and if it was, it couldn't be true… could it?

When Al failed to answer her, Rose turned straight to him and asked even more loudly, "WHAT DID HE JUST _SAY?_"

"Rose," Al said cautiously, his hands held in mid-air as if he was surrendering to an army or speaking to someone who was clearly insane. "Let's just think about this for a minute," he suggested.

Rose ran a hand through her wild hair and took a few paces across the hall before she stopped, staring at the staircases where she had last seen Scorpius, and stated simply, "No."

Al, confused, asked, "No?"

Rose shook her head and began to explain, still sounding panicked, "No, I'm not going to _think_ about it. I've been _thinking_ my entire life." Right now, at this moment, she didn't want to be the girl who _could_ perform every spell in the book. She wanted to be the girl who actually _did_ perform every spell, no matter the consequences. "This can't be true. But if it is, then we've got to do something about it. Now."

Then, without giving her actions any thought whatsoever, Rose quickly walked over to the gargoyle that would lead her to McGonagall's office and then started wracking her brain, trying to figure out what the password might be.

"Rose, it's pointless," she heard Al say from behind her. "You're never going to get in. Let's just talk about this, figure things out." He was not normally the logical one in the group, but somebody had to fill the position since Rose seemed to be out of the running.

"I _will_ get in," Rose said confidently. "I just need…" but she was interrupted by the familiar sound of clashing pots and pans coming from behind a tapestry. Only moments later, Peeves popped his head out from behind it, holding a set of stolen dishes from the kitchen, too curious to remain hidden any longer.

"It's not going to wo-ork," he sang merrily as he floated toward Rose, his face looking cocky and his hands crossed behind his back. Rose, irritated by him, sighed and gave a look to Al that begged for his help. Just as Al was about to say something to distract the poltergeist, however, Peeves flew right past Rose and up to the top of the hidden staircase, then yelled down at them, "Unless of course you could turn into a bird and fly up here yourself!"

He quickly reappeared and flew close to Rose, the two of them face-to-face, and said, "But I don't see that happening, do you?"

Normally, Rose would have been infuriated by Peeves' obnoxious and unnecessary behavior, but he had just given her the perfect idea, the one she had been looking for all along. Smiling to herself, she whispered, "That's it." Then, more loudly, she repeated, "That's _it!"_

"What?" Al and Peeves asked simultaneously.

The two then watched as Rose ignored Peeves' presence, pushing past him to get closer to the gargoyle, where she opened her mouth and said, "Animagus." She knew it was the correct password before anything happened, because McGonagall herself was an Animagus. Plus, transfiguring oneself into an animal was a very rare and difficult piece of magic to perform, so most people wouldn't even consider it an option, and therefore wouldn't think to use it as a password.

Slowly, the gargoyle nodded to Rose and leapt aside, revealing a wall that cracked into two, opening up to three small steps that Rose jumped onto. She looked over to Al, who was on the other side of Peeves, and asked, "Are you coming or what?"

Albus immediately nodded and ran toward her, but Peeves blocked his way, crossing his arms and saying, "Sorry, but that ride is full."

Rose and Al looked to each other, Rose with an apologetic smile as the stairs began to turn themselves around the mid-post, bringing her up the tower. "It's okay," Al said as she disappeared, the entrance closing from behind her. "I'll stay and deal with him." It was clear that Peeves intended on making things very difficult for the two of them, so somebody needed to stay and try to ward him off.

Suddenly finding herself nervous to be showing up to McGonagall's office so blatantly unannounced, Rose finally took a full three breaths to calm down. When she reached the next floor, she stepped off her stair and looked forward at the large and imposing door that stood directly in front of her. She had always felt relatively comfortable around McGonagall, as the Headmistress was logical and reasonable just like her, but now Rose was going in to speak with her not knowing what she would say, or how she would be able to control her overwhelming emotions. For someone who liked to be thoroughly prepared for everything that came her way, this was a frightening position to be in. Still, it would be worth it if she could, at the very least, find out what was really going on.

Rose's hands were soon on the griffin-shaped knockers that were connected to the well-polished oak door, and she could hear nothing coming from the other side. She had already tried knocking, but nobody had answered, so she decided to once again take action into her own hands. Slowly turning the handles, the doors flew open to the brightly lit, circular room that she had been in only once before.

It looked exactly the same as she remembered it, with various windows all with their own perfect view of the Quidditch pitch, the Black Lake, or the mountains on the other side of the castle. Looking over at the claw-footed desk that sat in the center, Rose was surprised to see that McGonagall, nor her cat-disguised self, were there. The chair by the desk was empty, and the desk lay perfectly still, with only a few well-organized piles of papers upon in. Glancing around the room for some sign of the Headmistress, Rose looked past the cages of animals and numerous bookcases that were all very similar to those found in the Transfiguration classroom. She didn't see McGonagall anywhere, and soon even the old Headmasters began looking around curiously from inside their portraits, mimicking Rose's actions.

"I'm afraid you've just missed her, Ms. Weasley," said a voice from behind one of the frames. Rose turned toward it to find that it came from the largest of all the portraits, and the most obvious one, hanging directly above McGonagall's desk.

Albus Dumbledore had never spoken to Rose before, as he had been asleep the last time she had been in the office. Surprised that the infamous wizard knew who she was, and confused about how McGonagall could have left the office without Rose or Albus seeing her go, Rose said to Dumbledore, "Sir, I – I don't understand. Where has Professor McGonagall gone?"

"Ah yes, well she has gone off to the Owlery to send an urgent letter to a Mr. Harry Potter. I must apologize for her absence, as I'm afraid it was upon my request that she left only moments ago," Dumbledore answered, leaning forward in his chair toward Rose, his arms crossed and sitting comfortably.

Rose was taken aback by how honest he was, letting her in on every detail. "Right," she said. Still confused though, she added, "Er, if you don't mind my asking, how is it that you know my name?"

Dumbledore chuckled quietly and said, "My dear, you are the perfect representation of the two of your parents. Of course, I cannot say that I knew them particularly well, yet I did know _of_ them a great deal. It would have been impossible to mistake you for anyone else." His words seemed ironic, but there was something about everything he said that made perfect sense.

Rose smiled, for she took anything that related her to her parents as a compliment. Then, curious to hear what else Dumbledore might have to say, Rose sat down in the spare seat across from McGonagall's chair, on the opposite side of her desk. Bringing her thoughts back to the task at hand, Rose looked up at the old, wrinkled, and white-haired man in the portrait and asked, "You said that Professor McGonagall left to write to Harry?"

"Yes," Dumbledore nodded. "She has some questions for him that need answering right away."

"Questions?" asked Rose. "About Scorpius?" Harry was more of a father to Scorpius than Draco had ever been, and McGonagall may have wanted to hear his side of whatever story Shunpike had told her.

"Young Mr. Malfoy may be a topic of conversation, yes," Dumbledore agreed. "I take it that is the reason you are here as well?" Rose hadn't yet mentioned why she had come, and Dumbledore wouldn't have had any way of knowing that she and Scorpius were a couple, or even that they were the best of friends.

"Yes," Rose replied. Dumbledore had been honest with her up to this point, so it seemed only fair that she be truthful to him as well. Glancing down at her nervous hands, one of which felt much lighter than normal without Scorpius's ring, Rose thought about what she would say next. Looking back up at Dumbledore confidently, Rose began, "I heard word that he's been accused for the murder of Mr. Filch. I'd like to know what evidence is being held against him."

Dumbledore looked down at Rose's pouting, watering eyes, before he said, "I'm very sorry, but it would not be my place to answer such a question. That explanation will be saved for Professor McGonagall, if she deems it fit to supply one for you."

Rose sighed, disappointed. She was getting more impatient by the minute, and was trying to ignore the pressure she felt tearing at her heart. One way or another, Scorpius had lied to her, and he was the one person she had been sure she could trust. She quickly brushed this thought aside, for she knew that there must be a reason for everything that had happened. She just needed to wait a little longer to find out what it was.

"If I may, Ms. Weasley," Dumbledore said quietly so as not to disturb Rose too greatly. "I would advise you not to lose trust in those whom you love, especially those who were born without such a blessing themselves."

Yet again, Rose had no idea how Dumbledore had seemingly read her thoughts to see how much she cared about Scorpius, and exactly what she was afraid of regarding her relationship with him. Speaking with Dumbledore was so surreal, as if Rose was having a conversation with someone of a higher power; someone who knew all, could see all, and could even feel all.

Feeling comfortable to say anything to him, Rose asked, "But how am I to convince others of the truth if I don't even know what it is myself?" She needed to defend Scorpius in his trial, but she wasn't sure that she had quite that much faith in him after all.

"Well now, that it is a very wise question to ask, for it is one which does not have a definite answer," Dumbledore said. "Alas, I believe that you, Rose, are wise enough to answer it yourself. You already know what you believe, and what is _not_ the truth. As for the complete truth - well, it will act. Though I must say, often times one must make it do so."

Rose took a few moments to comprehend his words. If she followed the things he said to do, then she knew that her instincts would lead her back to trusting Scorpius, no matter what anyone else believed. He had always pulled through whenever she believed in him, and this case shouldn't be any different. The only question now was how to make all others believe in him too.

"Thank you, sir," Rose said, to which she added a minute later, "But, if I may ask, why are you helping me?" Dumbledore seemed so calm considering what had just gone on in this office, and it was very generous of him to offer up his time to speak with Rose.

Dumbledore was smiling from cheek to cheek as he answered, "I once said that I would never truly leave this school, not until there were none left who were loyal to me. I would say the same thing now, and that is why I am still here. And as long as that is the case, help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it."

As soon as Dumbledore's sentence was finished, Rose heard footsteps coming from outside the room, followed by the sound of the doorknob turning. Just as Rose was about to look to see who was there, Dumbledore said one last thing. "Oh and Rose," he added. "Never be ashamed to ask for a little help." He then winked at her and leaned back in his chair, shutting his eyes closed at the exact moment that the double doors at the other side of the office swung open.

Professor McGonagall entered the room with a very powerful air about her. Her long, flowing robes were gliding across the floor with ease as she took two large steps before noticing Rose, who had stood from her seat to greet her. "Ms. Weasley," she said. "I thought you may be here."

"I'm sorry for coming without your permission Professor, but I needed to speak with you as soon as possible," Rose blurted out frantically, hoping that McGonagall would provide her with the explanation that Dumbledore hadn't been able to say.

McGonagall continued to walk toward her desk, turning around Rose and motioning for her to sit back down. Once she too took a seat across from Rose, she said, "If you are here once again to inform me of my misguided beliefs, please do not burden me with the embarrassment it so brings."

Rose blushed guiltily upon remembering that she had acted rashly with McGonagall once before, when she had offered up proof that Colin Creevey had also been innocent. This time though, she had no proof, and she knew that she needed to swallow her pride until she found some. "Again, I apologize for acting out of my place at any time before," Rose said, "But I do not plan on doing so again." To herself, she thought, _at least not yet._

"Then by all means," McGonagall offered, "Say what you'd like say, Ms. Weasley."

"Thank you," Rose acknowledged before going on. "I'd like to know what evidence Professor Shunpike gave to accuse Scorpius Malfoy of murdering Mr. Filch."

McGonagall looked at Rose reproachfully. Rose knew that it wasn't really her place to be asking these questions or receiving answers for them, but she had gotten herself involved in the murder from before McGonagall had even known about it, and by now she considered any issues that Scorpius ever went through to also be her own.

"Well," McGonagall sighed. "I suppose it is only fair to tell you, considering what that evidence was."

On the edge of her seat now, Rose listened intently for McGonagall to go on. She also noticed that the professor's eyes were red, as if she was sad about something. McGonagall was always very strict and apathetic, but it couldn't be easy to see her favorite student in an unexpected and unflattering light.

After pushing her spectacles higher up on her nose, McGonagall continued, "Professor Shunpike has reason to believe that Mr. Malfoy was in the Forbidden Forest the night before you and Mr. Scamander discovered Mr. Filch. His reason is because of a ring that he claims belonged to Scorpius before he in fact gave it to you, Ms. Weasley."

Rose looked back down at her hand, finally understanding why Scorpius had taken the ring from her. Though she had no idea where he had gotten it in the first place, he obviously didn't want her to be questioned for having it now. To McGonagall, Rose asked, "Do you mean to say that the ring came from the Forest?"

"Yes," McGonagall replied. "Professor Shunpike seems to be under that impression. I, however, am still waiting for confirmation from its previous owner."

Rose, now with access to more information than she had anticipated, tried to gather her thoughts. If Scorpius had gotten the ring from the forest, it made sense that it had been that night, since he had given it to Rose only a day later. If that was the case though, why had he been there at all? And if McGonagall had just been writing to the ring's previous owner, and being that Dumbledore had claimed that she was sending a letter to Harry, did that mean that the ring had once belonged to Harry? All that aside, what did this ring have to do with the murder, and why was it suddenly so important?

"Ms. Weasley? Rose?" McGonagall asked, leaning toward Rose, who was blinking uncontrollably and looking every which way for some sort of sign that would tell her how to piece things back together again.

Hearing McGonagall's voice in the far-off background, Rose pulled herself from her own thoughts and answered, "Yes? I'm sorry, what was the question?"

"I had asked if you can in fact confirm that Mr. Malfoy gave you the ring soon after Mr. Filch's murder?" McGonagall asked again. She hadn't noticed that Rose was no longer wearing the ring, but Rose supposed that that didn't matter much. She had all but admitted that Scorpius had given it to her by acknowledging its existence when McGonagall had mentioned it before.

Deciding to tell the truth, since it couldn't possibly help if she didn't, Rose answered, "Yes, I can confirm that. But I'm not sure what correlation that has to Filch's murder." Unless the ring could somehow help a person perform the Killing Curse, it didn't make any sense to Rose why that would be enough evidence to make Scorpius a prime suspect. After all, Rose knew for a fact that if he had been outside that night, he hadn't been the only one.

McGonagall sighed, and explained slowly and much more empathetically than before, "It is the only evidence any of us have been able to find. You must understand, Rose, that Mr. Filch's murder has given Hogwarts a very dangerous reputation, one that I do not enjoy having. Until I am able to find his murderer, no one at Hogwarts is safe, and I need my school to be safe. I do not wish to accuse Mr. Malfoy of anything wrong, nor do I believe that he has in fact done anything of the sort, but he presents the only evidence that I have; that any of us have."

Rose immediately felt sympathy for McGonagall, who looked heartbroken. Finally able to see past her exterior, Rose now found it incredibly apparent that McGonagall had had a very rough year. Her face, though it was normally home to a myriad of wrinkles, looked even older than usual, with sizable bags under her drooping eyes and grey hair that was turning whiter by the minute. Rose had felt the same danger that her professor spoke of, and she too desperately wanted that feeling to go away.

"I want to believe Scorpius," McGonagall said, using Scorpius's first name this time, showing more affection for him than she had expressed before. "But sadly, I am not the only one who has to. And neither are you."

Rose nodded. The two had reached a common ground with their mutual love of Scorpius, but neither seemed to know how best to protect him. Rose knew that despite whatever it was that he had lied about, she'd continue to believe in him in her heart, as would McGonagall. In order for others to do the same though, they would need concrete proof of either Scorpius's innocence or, even better, another suspect's guilt.

Rose stood up from her seat a second time now, for McGonagall had said all that she had to say for today. "Thank you, Professor," Rose said. McGonagall smiled sadly in response, and as Rose turned to go, she remembered to ask one more thing. "Oh, Professor, I was wondering when Scorpius's trial will be?" As a suspect of murder, he would have to go to wizarding court, which would most likely be held at Hogwarts unless it had more supporting evidence, in which case it would be brought to the Ministry.

"First thing Monday morning," McGonagall answered, after which Rose left her office, closing the doors behind her. Now it was Thursday night, which meant that Rose had a full three days to find some way to get Scorpius off the case.

Her head was spinning as she made her way back to the hallway where Al was waiting for her. Peeves was long gone by now, surely having found something better to do. Al was pacing across the hall when Rose stepped off the staircase, and he looked up just in time to see her return. "So, what did she tell you?" he asked curiously.

Rose, who didn't want to stop and talk any longer, walked past Al toward the moving staircases. Not knowing what else to do, Al followed and asked yet again, "Rose, what's going on?"

Blinking multiple times to try and clear her head some, Rose was able to spit out, "Ring. The ring he gave me. It was from the Forbidden Forest. He was there that night." Her sentences were short and choppy, many not even full, as if she couldn't form one properly.

"Wait, you mean the night before the murder? Scorpius was there?" Al asked. He had always been a fast learner, and seemed to be able to follow Rose's explanations, even though they were unclear.

"Yes," Rose answered as she stared down at all the different staircases in the large hallway, watching them randomly change positions, as she tried to make a decision on which to take. She wasn't sure exactly where she wanted to go, but she knew she needed to go somewhere. As soon as she spotted a staircase which seemed to be going upward, Rose headed straight for it, some part of her body telling her that this was the one to take. She had never gone higher in the castle than the seventh floor, but a part of her knew that this would be where Shunpike had taken Scorpius, and she desperately needed to speak with the latter of them.

Sounding worried, Albus raced after her and called out, "Rose, where are you going?"

"I need to find him," Rose said as she approached the staircase. Unfortunately, she was quickly blocked by Al, who jumped up onto it, stopping her from taking a step further.

"Rose, please, think about this," he begged her.

"No!" Rose said, once again not wanting to think; it was so much easier not to. "He lied, Al. He lied to both of us. He lied to me." She believed _in_ Scorpius, of that she was sure, but at this moment she wasn't convinced that she trusted him. After all, he could easily have told her where he had found the ring, as it had been quite the coincidence that it had been that same night, but he hadn't said a word. She would do everything she could to get him out of this situation, but she first needed to know why he had omitted the truth from her.

"What, you think he's actually guilty?" Al asked. He and Scorpius had been best friends ever since their first year at Hogwarts. If Scorpius had in fact been guilty, he wouldn't just be betraying Rose; he'd be betraying Al too.

"No, of course not," Rose said sternly. "He's _not_ guilty. But he still lied, and I need to know why. After that, I'll do whatever it takes. I'll find a way to make this right."

"Look, you're just going to get yourself into trouble if you try to talk to him now," Al insisted. "If somebody finds you, you'll never be able to help him. Whatever we decide to do, we've got to do it without him. We've got to trust that it'll be worth it."

"And how do you suppose we trust that? How do we trust _him_?" Rose asked. Al had stepped off the stairs now, and the two were talking just beside the staircase, in the corner of the hallway.

"You're the most loyal person I know, Rose," Al explained. "So act on that. Don't question it." He knew Rose so well, sometimes she thought even better than she knew herself. Over the past month, she had been having difficulty trusting him, and now Scorpius, yet Al was right. Somewhere inside her, she knew that both of them needed her, and that they deserved her loyalty.

Rose took a deep breath and nodded. "Alright, then I suppose we just need to come up with a plan." If they were going to do this without Scorpius's help, they would need to find a different suspect to accuse. The only problem was, Rose had a feeling that Al may not agree with her prime target.

"How about we sleep on it first?" Al suggested.

Rose laughed, as if this was the most ridiculous idea she had ever heard. "Al, Scorpius goes on trial Monday morning, and I have my Muggle Studies exam tomorrow. We have to think of something _now_ if we want to even have a chance in this."

"I know," Al pressed on, "But we can meet up for breakfast tomorrow, come up with something, then I'll go do some research while you take the exam. It's not going to do either of us any good if we try to come up with something this late." Rose hadn't realized it before, but it was pitch black outside. She had been in McGonagall's office all afternoon, and by now they had even missed supper.

"Fine," she sighed, "But we'd better hope that we wake up with something to go off of." She then walked past Al and headed for the Gryffindor common room, but was stopped when he called her name from behind.

"Rose!" Al yelled. As Rose turned around, she saw his scared expression. They had both been trying to hide their emotions, but underneath they were terrified of what may happen to their best mate. "It's going to be okay," Al said reassuringly.

Suddenly, Rose's eyes became watery and she found herself walking back to Al, where she collapsed into his arms, letting him give her that giant hug that she so needed right now. Blocking out the skepticism she had been feeling for him lately, Rose held on to Al for a long moment before they broke apart and went their separate ways.

Back in the Gryffindor common room, Rose was once again mystified by how late it was. Nearly everyone was already in their dormitories, except for one head that Rose saw poking above the top of the couch that sat in front of a dying fire. Knowing that she wouldn't be able to sleep even if she tried, Rose made her way over to the tall James and sat down next to him.

Sitting up when he noticed her, James immediately rubbed his eyes and asked sleepily, "Rose, you okay? I heard about Scorpius."

Surprised by his knowledge, Rose asked, "Who told you?" This was not the kind of rumor she wanted to be spread, as it could ruin Scorpius's reputation for a very long time.

"No one. I just, I saw him in the hallway," James gave as an excuse, though he was careful not to make eye contact with Rose.

"That's not true," Rose stated. When Shunpike and Scorpius had left McGonagall's office, Al and Rose had been the only ones around. James hadn't been anywhere in sight. "Who told you, James? And please, tell me that the whole school doesn't already know."

"They don't," James said, and this time he seemed confident and truthful. After a reproachful breath, as he obviously didn't want to tell Rose who had told him, James added, "I only found out from the one person."

"Who?" Rose asked again. "James, please, it's important."

James looked over at the fireplace as he mumbled, "Lysander."

Rose groaned in frustration and quickly stood from her seat. She had an incredible urge to speak with Lysander about this, since he clearly deserved a piece of her mind. He had only just told Rose that he still had feelings for her, so of course it was only fitting that he would relish in the thought of Scorpius, the one whom he deemed his competition, being sent to Azkaban for a murder.

"Where is he?" Rose asked. She had been slightly calmer moments before, but now her fury was back, and Lysander was the perfect person to take all her anger out on.

"I don't know," James said. "He's probably back in the Ravenclaw common room." Again, he looked as if he was keeping something from Rose as he failed to look her in the eye.

"James, I'm going to find him whether you help me or not," Rose said. "So you might as well give me a hint so that I don't stay up all night searching." She knew how to be intimidating when she needed to be, and James nearly always answered to her then.

"Try the Astronomy Tower," James offered. "It's his favorite spot in the castle." Sighing once more, he took out his Invisibility Cloak from its spot beside him, threw it at Rose, and added, "Here, take this. You don't want to get caught now."

"Thanks," Rose said sincerely before she turned on the spot and ran back out of the portrait hole. Once in the hallway, she wrapped the Cloak around herself, invisible to anyone who might be roaming the halls. It was a long way to the tower, which required one to head all the way down to the Entrance Hall before climbing three steep flights of spiral staircases up to the corridor that led to it. Rose, who was working on very little sleep and barely any food, dragged herself all the way to the top, ignoring any urge to fall to the ground and close her eyes. Whenever she had a goal, she would find a way to accomplish it.

Once in the narrow corridor, she pulled off the Cloak and buried it beneath her robes. She had needed it to get past any teachers in the Entrance Hall, but there was nobody who would find her here. Then, she walked a few more steps to the top of the tower and found Lysander standing on the edge by a railing, his head looking up at the starry sky.

Shaking her head in defiance, she stormed up to him from behind while yelling, "You foul, loathsome, evil little cockroach!" As he turned around, surprised to see her (or anybody) there, she hit him hard on the shoulder.

Lysander quickly buckled over in pain, asking her, "What exactly are you referring to now?"

"Hmm, I'm not sure," Rose said sarcastically. "Maybe the fact that you've been telling people rumors that aren't yours to share!"

The two could barely see each other through the darkness, but Rose could just make out his light hair, which reflected perfectly against the stars. He was incredibly handsome, and yet that seemed to give Rose all the more reason to believe how arrogant he was.

"Spreading rumors?" Lysander asked, now angry himself. "Rose, I only told James because I thought he ought to know. You know, just in case _you_ were upset, and needed somebody else who knew what was going on. Someone who could be there for you."

His explanation seemed reasonable, but Rose still wasn't convinced. "Really? Really, Lysander?" she asked. "Only a week after you tell me that you're apparently not over me, that you still have feelings for me, you go and try to find out all of Scorpius's secrets, because then maybe you've got a chance. I mean honestly, are you really that self-absorbed as to think that I might be attracted to someone like that?"

Lysander furrowed his eyebrows and opened his mouth in shock. "What on _earth_ are you talking about? I didn't _find_ out his secret! Peeves told me! He was the one trying to spread it around the school, but I made sure he didn't by using a tongue-tying curse on him. Then I went straight to James and told him, but I assure you that _nobody else_ knows. I didn't even tell Lorcan."

Rose, though still concerned, believed him about this. Peeves most definitely would have tried his best to stir up trouble, that part there was no denying. Feeling like an idiot, Rose sighed and asked in a much kinder tone, "Why'd you even stop him?" Lysander had never liked Scorpius, and he had been making his life miserable every chance he got. This would have been the perfect opportunity for sabotage.

Lysander took a deep breath and sat down, leaning against the railing. As Rose followed the motion and made herself comfortable in the spot next to him, Lysander said, "It's not worth it. You're always going to love him, Rose. I know that now."

Rose laughed, because it seemed so ironic that Lysander would realize this as soon as Rose began to question it. "I wouldn't be so sure," she said. It seemed as if every time she came close to restoring her faith in Scorpius, something told her not to believe everything so easily.

"You can't be serious?" Lysander asked, surprised to hear Rose admit such a thing about the boy she had been fighting for all year. "I mean, people get falsely accused all the time. That doesn't mean they're guilty."

"I just don't understand why he couldn't have told me that he was there that night," Rose said, covering her face with her hands. She was exhausted, yet her mind was still spinning, pulling her thoughts in various directions, all of them beyond her control.

"Well," Lysander started, "Sometimes people do things that are wrong without knowing that they're wrong, or they leave things out without ever realizing that they should have said something."

Rose was captivated by how honest Lysander was being, and how convincing he sounded. "You seem like quite the expert."

Lysander laughed, but not happily. It was more pitiful than it was cheerful. "My dad was a bit crazy, but he had no idea. He didn't think that what he was doing was wrong until I told him it was; until I turned him in for it."

Rose had never heard the story of Rolf Scamander before, nor did she feel that it was her place to ask for details. Even with the general idea, she could understand where Lysander was coming from. It also explained a lot, specifically about how calm and collected he had acted after witnessing Filch's murder. He had been through that before, with his father.

"Do you ever blame him?" Rose asked.

Lysander thought for a moment before answering, "Honestly, no. He didn't know what he was doing, and he thought that it was okay. How could I blame him for that?"

Finally finding the courage to say exactly what she felt, Rose mumbled, "I want to believe him. I _want_ to trust him."

"Then believe him," Lysander stated. "Trust him. Don't make it so complicated. In the end, if you're wrong, then you can blame it on him. But if you don't trust him now, and if you don't do anything to help, then later on _you'll_ be the one who's wrong."

"He just keeps so many secrets already," Rose added, thinking of how Scorpius hadn't told her about his mother, and later hadn't told her about his insomnia. She had had to coax it all out of him, one piece of information at a time.

Lysander smiled and explained, "Some people aren't very good at letting other people in. I know I'm not."

Rose looked up at him and also smiled, though she couldn't see his face very well. "You're getting loads better," she said genuinely.

"Thanks," Lysander said, and Rose had a feeling that he was blushing. "But anyway," he continued, "If you need any help in whatever it is you're going to do, let me know."

Rose nodded and said, "Actually, I do have one question."

"Shoot."

"How does the Ministry prove that someone's guilty?" Rose asked.

"Normally with a potion called Veritaserum," Lysander answered. "That's what they used on my dad. Though it's really rare, and really difficult to make. The Ministry only has so much in supply. They wouldn't use it on Scorpius unless they thought they had to."

"Good," Rose said. "I don't want to use it on Scorpius. I have someone else in mind."

"Are you sure you can brew a potion like that that quickly?" Lysander asked with skepticism.

"I can't," Rose answered. "But I happen to know somebody who's referred to as a Potions Master."

Lysander chuckled and said, "Well, good luck." He then stood up and held out a hand for Rose.

She took it gratefully and he pulled her to a standing position. "Thank you," she said, her hand still in his. "And I'm sorry. For everything." Things had gotten way out of hand between the two of them, and Rose knew that she held a lot of the blame.

"As am I," Lysander said. Then, more softly than he had ever been before, he leaned forward and gave Rose a small kiss on the cheek. "Goodbye Rose," he said.

"Goodbye Lysander," Rose responded, before she turned around, threw on James's Cloak, and descended back into the depths of the sleeping castle.

* * *

_Section 2_

After getting very little sleep, Rose rushed through her Muggle Studies exam as fast as she could. She had met Albus briefly at breakfast and had told him to look for all the information on Veritaserum that he could find. She had left quickly though, in order to be punctual for her last OWL, and hadn't had time to explain what exactly her plan was. Now, she was running through the castle on her way to the Great Hall where Al was waiting for her, extremely anxious to see what he had found.

The usual relief felt immediately after a student finished their last exam was completely lost on Rose as she passed by a group of screaming seventh years. She had much too much on her mind at the moment, and exams seemed like the least of her problems. Plus, Muggle Studies was a simple subject that Rose was certain she had done well in, so it hadn't caused her much anxiety.

Al was at their usual table, a pile of books sitting to his right and his favorite, the Half-Blood Prince's potions text, open right in front of him. "So, what do you think?" Rose asked as she took a seat across from him, not bothering to say hello. "Can you brew it?" This was what Rose was really anxious about.

Al sighed and looked up quickly. "Hey," he said. "Er, I'm not sure. It's really specific, and from what I've read it's difficult to make as well. I don't feel like I have enough experience." Al never liked to admit to something he couldn't do, but this was not a matter he wished to leave in his own hands. Scorpius deserved a better plan than that.

Rose hunched her shoulders over, relaxing her previously tense position on the wooden bench. Lysander had already told her how difficult this would be, but it was the only thing she could think of that would act as cold, hard proof, which was what they needed. McGonagall wouldn't be allowed to settle for anything less. Still, Al had only brewed so many potions before, and his wand couldn't help him with it. Thinking silently, Rose remembered one other person who spent a lot of time in the dungeon, brewing impossible potions that looked nothing short of perfect once made. If Rose could somehow convince them to help her, she and Al may just have a chance after all.

Smiling, Rose stood up and walked away, ordering to Al, "Follow me." He did as she told, dragging a couple of books with him, and Rose glimpsed a sly roll of the eyes as he came. She was being secretive, but it was only because she was excited, and figured that it might be in the best interests of Al if she tried to keep her mouth shut as long as possible.

Rose first led the way to the library, which they then explored in its entirety: room to room, section to section, passing by student after student, most of whom were from Ravenclaw. Rose could have sworn that she had seen the person here before, but apparently they weren't here now. Moving right along, she had one last place in mind.

Quickly, Rose continued out of the library and headed for the moving staircases, Albus in her wake. She could hear him panting to catch up with her, gasping in frustration. He still didn't know what they were doing. "Rose, can you just explain what's going on for a minute?" he asked.

"I have an idea," Rose answered, still walking forward. She was stopped, however, when Al got closer to her and held onto her wrist. Turning around to him, she saw that he had his firm face on, so she knew that he wouldn't be letting her go very easily.

"What's the idea?" he asked intently.

Rose searched the hall, trying to find anything to distract her from having this conversation. She herself didn't like to ask for help, but Al was even worse about it. There was no way he would approve of teaming up with some stranger.

"Look," Rose started when she realized there was no way out. "You said that you couldn't do it alone, so I have an idea of somebody who could help you. Somebody who could help _us_."

Al rolled his eyes again, but Rose tried to ignore it. "Oh yeah?" he asked. "Help us do what exactly? I mean, what do you plan on using this potion for?"

This was where things got really tricky. Rose had kept this part from Al for a very definitive reason, as she knew telling him would result in an argument. They had been debating over it for months already, and both were adamant about their positions. This time, though, a side would have to be chosen if they wanted to stick together to help Scorpius.

"I'm planning to use it to prove that Shunpike is guilty," Rose stated, keeping her ground by looking fiercely at Albus. She wasn't planning on changing her mind about this, though she knew that Al would put up a good fight.

Al laughed dryly and moved his hand from Rose's wrist to her shoulder. Leaning closer and as if trying to discipline a small child, he said, "How many times do I have to tell you? Shunpike didn't do _anything._"

Rose turned her head to glare at Al's degrading handhold and shook him off from her. After she broke free, she shrugged and said, "Fine. Who did, then?"

Al at a loss for words, Rose pressed further, "If you're so sure that he _didn't_ do it, then who did? Scorpius?"

"Of course not," Al answered quickly.

"Then who?" Rose asked. "Somebody did it, Al, and he's the best suspect right now. He's our best shot."

"And what if you're wrong?" Al asked. "Then you've accused yet another innocent man for no good reason, and I've gone behind my dad's back and turned in one of his oldest friends! I don't know about you, Rose, but I don't want that on my conscience."

Rose sighed, for Al just had to bring up Harry every chance he got. "I'm _not_ wrong," Rose stated.

Still looking as if he didn't believe her, Al shook his head and said, "I won't do this to my father. I'm sorry, Rose." He then gave her a courteous smile and began to walk away in the opposite direction that Rose was headed.

Initially, Rose was too angry to go after Al. A moment later, however, she remembered that she was terrible at potions, and that there was no way she could do this alone. Bracing herself and closing her eyes, Rose called after Al, "Your father's already done it to you!" She had always liked Harry, but she was nearly positive that Al didn't know about the Elder Wand, and that meant that Harry lied to his son about something extremely important. She hadn't wanted to tell Al in this way, but it was time he knew the truth.

Al stopped walking as soon as Rose had finished her sentence, but took a while to turn back around and face her. Once he did, he stood where he was, a few meters away from Rose, and waited for her explanation. "What are you talking about?" he asked.

The air around them was hot and humid, the summer fast approaching. The two were alone in the castle hallway, though it was possible for somebody to approach from nearly any direction. Trying to take advantage of the time they had before somebody else appeared, Rose slowly walked toward Al, while asking him, "Do you remember when you fixed Hugo's wand that day in October?"

After noting Al's nod in acknowledgement, Rose continued, "Well, afterward I talked to one of Hugo's friends, Nigel Creevey, and he told me that it's impossible for a wand to be mended by another, regardless of the wizard. They're just not powerful enough."

Rose had stopped walking now, as she was closing in on Al. Looking at her with a very confused expression tainted with a modicum of fear, Al asked, "What are you saying then? And what does this have to do with my father?"

Rose bit her lip before answering, "We did some research, Nigel and Scorpius and me. We found out about this unusually powerful wand, called the Elder Wand. It's been passed down through wizarding history, and the last person it belonged to was Harry Potter. The wand's acquired by defeating another, and this summer you defeated him. The two of you dueled, and you won, and he gave you the wand. I've seen a picture of it, Al. You're the master of the Elder Wand."

Al's eyes were blank. He was blinking uncontrollably and had taken his wand from the right pocket of his jeans. Rose was still in her robes, but Al was in free dress, since he hadn't had an exam today. Holding it in his hand cautiously, he didn't refute what Rose had said, since he knew that it all made sense. Still, he seemed very curious about what this meant. "So," he started, "You're telling me that I have the most powerful wand there is?"

Nodding, Rose answered, "Yes."

"And my dad gave it to me, without telling me what it was?" Al asked.

"Yes," Rose replied. "I've no idea why, but he did. And Al, this wand is not something to be taken lightly. It's dangerous, and Harry didn't even warn you of that. I'm sure he gave it to you for a reason, just like he got Shunpike the Defense Against the Dark Arts job for a reason. Please Al, you have to believe me when I say that there's something going on here, and right now everything relates back to Shunpike. It all fits."

Al looked back up at Rose and gripped his wand tightly in his hand. Sternly, he said, "My dad would never hurt anyone."

"I know," Rose answered honestly. "But that doesn't mean Shunpike wouldn't."

A mere second later, it appeared that their time alone was cut short when Rose heard loud, stomping footsteps coming from behind her, where all the staircases were. Praying that they hadn't overheard, Rose turned around to see who it was.

"What are you two looking at?" asked Vincent Goyle, looking even more sinister than usual.

Neither Al nor Rose answered him as he spied Al, his least favorite Potter, looking at his right hand, which had curled into a tight fist around his wand. "Come on," Rose whispered to Al, glancing over at their intruder. "Let's get out of here."

"Yeah," Al agreed. "Scorpius doesn't have much time." He then walked away with Rose, the two of them leaving Goyle and running down staircase after staircase until they reached the bottom floor, otherwise known as the dungeons.

Their previous conversation now long behind them, Al asked Rose curiously, "So who exactly do you have in mind that could brew a perfect pot of Veritaserum?" He was back on Rose's side now, and seemed to be at least mildly convinced that Shunpike was the only suspect they had left.

They were at the Potions classroom now, and Rose turned the knob of the closed door and stuck her head through the crack before opening it completely. Spotting the same girl she had seen multiple times before, with the wavy black hair and bright green eyes, sitting by the far side of the room with a row of jarred ingredients on her table, Rose pointed and said, "Her."

As Al came in the nearly empty room from behind Rose and saw the girl she was referring to, who happened to be the only person inside, he went completely still. Rose had expected him to say that she wasn't good enough, that they'd need to find somebody else, but instead he didn't say a word. He was completely silent as Rose made her way toward the girl, who had her back turned to them.

"Hi," Rose said to her. She was sitting on a stool and had her head buried from view as she sniffed an open jar of conifers. Rose was going with her gut, as she had never actually heard anything about the girl, but she had seen her in the Potions classroom before, so she assumed that she was skilled at the subject.

Pausing for a moment, the girl took her time to return the jar to the table. Once she had done so, she turned ever so slightly to Rose, who was standing beside her, saw who she was, turned back to her ingredients and said, "Hello." She sounded annoyed, as if a person she despised had just interrupted her deepest thought. She was making it clear that she didn't want to talk as she said nothing else and began collecting her jars and carrying them over to a shelf at the side of the room.

Rose, insulted by the girl's lack of interest, looked to Al for reassurance, but found that he was still staring wide-eyed at the girl, a hint of a crooked smile making its way onto his face. The girl may not be interested in either of them, but Al was most certainly interested in her.

Ignoring him, Rose ran after the girl and said, "Er, excuse me, but I was wondering if I could have your name?"

She was dressed in a plain, black skirt and a vintage, patterned top as she placed the last of her jars on the top shelf and faced Rose once again. Pushing her dark bangs away from her eyes and revealing her bright green irises, she answered, "Ilana Higgs." Then, looking at Al, who still hadn't said anything, but had his own green eyes transfixed on hers, she nodded at him and said, "You're Albus Potter." Back at Rose, she furrowed her eyebrows and added, "And you are?"

Smiling at the chance to introduce herself, and being used to people immediately knowing who Al was, Rose held out her hand to shake Ilana's and answered, "Rose Weasley."

Ilana glanced at Rose's hand but didn't shake it. Yet again turning away from Rose, she raised her eyebrows and said sarcastically, "Pleasure."

After an awkward moment of silence, Rose taken aback by Ilana's rudeness, Al remaining silent, and Ilana waiting for something to be said, the latter finally spoke. "Look, I best be going," she said before pushing past Rose and heading for the door.

"Wait!" Rose yelled out instinctively. She didn't like Ilana very much so far, but that didn't change the fact that she needed her help.

"What?" Ilana asked when she turned back around.

Answering quickly so that she wouldn't have time to try to leave all over again, Rose said, "We were wondering if you could help us. We need to brew a specific potion, and we don't have much time to do it." She decided to refrain from telling her what type of potion they wanted to make, just in case Ilana refused to help.

Ilana chuckled and looked away before saying, "Sorry, but I doubt that you of all people would ever need _my_ help with something."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rose asked, her arms crossed against her chest protectively.

Brushing a hand through her hair, Ilana pointed at Rose and then Albus, saying, "You're a Weasley and a Potter. You were both born with _perfect_ lives to _perfect_ families, and I'm sure you both have _perfect_ grades in every class. Why would you need me to make one little potion for you? Can't you do that yourselves?"

Rose was about to reply with an equally insulting comment, but didn't get the chance to when Al unexpectedly opened his mouth and spat at Ilana, "Hey! You don't get to talk to us like that." He had been lost in his own world before, but now he had returned, and was sticking up for Rose, since Scorpius wasn't around to do it for him. "We may have the _pleasure_ of our famous names, but that doesn't give you the right to judge us by them. Having so-called _perfect_ lives only means that we have impossible expectations to live up to, and it doesn't make anything easier. We walk around this school with everybody staring, wondering if we'll turn out to be as brilliant as our parents, when all we really want is to just be ourselves. Meanwhile, you get to hide in the library or the Potions classroom and go completely unnoticed. Don't you _dare_ judge us just because we can't do the same."

Al had made both Rose and Ilana speechless, and as he glanced down at his pocket where his wand had been returned, he added, "We're no more powerful than anybody else, and we never will be. We can't do this on our own, but somehow we have to do this. So please, the least you could do is offer some advice."

In that moment, Rose was immensely proud of her friend. Not only had he acted more confidently than she had ever seen, but after she had spent such a large part of the year wondering if he was the person he claimed to be, it felt extremely relieving to hear that he wouldn't be indulging in the power of his wand. He understood what it was now, but it was clear that he wanted nothing to do with the benefits it could provide him with.

Meanwhile, Al had returned to staring at Ilana, and she back at him. It looked as if she was really taking his words into consideration, and Rose was thankful that he had somehow gotten the message across to her. After a large gulp and the release of a breath, she asked Al, "Which potion?"

Albus smiled with satisfaction upon knowing that she was willing to hear them out, and Rose answered for him, "Veritaserum. Have you ever been successful with it?"

"Sort of," Ilana answered, looking back and forth between Rose and Al. "Mind you, it was part of a lesson in class, and we were given specific instructions orally, and all the ingredients were provided. I have a recipe for it, but it's not detailed enough to produce a perfect batch. I've been trying to find out what it's missing for months, but I haven't gotten anywhere with it."

Rose was quickly disappointed, but noticed that Al was still smiling. He then held up his left hand, in which he had the Half-Blood Prince's potions book, and said, "I think I know what you're missing."

"Where did you find this?" Ilana asked Al as she flipped through the book, reading the various notes that had been written in the margins of every page. Apparently each potion recipe had tweaks and tips written in by the book's old owner that helped to give better results. Ilana seemed to be fascinated by all of it, and she and Al were having a great time searching through it at their table.

The two of them, along with Rose, had relocated to the library so that Professor Pontner, who had been sitting in her office beside the Potions classroom, couldn't overhear their plans. They had only been here a few minutes, but Rose was already afraid that they had wasted too much time. It was already Friday afternoon, and Rose still didn't have a definitive plan in motion. Albus and Ilana noticed this as she tapped her fingers nervously against their desk.

As the two looked up at her from the other side of the table, Rose said, "Can we skip the story and just go to the section on Veritaserum please?"

"Sorry," Ilana said, laughing. She then flipped toward the back of the book to the long chapter on truth serums, in which Veritaserum was the first listed. Bending down to get a closer look, she and Al started to read.

"I'm pretty sure it's all there," Al said. "I just don't know what half of it is, or how to get it. And some of the techniques in the procedure are things I've never had to do before."

Ilana nodded and commented, "You wouldn't until your sixth year. None of this is below NEWT level." Smiling, she added, "But you're right, it's all here. I've been using one beetle too many, I cooked it without enough heat… I mean, this is brilliant!"

Before Al could take all the credit for himself, Rose steered the conversation back on track and asked, "So how will we do this exactly?" She felt uncomfortable without all the control, but kept telling herself that it was for the best.

"Well," Ilana began, still reading the ingredients list. "We'll need to get hold of all this. Most of them are plants that we'd probably have here in the Greenhouses. There are a few rarer ingredients, spices and such, which only Professor Pontner would have. I'd normally be able to get some no problem, but with it being the end of the year, she'll have her cupboard locked up by now…"

"Don't worry about that," Rose said, already sure that none of what Ilana had mentioned would be a problem. Rose herself didn't like to break into places or steal things, but she knew plenty of people who did, and they happened to be extremely good at it.

Ilana looked up at Rose with intrigue, to which Rose explained, "The one good thing about being born with a name like mine means that I have a lot of contacts. They come in handy sometimes."

Ilana laughed, looking somewhat impressed as she returned to reading and said, "Alright then."

Rose smiled back with pride, but it turned into a frown as soon as Ilana's did. "What?" she asked with concern. Both Ilana and Al had their eyes locked on the bottom of the page, and Ilana was rubbing her forehead as if she had her work cut out for her.

Looking up at her, Al said, "That doesn't sound easy to obtain. It isn't, is it?"

Too curious to keep calm anymore, and beyond annoyed that she wasn't being let in on the conversation, Rose asked more loudly, "_WHAT?_"

Ilana looked up at Rose with wide eyes, surprised to hear her speak so loudly in a library. As her eyes adjusted back to their normal size, she whispered, "It's the final ingredient: hair of a werewolf. It's incredibly rare."

Rose, not letting herself feel defeated for even a moment, asked, "Doesn't Professor Pontner have some?"

Ilana shook her head and replied with, "Are you kidding? This isn't something you can go out and buy."

"Well, then how did your class make the potion without it?" Rose asked, trying to think logically, which was the only way she knew how.

"Our potion wasn't perfect. It was good, but it wouldn't have been usable," Ilana answered. "I'm sorry, but there's not really any way around this. If you want to have perfect results with this potion, we'll need the hair."

Al put his head down in complete defeat and Ilana closed the book, but Rose wouldn't give up so easily. "Hold on," she said. "There's got to be a way to do this. There always is." She was thinking of what Dumbledore had told her about how the truth will act, and she knew that this was what he had meant. "Let's just get hold of everything else, and let me deal with the werewolf hair."

Rose was about to leave the table to go to the Great Hall when Ilana asked, "Why is this so important?" They hadn't yet told her why they needed the potion, and a part of Rose had been hoping that she would never ask.

"Because it'll help save someone," Rose said simply. "Someone I love." She was being sincere, but noticed that Ilana gave her a look that signaled that she thought less of Rose's emotional capacity to love at such a young age.

"Isn't there someone you love, someone you'd do anything for… _everything_ for?" Rose asked, trying to connect with Ilana in any way possible.

Ilana looked into Rose's eyes for a long moment, green grass meeting sea blue, and Rose knew before long that Ilana believed the words she said after all. "Of course there is," answered Ilana.

Then, they both went silent, and Rose continued on her way, leaving Al and Ilana to continue to discuss the potion, a language that Rose didn't fully understand.

The Great Hall was as crowded as ever, and Rose was once again surprised to find out how late it was. Students and teachers alike were all packed into the enormous room for supper, since unlike Rose, their appetites hadn't abandoned them through the chaos that their minds were undergoing. Even looking at all the food, Rose still had no desire to eat. She was here to recruit more people who could help her and Al, all while hoping that some sort of answer to the problematic werewolf hair would fall from the sky.

Standing in the doorway to the Hall, Rose searched the rows of heads for James's mouse brown hair, but was instead met with a cheerful sounding voice from behind her. "Rose!" Nigel said, now right beside her. "Look who's back!" He then motioned to someone standing behind him.

"Colin!" Rose said, shocked to see Nigel's older brother back at Hogwarts. She instantly walked up and gave him a great hug as she said, "I'm so glad you're back! When did you get here?"

After the two broke apart, Colin answered, "O - only just now. Hagrid flew me over on his motorbike. I told him there wasn't much of a point, seeing as school ends this week, but he sort of insisted."

Rose laughed. "That sounds like him," she said. "So McGonagall just let you return?" He had been on home arrest ever since his false accusation, if only because McGonagall didn't want him to get bullied by naïve and assuming Hogwarts kids.

"Yeah, well they've apparently got a new suspect, so they said they didn't think anybody would blame me if I still wanted to work here," Colin explained.

Rose felt a sharp twang of pain in her chest, since Colin had only been allowed to return because Scorpius had been accused. It didn't seem fair either way, but not much did these days. Thinking about this, Rose nearly missed Colin ask her, "Do you have any idea who it is? The new suspect?"

All three were still in the entryway to the Hall, but nobody was close enough to overhear, since all the students were sitting down, eating and talking with friends. "Actually…" Rose began to answer, but was caught off guard when loud squawking sounds mixed with flapping wings came from up toward the ceiling. Apparently the daily post was being delivered, and owls were flying left, right and center, all being careful not to land in their owner's food. Normally, these deliveries would take place in the morning, but lately the owls were coming at night, since many students didn't have time to eat breakfast before their exams.

As Rose, Nigel, and Colin all stared up at the birds, Hugo came running from the Gryffindor table to address the three of them. "Hey, you're Nigel's brother, aren't you?" he asked Colin.

Colin nodded, and then Hugo asked, "Is it true that you're a Squib?"

Rose's mouth dropped open in surprise at just how rude her younger brother was acting, but as it turned out, she didn't need to scold him herself. Instead, Pig did it for him, the miniature owl flying directly toward the back of his fire-red head and sending Hugo to the ground, with the tiny envelope it was carrying in its beak into Rose's hands. She had shot them out to try and catch Hugo, but had of course missed.

Now, Rose was laughing hard with Colin chuckling beside her as Nigel helped Hugo up cautiously. Once he had both feet on the floor again, Hugo rubbed his head where the bird had hit him and gasped in pain. "Bloody hell, that hurt!" he cried. Upon hearing this, Nigel looked as if he was about to cry for Hugo, but tried to hold back his tears.

"Serves you right," Rose said as she pet Pig approvingly, who was now perched peacefully on her shoulder. "What you asked Colin was none of your business."

"I – it's okay, Rose," Colin said, looking then to Hugo. "People are bound to know by now anyway."

"So it's true then?" Hugo asked, his excruciating pain apparently not enough of a distraction to keep him from receiving confirmation for Colin's secret.

Rose rolled her eyes, but Colin nodded. Ignoring them all, Rose took the time to open the envelope Pig had delivered. It was from a stationary she didn't recognize, but inside was her mother's handwriting, which read:

_Dear Rose and Hugo,_

_ I am happy to write of some very exciting news! Victoire gave birth to a beautiful baby girl this morning, named Remus, or 'Remy' as they call her (after Teddy's late father, Remus Lupin). Your dad and I are at the hospital now, and Harry and Ginny are here as well. I don't think I've seen Harry look so proud since Lily was born, and Teddy and Victoire are both thrilled and doing well._

_Just thought you'd like to know, and I'm sure Remy can't wait to see the both of you once you get back home. Oh, and Rose, let us know how your OWL's went!_

_Lots of love,_

_Mum_

Rose's thoughts were initially a pleasant surprise as she finished reading the letter, Hugo next to her and jumping up and down to try to read it himself. After the surprise wore off, however, Rose was met with yet another epiphany, and her eyes widened with delight as she handed the letter off to Hugo.

"Rose, are you okay?" Nigel asked, always concerned for the well being of those around him.

Rose didn't answer Nigel as she returned to scouring the hall for James, whom she would need to help break into Professor Pontner's cupboard. Once she spotted him, sitting with Fred and Lila at the end of the Gryffindor table, she started walking, her company following behind her.

"'Can't wait to see us'?" Hugo mumbled as they walked, oblivious to the sudden change in destination. "She's an _infant_. She doesn't even know we exist!"

Once they got to James, Rose tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Come with me. I need you." Reluctantly, he got up and joined the group, looking to Colin for some explanation, but he just shrugged in response.

Next, Rose approached both Lucy Weasley and Holly Longbottom from the Hufflepuff table and told them to follow her as well. She would need the two Herbologists to help with the Greenhouses, but didn't explain this yet. Instead, like James and the other boys, the girls signed on to the task blindly as Rose led them all back to the library.

Listening to some of the conversation from behind, but failing to join in, Rose heard Lucy ask James, "What's happening?"

"I suspect that Rose has developed a deep thought that must be dealt with immediately," Holly answered when James didn't know what to say. "You can tell from all the wrackspurts flying around her ears."

To Colin, Holly added, "Oh, hello there. It's good to have you back, Colin." More quietly, she whispered, "You have very nice ears, you know. Not too many wrackspurts in them."

"Er, thanks," Colin replied.

Just as they arrived at the library, Hugo asked rather loudly, "What the devil is a _wrackspurt_?"

Nobody answered, since before they actually entered the library, Rose turned around to face the crew. They all silenced and looked up expectantly, as Rose took a deep breath and said, "Colin, the person who was accused was Scorpius. Scorpius Malfoy."

Hugo, Lucy, and Nigel, all of whom hadn't yet heard the news, gaped in surprise as James took a step toward Rose and rubbed her arm for comfort. "It's okay though," Rose continued, "Because he's innocent. I'm sure of it. Unfortunately, we still have to prove it to McGonagall before his trial, which is on Monday."

"Hmm," Holly muttered. "I suspect nargles are behind this."

Everybody ignored her, but Hugo gave her the most outrageous look of bewilderment. "Nargles? What are _nargles?_" It was becoming clear that he and Holly would not be getting along very well.

"Hugo, let Rose speak," Nigel said, since he knew that he was the only one who could get Hugo to shut up. Holly wasn't going to answer anyway, since she had been distracted by the apparent beauty of Colin's earlobe, which she was gazing at with wonder. She looked as if she was about to pet it.

"Thank you, Nigel," Rose said. "Now, I would really appreciate it if all of you could help Al and me with this. I know you'd all be useful." Truthfully, she hadn't planned on bringing Hugo or Nigel into this, as Hugo would usually just get in the way, but hopefully she could find something for them to do.

"Of course we'll help," Lucy said. "Anything you need."

James nodded with her, followed closely by Colin, Holly, and Nigel. Hugo was pretending to think about it as he asked, "What's in it for me?"

Luckily, Rose was saved from having to respond when James whacked Hugo on the side of the head. Hugo tried to fight back, but realized before too long that he didn't stand a chance; James was at least twice his size.

Leading the way to Al and Ilana's table, Rose approached the two of them and said to Al, "Can you introduce everybody and fill them all in? I need to go look for something."

Al shrugged and then helped James pull up an extra table. Then, they all took a seat around it and Al introduced them, one by one, to Ilana, who looked slightly overwhelmed.

Meanwhile, Rose headed away from the Potions section that they were in and toward the row of books on Mysterious Beasts. She found one book listing all known werewolves and Animagi throughout wizarding history and searched for Remus Lupin. It hadn't crossed her mind before, but she remembered overhearing a conversation between Teddy and his father-in-law, Bill Weasley, at his and Victoire's wedding. Bill had been telling Teddy about the origins of a large scar that had torn apart pieces of flesh on the side of his face. Teddy had seemed oddly interested in the subject, and Rose could just barely recall him mentioning something about his father, Remus.

In the middle of a long list toward the end of the book, Rose found Remus's name listed just below that of Fenrir Greyback, yet another person she recognized from nightmarish tales that her father had once told her. Now that her initial hunch was confirmed, Rose moved on to another book that detailed the science behind a werewolf bite, along with its repercussions. Turning to a chapter on werewolf genetics, Rose's curiosity had now reached an ultimate high. Skimming through the section as fast as she could, her eyes focused in on the exact information she had been hoping to find. As it turned out, the werewolf gene was recessive, but it could be passed on through anyone who had in fact been bitten by a werewolf, whether that wolf had been in its transformation, or not. This meant that not only did Remus most certainly pass on part of the gene to Teddy, but that Bill had passed his on to Victoire as well. Neither Teddy nor Victoire were werewolves themselves, since their mothers hadn't had the genes. However, this did mean that Remy _could_ receive the gene from both sides, and thus it should carry through, making her a full-fledged werewolf.

Trying not to think about what this would mean for the poor child or her family if it were true (and granted, there was a 75% chance that it wouldn't be), Rose rushed back to Al and the rest of the group, who were all seated in the same spot she had left them in. Al was telling them all about Veritaserum, showing Lucy the list of ingredients, and Ilana was sitting in silence, watching.

"Ilana," Rose said, sounding flushed. As soon as Ilana turned to see her, Rose asked, "Does the werewolf hair have to be taken from the wolf during its transformation, or can it be when it's in human form?"

"Um, the book doesn't say, but it shouldn't matter," Ilana answered. Upon seeing Rose's smile of relief, Ilana asked, "Why, did you find something?"

"Yes," Rose said as she looked around for a piece of parchment. Al offered up the bookmark he had been using, which Rose took gratefully. She then began writing, trying to think of how exactly to phrase such an odd request to her mother.

_Mum,_

_ That's great news! I'd definitely love to meet her, but be sure to send along my congratulations until I do. First though, I have a strange favor that I'm hoping you could do for me. I have one last Potions project to complete, and one of its ingredients is the hair of a human baby. I know it sounds incredibly odd, but if you could snatch a bit of Remy's hair, it'd be greatly appreciated. Also, I need it by Sunday, if it's not too much to ask._

_ Thank you so much, and I'll write again soon to tell you all about my OWL's._

_Love,_

_Rose_

Well, it wasn't a complete lie, Rose thought to herself as she read the letter over in her didn't want to tell Hermione the whole truth just yet, nor did she want to cause any turmoil amongst Teddy and Victoire until she had to. Her excuse sounded ridiculous of course, but she had a feeling that it would work. Potions ingredients tended to be seriously obscure, and Hermione had never been one to deny her children the opportunity to excel at school.

After she finished reading, Rose snatched the envelope from the letter Hermione had sent that Hugo had been holding, inserted the return letter, and asked Hugo to give it to his personal owl, Cow, to send to their parents. He tried to get out of it, but Hugo was just too wrapped up in this grand mission that he didn't want to miss out in any part of it, so he did as he was told.

Once he was gone, Al asked Rose, "What exactly did I miss?"

"Victoire had the baby," Rose answered, at which both Al and James smiled with pride. Before they could comment, Rose continued, "And I just looked some things up, and I'm pretty sure Remy, the baby, might be a werewolf."

Al took a minute to think about this as Ilana gave Rose a look of shock from beside him. It soon became clear that he too had known about Bill and Remus, as Rose could see the pieces coming together in his mind as he said, "Rose, you are brilliant!"

Rose smiled and said, "Actually I'm highly logical, which allows me to look past extraneous details and perceive clearly that which others overlook."

"Exactly," Al agreed. Both he and Rose were grinning from ear to ear, and even Ilana looked excited. Around the table, everybody's spirits had been lifted, and all were eager to be given their own tasks in a plan that was finally ready to be put into action.

"Alright," Rose began, "So James, do you think that you'd be able to get into Professor Pontner's cupboard?"

"We were just talking about that actually," James said, looking over at Nigel. "We're going to need a lot of ingredients, and I can't fit under my Cloak if I try to carry them all out. But I was thinking that Hugo and Nigel are probably small enough to fit under it together, so they could get all the ingredients for me and that way I can stay outside and make sure the coast is clear with my map."

"Sounds perfect," Rose said, thinking that that took care of the Hugo and Nigel problem. She then turned to the girls and asked, "Holly, Lucy, would you be able to get into the Greenhouses and identify all the right plants?"

"Well, Holly said she might be able to get hold of Professor Longbottom's keys," Lucy suggested, looking at Holly, who was sitting unnaturally close to Colin and smiling to herself. "And as for the plant identification," Lucy continued, "I think we've got that covered."

Rose laughed and nodded, before turning to Colin, whom she had a special task for. "Colin," she said, "I was hoping you could help me plan how to get Shunpike to drink the potion?" Colin didn't have any magical powers, but he of all people would want to see Filch's true murderer revealed.

"Yeah, sure," Colin said, thankful for the chance to be included.

"I think you'll be brilliant," Holly whispered then, and everybody shot their eyes at her. She sounded sincere, though Colin was trying to avoid eye contact with her. Holly was a lot to handle for anyone, and she and Colin had only just met.

Trying to redirect the attention to the plan, Rose addressed the last two at the table, Al and Ilana. "I'm counting on you to brew the potion, of course." Skeptical of their newest ally, Rose asked, "Ilana, you're sure you can do this, right?"

Everybody looked at Ilana expectantly, hoping to hear something that sounded hopeful or confident. Ilana, who was often so shy, and couldn't possibly be used to having this many people all relying on her, responded hesitantly, "Yes. I'm sure."

* * *

_Section 3_

Rose walked with James to the dungeons first thing the next morning. Just like on Friday night, she hadn't gotten any sleep, but rather had stayed up finalizing everything with her older cousin. They had decided on breaking into the Potions cupboard first, so as to get all the rare ingredients as fast as they could, since most of them took the longest time to boil. For this reason, while the rest of the school was in the Great Hall for breakfast, Rose and James, along with Hugo and Nigel, took the opportunity to head downstairs when no one was there to see them.

The castle became increasingly quiet as they descended each floor, and the further they went, the darker it was. This part of the school had never felt very homey for Rose, and she often wondered how anybody in Slytherin could live down here. With no windows, and a humid, misty stillness about the air, it was extremely unpleasant.

From behind her, Rose could hear Nigel taking deep, calming breaths. It sounded as if he was just as uncomfortable as she was. Hugo, on the other hand, was excited and annoyed all at the same time. He always loved having a mission, but he was disappointed by the task he had been given, which was apparently insulting to his incredible talents as a wizard.

"You know Rosie, these jeans, they're not my favorite," Hugo complained. Rose had made him wear his largest pair of pants, which looked terribly oversized on him, but had plenty of room to stuff ingredients in them. Right now they were being held up by an array of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes products, all of which Hugo suspected might come in handy.

"Hugo, can you go run up ahead and see if Professor Pontner's in her office please?" Rose suggested. He would just continue to whine if she didn't give him something to do. Plus, it provided a brief moment of entertainment as the remaining three watched Hugo try to waddle his way over, his hands on the top of his jeans acting like suspenders as everything started to fall out of his pockets.

Becoming ever more nervous as they came closer to the Potions classroom, which sat just next to the cupboard with all the materials, Rose asked James for what felt like the hundredth time, "And you have the Cloak and the map, yes?"

"Yes," James said. "Stop worrying. This'll be a cinch." His words always had a comforting effect on Rose, especially when she considered how experienced James was in breaking into different parts of the castle. He had found three ways to get into Hogsmeade from Hogwarts in his very first year, including one route through a hole in the Whomping Willow that led to the famously haunted Shrieking Shack. Since Al and Ilana would be brewing the Veritaserum in the Room of Requirement, Rose had recently found out that James knew about this secret place as well, and that apparently there was a tunnel that led to a portrait in the Hog's Head from inside the room. Of course, thinking of this now only made Rose wonder about her sanity, considering that these were not usually things she would find consoling.

"Do you think they'll try to expel us or something if we get caught?" Nigel asked quietly. He was much less enthusiastic than Hugo, but felt too loyal to Rose to back out now.

"They won't _expel_ us," Rose answered. "Though I'm not sure what they'd do."

"It's the end of the year," said James. "They can't do anything, can they? We'll already be gone."

Rose and Nigel shrugged, and said in unison, "That's true."

They were only a few yards away from the cupboard when Hugo came running back toward them from around the corner. His hands were full of the toys he had dropped, but he managed to straighten one of his fingers and hold it up in front of his lips, signaling for everyone to be quiet. He then shook his head frantically and widened his eyes, and everybody immediately retreated, lining up against the wall so as not to be seen.

Hugo was nearest to the corner now, and was trying to peek around it. James was to his right, and he too was able to catch a glimpse around the wall, his torso curving over the top of Hugo's head. Rose was next to him, and she waited patiently with Nigel, who had a firm grip on her arm as he held his breath with fear. In her other hand, she tightly grasped the piece of paper that Al and Ilana had left with her, the only list that included every ingredient they would need for the potion. If there was anything they couldn't lose in the next two days, it was that.

Suddenly, Hugo and James both brought their heads back and laid them against the wall, keeping silent with Rose and Nigel, waiting for someone to turn the corner and pass them. As the person appeared, Rose saw that it was once again Goyle, though he didn't look as though he had seen Hugo or anybody else. In fact, he didn't look much like himself at all. His eyes, which usually seemed violent, had become stale, and were unmoving as they stared straight ahead, as if it wasn't possible for him to look anywhere else. His body too was moving in perfect rhythm, marching along to the slow beat of a silent drum.

Goyle, who was alone (his posse must have been at breakfast already), went right past Rose and company, and they all breathed a sigh of relief once he was out of their sights. They hadn't yet done anything wrong, but if Goyle had seen them, he definitely would have ruined their plans, in any way he could.

Rose was about to ask Nigel if he was okay, as his ears had gone terribly red, and he was still gasping for air the way someone would if they had just escaped a near-drowning incident, but Hugo shushed her before she got the chance. "Pontner's there," he whispered.

"She didn't go to breakfast?" Rose asked, just as quietly, but sounding anxious. Their plan would be much harder to execute with Professor Pontner sitting in her office with the door wide open. She'd be able to hear every word they said.

Hugo shook his head. Rose quickly put a hand to her forehead and started to think of how they could manage despite this setback. "But maybe we could use Extendable Ears?" Hugo suggested.

Rose had her hand up in anticipation of hearing something idiotic from Hugo, but was pleasantly surprised at the words that came out of his mouth. "You know, that might just work," Rose said to her little brother. A pair of Extendable Ears was a product that really was exactly what it claimed to be: a pair of human ears attached by a piece of string that allowed a witch or wizard to create a miniature telephone.

Hugo, who paused amongst searching through his pile of products, which he had laid out on the floor, said to Rose cockily, "I'm not all brawn, you know!"

James snickered at this, eying Hugo's scrawny arms, which were buried deep in a pile of puking pastilles. Hugo gave him a very smug look in return and crossed his arms against his rather small chest. "Oh, please," he said. "I could take you any day." He then stood up and handed Rose the pack of ears before everybody nearly choked to death just trying to keep from laughing.

Once Rose had the pack open, she handed one ear to Hugo, then James took his Invisibility Cloak and threw it on top of both Hugo and Nigel. Instantly, they disappeared, and all that was left of them was the string from Rose's ear that seemed to be going nowhere. "Alright you two," Rose said. "You know what you have to do. Just be sure to follow everything I say, and wait for James's word before you go in." It felt odd talking to empty space, but Rose could still hear Nigel's breathing, so she knew they hadn't gone anywhere just yet.

When Rose gave one final nod, she felt a tug on her ear and heard tiny footsteps walking away from her. Hugo and Nigel were now making their way around the corner and over to the door. Turning back to James, Rose watched him take the Marauder's Map out of his back pocket. After unfolding it halfway and with a point of his wand, he whispered, "I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good." The blank page then gradually transformed itself into an incredibly detailed, complete fold-out map of the entire school, the words 'Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs' sprawled across the front page.

James opened up the map and focused on the bottom floor, where Rose spotted her own name attached to a small pair of footsteps, staying still right beside those of James. Sure enough, Hugo and Nigel were listed to be waiting just outside the door of the closet-sized cupboard. With the exception of Professor Pontner, who was still at the desk in her office, nobody else was anywhere to be found.

For a moment, Rose wondered if she'd be able to spot Scorpius somewhere on the map, but quickly pushed the thought away. She would be able to see him soon enough, but first her plan needed to work. Holding the ear out, James whispered, "You're clear. Head on in."

"Wicked," Rose heard Hugo say in return. A little while later, she heard him say firmly, "_Alohamora_," which resulted in the click of the lock opening on the door. A creaking sound followed this, along with a few more footsteps, before Rose heard the door shut behind the boys.

"We're in," Nigel said, extremely quietly.

"Relax," Hugo said, more loudly than Nigel had spoken before. "You don't have to whisper anymore. These walls are seriously thick; they're bound to be sound-proof."

"Oh, right," Nigel said, this time at a more normal register.

James was rolling his eyes at the pointless conversation that was taking place, and Rose decided it was time to take the lead. Unfolding the piece of paper she had been keeping close, she read off, "Okay, first thing we'll need is one suspended frog. Ilana says it should be concealed in some sort of purple liquid."

"Got it," Hugo said after only a short period of time. "It looks disgusting though. Here Nigel, you take it."

Speaking over a groan from Nigel, Rose continued, "Next is bicorn parts. It should be in the form of a powder; it's supposed to be grounded up horn."

Nigel was able to find this one, and decided to carry it himself. After a few more ingredients, including ten sliced caterpillars, an entire jar of cockroaches, and some lacewing flies, Rose reached the final one, which she had been warned was the most valuable of all. "Last is the horn, powdered, of a Romanian Longhorn dragon."

This one was harder for them to find, but Hugo managed to spot it eventually. "Oh there it is!" Rose heard him say. "It's up on the top shelf."

"Will you be able to reach the top shelf?" James asked from his side of the ears. Rose chuckled at the rhetorical question.

"Watch and be amazed," Hugo said in return.

"Believe me, I wish I could," James added as he and Rose listened intently to various groans from Hugo and the clanking of jars seemingly all around him. It sounded as if he was climbing his way up.

They then heard a crash to the ground, and Rose immediately asked, "Hugo, are you alright? Did you fall?"

"Phhhh," Hugo said back, sounding unscathed. "You know, we should get nicknames or something, like secret agents. We could even fashion them after Uncle Harry's dad's! We've already got Prongs, I'll be Goony, and Nigel can be… Squirmsnail! Yeah, that one's perfect. As for Rose –" But his voice started to break up then.

When all that was coming out on Rose's side of the ear was an unclear, buzzing sound, Rose asked James, "What's going on? Why can't we hear them?"

"I dunno'" James said as he scoured the map. There was nothing there. Then, the two heard an incredible, screeching meow coming from the adjacent hallway. Looking at each other, they both exclaimed at once, "Mrs. Norris." Animals tended not to appear on the map.

Figuring that there wouldn't be much harm in it, Rose and James stuck their heads out from around the corner to find the mangy old cat chewing on the string of the Extendable Ears. "Mrs. Norris, shoo!" Rose called at her. Unfortunately, the cat, who looked worse than she ever had, terribly thin and with large patches of fur missing, wouldn't budge.

Since the ears weren't working properly, Hugo and Nigel didn't know about the cat, and so just as Rose and James were walking up to try to scare her off, they saw the door to their left slowly creak open. As soon as it did, Mrs. Norris's red eyes shot up and she bolted into the cupboard, running straight through the Invisibility Cloak and pulling it to the ground, along with a good amount of the jars Hugo and Nigel had been carrying.

Cockroaches were suddenly crawling all across the floor, and Mrs. Norris was having a field day trying to chase after each one of them. Hugo, who was terrified of insects, started screaming at the top of his lungs, backing away to the other side of the hall to put some distance between him and the bugs, which did in fact bear a striking resemblance to spiders. In doing so, however, his newly empty pants had lost all support and were now hanging around his ankles, revealing the very unflattering pair of Chudley Cannons boxers he was wearing underneath.

James, whose eyes had remained on the map, swore at Hugo then, exclaiming, "Bloody hell, what have you done? Pontner's heard you! She's on her way out now."

Panicking, Hugo tried to wear his guilty expression as he pulled his pants back up from the floor, but nobody bought it. Around him, Rose thought quickly on her feet and ran over to the cupboard, picked up the Cloak, and threw it over the spilt ingredients. She then scooped up Mrs. Norris in her arms and carried her out of the cupboard. Once out, she closed the door, pointed her wand at the cat, and said, "_Evanesco_". Just like the Invisibility Cloak had worked on the fallen jars, Mrs. Norris suddenly disappeared. It was one of the only times Rose had been able to fully vanish an animal after a year's worth of practice in Transfiguration, and for a split second she couldn't help but think of how proud Scorpius would be, if only he knew.

Seeing what Rose was doing, James followed suit and sent a large Vanishing Spell across the remaining cockroaches that hadn't been trapped by the Cloak. "There's one more!" Nigel yelled at him helplessly just as the door to the Potions classroom was opening. James aimed for the bug, but didn't have time to vanish it before Professor Pontner appeared before the four of them.

Taking in her surroundings, the petite, dark-haired woman looked first at Hugo, who easily stood out from the rest of the group. He was still on the other side of the hall, and had his eyes on the ground, where the last cockroach was crawling toward him. Luckily, Pontner failed to notice what Hugo was looking at and instead turned her attention to James, Rose, and Nigel. James, who had already hid his map, looked calm and collected. Rose eyed Nigel wearily, but was pleased to see that his ears had remained their normal shade of pinkish white. Apparently he worked well under pressure.

"What are you all doing down here? Isn't time for breakfast?" Pontner asked curiously. "And what was that noise? Did I hear someone screaming?"

Both James and Rose opened their mouths in an attempt to say something, but couldn't think of a good excuse. Pontner was just about to ask them again when Nigel spoke up. "Actually Professor, I asked them to come with me. See, I wanted to ask you about my exam, because I'm pretty sure that I wrote the wrong answers in this one section. Now I know you're not supposed to give retakes, but I'd really appreciate the opportunity…" he tried to continue talking, but the teacher wouldn't let him.

"Mr. Creevey, I've told you before, no re-takes," Pontner said sweetly. It sounded as if Nigel had had his fair dose of paranoia before. "But that doesn't explain the screams I heard."

"Yes, well," Nigel started, but Rose knew that he wouldn't be able to think of anything.

He didn't end up needing to though, since Professor Pontner spotted something behind her students and her mouth gaped open. "What on earth is that?" she asked.

Rose, James, Nigel, and Hugo all turned around at once to find a beautiful, male lion running in their direction. Rose recognized it as Holly's, though she had no idea what it was doing all the way down here. As it came closer, Rose noticed its fierce eyes and wondered if it was about to prance at something. Its glare, however, was actually directed at the last cockroach, which it quickly caught in between its heavy paws and licked up excitedly.

"Is that a lion?" Pontner asked as the giant cat lay down and licked its nose in satisfaction.

"Yes," Rose answered. "It's a pet of a friend of mine, actually. It's just that Hugo's never seen it before, so he got a little scared. That's where the screams came from." Rose figured she might as well use the excuse, since it had been handed to her so freely.

"I see," Pontner said, too scared of the lion herself to fight off her gullibility. "Well, if you know who it belongs to, I suppose I'll leave you to return it." She then backed up hesitantly into her classroom and shut the door before the lion could follow her inside.

Relieved that they had gotten away with their break-in, Rose sighed heavily and gave Nigel a pat on the back. "Thanks for that one. You really saved us."

Nigel shrugged. "My pleasure," he said.

They then pulled off the Cloak and tried to gather up all their things, Hugo staying away as James corralled the rest of the cockroaches back into their jar (which Rose had mended for him). Holly's lion tried to get a few more licks in, but Rose had managed to distract him by revealing the before hidden Mrs. Norris, whom the lion was apparently very fond of. They had since lain down together, falling asleep peacefully in the middle of the hallway, Mrs. Norris's bald patches warmed by the extra fur from the lion's mane.

After checking that they had everything, Rose took out a small beaded bag she had carried with her, used an Undetectable Extension Charm on it, and then piled all the ingredients safely inside. The Weasley's Wizard Wheezes products, which were still on the floor around the corner, Hugo stuffed back in his pants.

Once on the ground floor again, Rose thanked Hugo, Nigel, and James for all their help and left them at the Great Hall. They were going to see if they weren't too late to get a bite to eat, but Rose didn't have any time to waste. Once they had gone, she rushed up to the seventh floor and met Al and Ilana in the Room of Requirement, which had fashioned itself as a sort of office, with tables all around and plenty of space on the floor. In the middle sat an enormous cauldron, with a roaring fire underneath that never went out.

Ilana was sitting beside the cauldron, stirring lazily, while Al sat on one of the tables at the side of the room with his head buried in the Half-Blood Prince's book. Every few moments though, Rose caught him glance over at Ilana with interest.

When the two noticed that Rose had come in, Al asked, "Did you get everything?"

Holding up the beaded bag for Al to see, Rose answered, "It's all here. Though we did lose a few cockroaches along the way."

"But it all went okay?" Al asked. He had gotten up and was standing by the cauldron with Ilana now. Rose too had joined them, and was taking the jars out of her bag, one at a time.

"Yes," Rose replied. "Hugo posed some difficulties, but I suppose that was to be expected."

Al laughed, but Ilana remained quiet, since she had barely even met Hugo. More focused on the potion, she asked Rose, "And you got the dragon horn, right?"

"Yeah, it's here," Rose said, handing the precious powder over. "Is that the first thing?"

Ilana nodded and carefully opened the lid of the jar. She then tested the water in the cauldron to make sure it was the right temperature before she began poured in the powder. "Potter, do you want to stir?" It wasn't so much a question as a command, but Al didn't seem to mind.

Right away, he picked up a large spoon and started to gradually mix in the powder, which turned the potion a beautifully rich, purple color. As soon as Ilana had poured the whole jar in, she smiled at the liquid she had made. "Brilliant," she whispered.

Al followed her lead and stared down at the cauldron. Rose couldn't help but roll her eyes at him. He was a student eager to learn, but he couldn't seem to make up his mind over which he liked more: the potion or the potion-maker.

Distracting both of them, Rose asked, "How long will it take?" Now that the first ingredient was in, they had to follow a precise timing schedule in order to brew it correctly.

"It should be done by tomorrow night," Ilana answered. "There's a rumor that it takes a full moon cycle to complete, but I'm pretty sure that's just because of the werewolf hair. Most truth serums only take 24 hours."

Rose nodded, relieved, but Ilana continued, "Speaking of the hair though, you're sure you'll get it?"

The werewolf hair was the final ingredient to be added to the potion, and everything they did up until that moment was banking on the fact that Rose would pull through and provide the hair for them. She was fairly certain that Hermione would be able to get it, but was still slightly worried about the amount of time it might take to get back to Hogwarts, not to mention the fact that the gene may not have been passed down after all. Still, she wanted Ilana to be as confident as possible going into this, so she answered the same way Ilana had the day before. "Yes," she said. "I'm sure."

Ilana nodded silently before telling Rose, "You should get going. We'll need the valerian root in a couple of hours."

Without another word, Rose was off for the Greenhouses. She knew that Ilana had been coyly trying to get rid of her, but she also knew how important it was to stick to the schedule, and it was about time to meet Lucy and Holly anyway.

The Greenhouses were back on the ground floor of the castle, which meant that Rose had to walk all the way back down various flights of stairs and pass through the Entrance Hall once more to get there. On her way, she swerved through a crowd of students leaving the Great Hall and heading out the large double doors to the Hogwarts courtyard. All students were now done with both classes as well as exams, so they tended to spend their time outside with their friends, or in their dormitories packing for the summer. As they left, Rose caught a whiff of the warm, spring air, but it didn't bother her at all. In fact, she deemed it as quite the happenstance that the day had brought beautiful weather, keeping most of the Hogwarts population far away from wherever Rose's plans were taking place.

Hogwarts had a total of three long greenhouses, all fairly narrow with serpentine dragons flying across the peaked roofs. The first and smallest was reserved for first years, and held plants that were fairly uninteresting and completely safe. The second and third, on the other hand, held the rarer and more dangerous plants, which were the ones the Veritaserum potion called for.

As Rose approached the entrance to the second greenhouse, she saw Lucy leaning against the wall. "Hi," Rose said as she came closer.

The brunette beauty stood up when she saw her friend and said hello back. She was smiling lightly, but her rather tense body language made it seem as if she was nervous for what she was about to do. This was only normal for Lucy, who had always been very shy, and had never broken a school rule before.

"Where's Holly?" Rose asked, but Lucy shook her head.

"I haven't seen her in a couple of hours, but I'm sure she's on her way," Lucy replied. Then, more seriously, she asked Rose, "Are you sure this is a good idea? I feel like we're breaking and entering."

Rose chuckled, as she had had the same concern that morning. "We're not _breaking_ and entering if we already have a key," she said. Holly was supposed to have the key from her father, Professor Longbottom, since the Greenhouses were better locked than most rooms in the school, thus a simple charm wouldn't work to open them.

"Plus," Rose added, "Even if we get caught, they can't exactly do anything about it, can they?" She knew she sounded much too much like James for her liking, but she happened to agree with his logic in this case, if only because it made all reasoning much simpler.

Lucy looked to Rose with shock, surprised to hear such things coming from her usually overly cautious cousin. "Well, I'm sure they could do something," Lucy suggested.

Rose furrowed her eyebrows in thought, but quickly decided that she disagreed. "Who cares?" she asked Lucy. "I mean, it's sort of exciting, isn't it, breaking the rules?" It was true that Rose's plan needed to be executed flawlessly in order to be successful, but she figured there wasn't any harm in having some fun along the way. She most definitely had experienced such this morning, and it had still worked out. Plus, Scorpius wouldn't want her to spend all of her time fretting over every detail like she normally did.

"Who are you and what have you done with Rose Weasley?" Lucy asked, even more surprised now.

Rose shrugged and laughed, but didn't have time to give Lucy an answer before she spotted Holly skipping down the hall in their direction. She was wearing a sweet, flowery dress and was pounding barefoot across the marble floor. "Hello Rose!" she called out as she came closer.

"Hello Holly," Rose and Lucy said together. "Do you have the key?"

"Yes," Holly said, taking out a large, worn key from a pocket in her skirt and handing it to Rose. "My father gave it to me yesterday. I hid it in my shoes overnight, but then the oddest thing happened. You see, I woke up and my shoes had mysteriously disappeared, but the key had been left on my nightstand."

Rose was ignoring Holly as she worked to unlock the door, but Lucy had been listening with some interest. "That sounds bizarre," she said. "Do you by any chance sleepwalk?"

"Oh yes, constantly," Holly answered. "In fact, I'm quite certain I even do so when awake at times. Still, that wouldn't do much to explain my missing shoes. I don't usually wear shoes in my dreams."

Lucy was about to try to help Holly make sense of things, but Rose cut her off when the door opened and she pulled the two of them through the entryway. The three were instantly met with an extreme heat, the sun glaring through the glass walls and ceiling. All around them, a forest of green was shaping itself in every direction, twisting in on each other and growing before their eyes.

"Home, sweet home," Lucy said with a smile. There was no place at Hogwarts she enjoyed more, which became very clear when she lifted her head toward the sun and took a giant whiff of the air around her.

Holly, who also knew this part of the castle like the back of her hand, nodded at Lucy, but then put a hand on her shoulder and said with a warning tone, "Don't enjoy it too much. These specimens are known to invade minds of the weak and turn their brains into dirigible plums. It takes a while for the effect to show, of course, so they may have caught you already."

Lucy was suddenly frightened by Holly, too scared to notice the insinuation of her being weak. Holly, though, merely looked pleased, and smiled as she made her way through an aisle of various vines. Rose rolled her eyes, signaling to Lucy that Holly hadn't been serious, and they both then followed Holly's lead.

The next aisle over was filled with the Venomous Tentacula, with spiked vines that moved all around in search of prey. Lucy and Rose steered clear of it, but Holly had other intentions. Taking out a small tin box and some tweezers, she began picking off the small leaves and storing them in the box.

"Holly, aren't those Tentacula leaves?" Lucy asked with concern.

Though Lucy may have been worried for Holly's safety, Rose was more concerned with her interest in them. "They're very valuable, aren't they?" she asked.

"Ten Galleons a leaf to the right buyer," Holly answered simply. "Not that I'm familiar with such back alley transactions, but one does hear rumors. My own interests are purely academic, of course."

Rose smacked her hand over her eyes, shaking her head in disbelief. She seemed to learn something new about Holly from every word she spoke, and things were certainly never dull around her.

"Mmm," Lucy commented as Holly closed her now full tin. "Personally, these plants always kind of freak me out." She then looked at the plant skeptically, and Holly copied her motions but then shrugged, apparently not seeing things the same way Lucy did.

Continuing through the large room, they made it to the back end and collected a fairly large amount of valerian root. This was when Rose realized just how thankful she was to have Lucy and Holly with her, as she had had no idea what the root looked like beforehand.

Meanwhile, Holly kept stopping along the way to take pieces of plants for herself. At one point, after many silent conversations about Holly's mysterious behavior amongst Lucy and Rose, Lucy asked, "Holly, what are you planning on using all that for?" She was pointing to the large bag that held everything she had taken thus far.

"Oh, nothing really," Holly answered. "I was just thinking that I might try to make a potion of my own at some point."

"Really?" Rose asked, suddenly too curious to resist. "This wouldn't have anything to do with Colin, would it?" Holly hadn't been able to keep her eyes off of him at their meeting in the library, and Rose knew how powerful love potions could be, especially if used on non-magic folk.

Holly blushed immediately and Lucy covered her face with her hands, jumping up and down in excitement. "I didn't know you liked him!" she screamed, nearly knocking into a giant venus flytrap.

Nodding her head slightly, Holly said, "Well, of course I like him. He's very nice."

"And has very few wrackspurts invading his ears," Rose insinuated, catching Holly off guard.

"Well it's true!" Holly yelled at her. She didn't seem to understand just what it was she felt for Colin, but Rose and Lucy had been in her position before.

"Oh, Holly, it's okay!" Lucy said, pleased to see that their conversation had officially turned into pure girl-talk. "It's normal to feel attracted to boys at your age."

"I suppose," Holly admitted. "Though I tend not to experience such things at the normal age. My father says it's because I'm much wiser than my years, but I don't think that's true. It seems to me that most others are just more foolish than theirs."

Rose smiled at this, glad to see Holly opening up about something. "You know Holly," she said to her, "Falling in love doesn't always mean that you're foolish. In fact, I think it means that you're lucky."

The three girls were standing around a small tree now, and Lucy squeezed Rose's hand, letting her know that she felt the same. Holly had her head down now, and was thinking to herself. After a while, she looked back up at Rose and asked sincerely, "Are you and Scorpius in love?"

Rose smiled fully now, as just hearing his name was enough to make her skin glow and eyes sparkle. "Yes," she answered, never before being so sure of what she was admitting to. "Most definitely."

Holly nodded and then whispered, "I hope I can be that lucky." She then turned around and carried on, heading into the third greenhouse. They only had one ingredient left to acquire: knotgrass.

As they were walking, Lucy suggested, "If the love potion doesn't work out, you could always tie a bit of mistletoe somewhere."

"Oh no," Holly said at once. "It's infested with nargles." It hadn't been long, but she was clearly back to her normal self.

After finding the knotgrass and adding it to Rose's stash, the girls headed back into the hallway, locking the door behind them. Things had gone quite smoothly this time around, no doubt thanks to Hugo's absence. After thanking Lucy and Holly for their help and giving them a hug goodbye, Rose set off once again for the Room of Requirement to deliver the new ingredients.

She didn't stay in the now dark room for long, as Rose's appetite had finally caught up with her. After Al declined her offer to head to the Great Hall for supper, Rose set off alone, ate a small meal with James, and then headed to her dormitory, where she laid awake in bed. Tonight though, instead of agonizing over Scorpius, or even worrying about him, she just thought about how much none of that mattered. Instead, she thought of how much she loved him, and how incredibly lucky that made her.

* * *

Rose was completely out of breath by the time she reached the Owlery, a small, open room at the top of a tall tower just off of the castle. There was no post on Sundays, so she had to make her way all the way up here to check for a return letter from her mother, Hermione.

It was still bright and early in the morning, but Rose had already been up for hours, talking to Colin in the Room of Requirement as Al and Ilana worked on the Veritaserum. He had warned her further about the consequences that Scorpius would receive if his trial went as far as the Ministry, and then he and Rose had brainstormed ideas on how to make Shunpike drink the potion. Colin had had to leave a while back however, as he had work to do in the gardens outside. That was when Rose had left for the Owlery, not feeling needed enough to stick around any longer.

Now, Rose was plugging her nose from the foul smell of owl dung, and had her other hand shielding her head from scraping talons as she looked around anxiously for a tiny, brown, miniature owl. It was difficult to spot such a creature amongst the massive and popular barn owls of Hogwarts, but eventually she saw Pigwidgeon hiding out on a railing next to a much larger, snowy owl. Excited, Rose rushed over and gave him a small pat on the head before taking the letter from his beak.

_Dear Rose,_

_ You shall find your request inside this envelope. Whatever hair poor Remy had to begin with is now long gone and I'm hoping that it is sent to you before Teddy and Victoire have the chance to notice their daughter's newly bald head._

_I do hope this is a real ingredient though, as I've never heard of it being one myself. Let's just say that you're lucky your father was around to read your letter, as he was thrilled at the idea of helping you with some secret potion. I'm afraid we both tend to reminisce over our final days at Hogwarts every year that you're there, and things were always exciting for us during that time of year. _

_ Anyway, if you are planning something other than what I think you are, I do hope that you are safe, and that you will let your father and I know all about it as soon as you get home. Also, for my sake, don't involve Hugo in any of it. If anything were to go wrong, I can't help but think that he could easily be the reason for it._

_Wishing you the best of luck and all our love,_

_Mum and Dad_

Rose immediately blew out a huge sigh of relief. Her mother had pulled through after all, and she couldn't have been happier. Of course, there was still a chance that Remy's hair wouldn't work for a number of reasons, but it was a miracle that she had even acquired it.

Gently pouring the contents of the envelope into her hands, Rose examined the small, thin hairs. They were difficult to see, as each was a bright shade of blonde, much like Victoire's. It didn't sound as if Remy was a Metamorphmagus like her father, but it was possible that she hadn't yet developed the unique talent.

Before too long, Rose placed the hairs back in the envelope, gave Pig a treat and they both left, Pig headed home and Rose on her way back to the castle. Unlike on the way over, Rose traveled quickly back to school. The potion wouldn't be ready for the ingredient for another hour or so, but she couldn't contain her excitement for that long.

After the long trek to the seventh floor, Rose rushed into the Room of Requirement, all while screaming out, "I got it! I got it!"

Having expected an immediate reaction from her companions, Rose looked around the room to find that it was deserted, with only the large cauldron continuing to brew in the center, and a couple of Al's things strewn across the other table, including one of his favorite black sweaters and his precious potions book. Disappointed that she couldn't share her enthusiasm, Rose crossed her arms against her chest and sighed.

"You got it? That's brilliant!" She suddenly heard someone say, and it sounded almost as if the voice, which she immediately recognized as Al's, was coming from somewhere along the ceiling.

"Al?" Rose asked, looking around again but finding no one.

"I'm up here," he said, sounding embarrassed. When Rose turned around and looked up, she found him hanging in midair, his feet pointed toward the ceiling, as if an invisible rope had tied his ankles to it and the rest of his body was hanging down toward the ground.

"I could use some help actually," Al added when Rose stood unmoving and stared up at him. "The counter-jinx is _Liberacorpus._"

"Oh, right," Rose said as she took out her wand and pointed it at Al. With a small swish and a silent spell, Al was released and crashed onto the floor, rubbing his forehead in pain as he tried to sit up.

Holding out a hand for her friend, Rose asked, "How long have you been up there?"

"Not _too_ long," Al said, now standing. "I've been trying out a couple of spells that are marked in the margins of my book, only I lost my wand when it pulled me up there, so I had to wait for someone to show. Honestly, I'm quite glad it was you and not…" but then he stopped, his cheeks flushing a light shade of pink. He quickly turned around in an attempt to hide his expression and picked up the Elder Wand from where it had fallen on the floor underneath him. Once he had it, he finished his sentence with, "Well anyway, thanks."

Rose laughed and said, "Of course." She then walked over to one of the tables and sat on top of it, swinging her legs back and forth. It seemed she couldn't stand or sit still at the moment. "Now that you mention it, where is Ilana?"

Al followed her to the table, sat beside her, and answered, "She went to get something to eat. Don't worry, I know that means I'm on potion duty." The three had agreed to have at least one person in the room at all times, so that nobody else could try to occupy it, as well as to monitor the potion.

"Yes, well that doesn't mean much if you're hanging from the ceiling the whole time," Rose snapped in response.

"Hey, it wasn't my fault. I had no idea what the spell would do; I'd never heard of it before," Al refuted, his pride taking control.

Rose nodded but said in a graver tone, "Fine. But you know, you have to be careful with these things. Even the simplest of spells could turn out to be very dangerous with the wand you have."

"Relax, Rose," Al said calmly, leaning back against the table so that the top half of his body was lying down. "I wouldn't have tried it if it seemed at all dangerous. Note that I used _myself _to test it out on."

Rose was skeptical, but didn't fight Al on anything. So far, he had been dealing with his power better than she had expected him to, so it was only fair to leave him be.

"So you said you got the hair?" Al asked anxiously, sitting up on his elbows.

Nodding, Rose handed him the envelope. "Don't lose any, they're practically microscopic."

"Yeah," Al agreed, looking closely at the hairs of his niece. "We're lucky she even had any." He then handed the envelope back to Rose, but had on a look of concern. "So, does this mean that on the next full moon, she'll turn? Remy?"

Rose shrugged, for she had no idea how things like this would work for a newborn. "I don't know, but you may want to tell Harry when you get home, that way Teddy will find out soon enough. That is, we'll tell them if the potion works. If it doesn't, I suppose she's in the clear."

Al nodded. "That can't be a nice life, being a werewolf. I don't think I'd want to turn into any animal, but that'd be the worst."

"I can't even imagine it," Rose commented. "But we can't think about that right now. We have to focus on the Veritaserum. Has it been going well so far?"

"As far as I can tell," Al said. "Higgs would be able to give you a better answer though."

Noticing the name Al had called Ilana, Rose asked teasingly, "She's good, isn't she?"

Sitting up all the way on the table, Al let out a breath and admitted, "We wouldn't last two days without her." Seeing Rose's wide eyes, he added, "Don't tell her I said that."

Rose laughed loudly at this, asking, "How is it that you two had never met before?" Ilana, like Al, was in Slytherin, and only one year above him. James had informed Rose of this when he mentioned that she was the star student of his sixth year Potions class.

Al shrugged and answered, "Different circles, I suppose. I mean, I'd seen her around loads of times, but I don't think she has many mates."

"It doesn't seem like it, does it?" Rose agreed. "She spends a lot of time alone in the library." Ironically, she said this as though it was an odd thing.

"Well, so do you!" Al exclaimed.

"Hey!" Rose fired back. "I go to the library whenever I need to find a bit of light reading."

Albus scoffed and picked up a book Rose had brought with her this morning. It was extremely thick, with a binding that stretched to half a foot and old, thin pages to boot. "This is light?" Al asked sarcastically.

Rose rolled her eyes, but ignored his comment. "What I was saying was that one normally goes to the library to _read_, but all I ever see her doing is writing letters."

"So?" Al asked. He didn't see the point.

"_So_," Rose explained, "We don't really know anything about her."

Al looked annoyed, so Rose defended herself with, "Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled to have her help, but it's just odd how she never asks questions about us, and we don't seem that curious about her either."

"Mmm," Al thought. "I think it's quite intriguing actually."

Rose didn't ask anymore about Ilana, since it was clear that Al liked her, and she didn't want her doubt to creep into his head too. The conversation having come to an end, the two became rather silent and spent the next while reading, waiting for Ilana to return and give more instructions about the potion.

At one point, Al stumbled across another interesting spell in the Half-Blood Prince's book that he couldn't seem to keep his mind off of. Curious, he asked Rose, "Have you heard of this spell, _Sectumsempra_?"

Looking at the page in his book where the incantation was scribbled in a margin, next to the words, '_For enemies'_, Rose answered honestly, "No, I haven't. But it doesn't sound particularly pleasant."

"Yeah, this book is filled with all these things I've never heard of either," Al mumbled, listening to Rose's first few words, but no further.

Rose was about to tell Al to be careful again, but was interrupted when she heard the front wall crackling. A door was emerging, and someone was coming in. "Higgs!" Al yelled excitedly as Ilana walked in, jumping off the table and leaving the book behind him. "We've got some great news!"

"Oh?" Ilana asked, barely paying attention to Al or Rose as she walked up to the boiling potion to examine it.

"Rose," Al said, offering for Rose to show Ilana the hairs herself. Reluctantly, she did so, going over to the cauldron and handing Ilana the envelope.

The paper sitting in the palm of her hand, Ilana asked, "Is this the hair?"

Al nodded, and Rose smiled. She couldn't help but feel intimidated by Ilana, whose similarly wild hair flowed perfectly over her rounded features, and whose talent with potions made Rose green with envy.

Slowly, Ilana poured out the follicles and examined them. "And you're sure these come from a werewolf?"

"Yes," Rose lied, Al shifting in his stance beside her. "A – a baby, but she is one."

"All right then," Ilana nodded. "Let's put it in."

"Oh, is it ready for it?" Rose asked, surprised.

Ilana looked in the cauldron and Al took a peek as well. "It's in its final stage, so any time is fine." She then held out her hand of hairs toward Rose.

"No," Rose rejected. "You should do the honors."

"Um, okay," Ilana said before she sprinkled in the final ingredient. As soon as she had done so, all three of them were circled around the cauldron, their heads leaning in to look for some sort of change in the substance, which was still a dark violet color of relatively diluted liquid. It wasn't much denser than water, but its rich coloring looked nothing like what the finished product was meant to, as Veritaserum was described to be transparent.

"Should something be happening?" Al asked, glancing at Rose with a worried expression. It was still possible that she had been wrong about Remy.

Ilana looked up at them, each of their faces meeting. She looked unsure of herself as she said, "Let me check." She then made her way over to the table where Al's book was sitting and flipped back to the correct page. Al and Rose waited patiently, having a silent conversation amongst themselves.

After Al had finished sending darting glares at Rose, he called out at the quiet Ilana, "What does it say?"

"Don't worry, we're fine," she answered, heading back over with the book open in her hands. "It should take a couple of hours. One of us has to monitor it closely though, since we're supposed to take it off the fire as soon as the color changes. If we don't, it won't be as powerful."

"I'll do it," Rose offered shortly.

Ilana looked skeptical, and asked, "Are you sure?"

"Of course," Rose answered. "Look, I know I'm not very good with potions, but I'm nothing if not observant."

Ilana looked to Al quickly, who nodded in agreement with Rose, and then said, "Fine. It's your potion anyway. I'll wait over there if you want a break at some point."

"I'm sure I'll be fine," Rose commented as Al and Ilana walked back to the table and sat down. Rose conjured a simple, wooden chair with her wand and sat next to the cauldron, her face staring down through the burning steam produced by the liquid. She had already vowed to herself never to take her eyes off of it, not even for a second; Scorpius's rescue depended on it.

Completely focused on the potion, Rose paid little attention to what Al and Ilana were up to in the background, though she could hear them debating over something. It sounded as if Al had taken Rose's advice after all, and had resorted to asking Ilana some questions to try and get to know her better. Still, they were keeping things light, each answer giving little away about either of their personalities.

"Favorite Quidditch team?" Al asked sometime in the middle of their discussion.

Ilana sighed, for she had been refusing to answer some of Al's previous questions, not wanting to play along. He had persisted, however, so she gave in. "Er, don't have one," she replied.

For a moment, there was silence, and Rose assumed that Al was gaping with shock. His family, along with Rose's, was extremely involved with Quidditch. Al himself wasn't the biggest fan in the family, but that didn't mean much when one considered the likes of Harry, Ginny, James, and even Lily.

"Really?" Al asked, though Rose was surprised to hear that his tone held little disappointment. In fact, he sounded okay with Ilana's response, and genuinely interested to gain an explanation.

"It's not because of the violence or anything like that," Ilana continued. "I just find it a little boring. I mean, there's no real strategy to it."

Rose, if she hadn't had her mind elsewhere, could have refuted Ilana on this point so easily.

"Oh, sorry," Ilana said before Al had the time to respond. "I know you're on the team. I didn't mean it personally." She didn't sound all that sincere, making Rose grunt to herself in the background.

"That's fine," Al said, much to Rose's disappointment. "To each his own, right?" He was trying _way_ too hard at this point.

"Yeah, I suppose," Ilana agreed, finishing off the topic.

"All right, let's see," Al thought, trying to come up with another question. "Oh, I know. What's your Patronus?"

Rose barely made out a small chuckle from Ilana, and she had a feeling that she might be blushing. Rose understood why Al had asked this, as the animal form that a person's Patronus Charm took usually represented a part of their own personality, but she didn't know why Ilana would be embarrassed to admit her own.

"Come on, how bad could it be?" Al asked after Ilana didn't answer.

After a deep breath, Ilana finally replied, "It's an okapi."

"An _okapi_?" Al asked, having never heard of the animal. Rose had read about them once before, but they were very rare, and not a part of the magical world at all.

"Yeah," Ilana said. "It's sort of odd looking, like a giraffe mixed with a zebra. It's a type of antelope."

"So what, like shapes and stripes?" Al asked.

"Um no, not exactly," Ilana explained. "Stripes around the legs, but a relatively long neck and a face shaped like a giraffe. It also has enormous ears, which look sort of ridiculous."

"I think it sounds unique," Al commented. "Different. Even special."

Rose went perfectly still, trying to make herself invisible in case this proved to be a connecting moment for her friend and Ilana, but this didn't seem to be the case when Ilana casually replied, "Well thanks, Potter. And what about you? What's your Patronus?"

"A hawk," Al stated proudly.

"How powerful," Ilana said. Rose could imagine the smile on Al's face upon hearing this. It would have dropped instantly, however, as soon as Ilana added, "And predatory."

"Or independently motivated," Al offered, making Ilana laugh in return. They continued on like so for a little while longer until both got bored and Al returned to reading while Ilana took out a piece of parchment to write yet another letter.

Meanwhile, hours had gone by, and it was nearing Sunday evening already, but Rose had forgotten to care. Her entire body had turned somewhat numb, ignoring the need for food, water, or sleep, and finding whatever energy it could to keep Rose concentrated on this potion.

It was still bubbling away, the steam not only making Rose's cheeks turn bright red from the heat, but also making her hair frizz uncontrollably, as if she had just spent a large amount of time vacationing in the tropics. Al and Ilana tried to make fun of her for it, but she didn't have the energy to care about them either.

At some point, Al and Ilana left for supper, but returned soon after to find Rose in the exact same spot she had been in before. Both had offered to switch places with her multiple times, but she always refused. This would be her burden to bear, and hers to reap the consequences of if it didn't work as planned.

Once Al had fallen asleep, his body sprawled across one of the tables, and Ilana was barely staying awake as she tried to read Rose's book (which she proclaimed to be exceedingly dull), Rose suggested the two just leave for their dormitories. Without much argument, they stood up and headed for the door, and were just about to go when, out of the corner of Rose's eyes, she saw the potion suddenly turn from the color of eggplant into perfect, transparent glass.

"Wait!" she yelled as soon as they had reached the wall.

"What?" asked Al and Ilana, excitedly yet sleepily.

"I think it just turned," Rose said. "Come help me move the cauldron!"

Suddenly overcome with adrenaline, the two rushed back over and held on to the handles of the enormous pot, Rose and Ilana on one side and Al on the other, and lowered it onto a cooling tray beside the fire.

Ilana took out her wand, pointed it at the still roaring fire, and whispered, "_Aguamenti."_ A burst of water emitted from her wand, dousing the fire instantly. It was a spell that Rose had always wanted to learn, but that only appeared in the sixth year curriculum.

Turning back to the newly completed Veritaserum, Ilana took out a large spoon and began stirring. It looked just like the pictures Rose had seen in the various potions books they had checked out over the weekend: clear and colorless, with the same smoothness and ripple effect as water. It reminded Rose of the time she had taught Scorpius how to skip rocks, and how such a simple thing brought such a calming atmosphere to the air around it.

The potion was also odorless, and as the three reverted to staring down at it, they were captivated by its perfection. Somehow, they had managed to produce a potion so incredibly pure, and they had quite a large dose of it to go around. Still, Rose wanted to make sure that they had done as well as it looked like they had.

"How do we know if it works?" she asked.

"We could test it on one of us," Ilana suggested. "The effects shouldn't last too long, and there's not much harm that could come of it."

"I'll do it," Al volunteered, raising his hand in the air as if back in DADA class, when Shunpike decided to test spells directly on his students. He was trying to show off for Ilana, clearly, but Al was also never one to pass up a challenge.

"Alright," Ilana said. She then used her wand to conjure a small cup, which she used to scoop out some of the liquid. She carefully handed it to Al, who gulped it back like pumpkin juice.

Once he had drunk it all, Rose asked Ilana, "What now? We just ask him questions and hope he's telling the truth?"

Ilana, thinking, suggested, "Well, you're the one who knows him. Just ask him things that you already know the answer to." Turning to Al, she added, "Potter, you're going to try your best to lie, and Rose will be able to tell me if you are or not. If you can't do it, then that means it works."

Rose nodded, anxiously awaiting the outcome of this test. It seemed as though things had been going well in her plan thus far, but she knew better than anyone that luck never lasted.

"Al," Rose started, having thought of a simple question for him. "What day is your birthday?"

"July the first," Al responded. Rose gave a nod to Ilana; this was true.

"Alright, now ask something deeper, more meaningful. Something he wouldn't want to tell everyone," Ilana suggested.

This time, Rose thought about her question for a long while. She had plenty of ideas, but didn't want to ask anything too personal in front of their new companion. Eventually, she decided upon something that she thought might actually be helpful for his quest to impress, as it had a similar context to what Ilana had accused him of when they had met that Friday.

"Why did you want to be Slytherin prefect so badly at the beginning of the year?" Rose asked Al.

He glanced at Ilana as he answered, "To make my father proud."

Rose didn't need to wrack her brain to know what this meant. "It works," she said happily. Turning to Ilana, she was pleased to see that she still had her eyes on Al, and wore a guilty smile on her face.

After her attention was turned back to the potion, Ilana exclaimed, "Brilliant! We did it!"

Rose and Al nodded and smiled, and Al hugged Rose by the side (though he leaned away so as not to become buried in her overly grown hair). As each of them stood up, Rose addressed Ilana and said genuinely, "Thank you. For everything."

"Of course," Ilana said. "Let me know how things work out with Scorpius." Rose and Al had planned to meet Colin early the next morning just outside Shunpike's office, but Ilana's work with them was officially over now that the potion was finished.

As Rose looked to Al, she could tell that he was just realizing this, and what it meant. Out of everybody, with the exception of possibly Hugo, Al had been enjoying himself most during this time. The weekend had been long and stressful, but he hadn't cared much about any of that. With a slightly saddened expression, he asked Ilana, "Could I walk you back to the common room?"

Ilana hesitated, but said, "Sure." She then led the way out of the room and into the hallway, where they parted ways from Rose.

Before doing so, Ilana had one last thing to tell Rose. Just as they were saying goodbye for the night, standing in the seventh floor hallway, Ilana said, "You did good, Rose. I'm sorry I underestimated you. I just hope that Scorpius knows how much you love him, and how much you've done for him with all this."

Rose smiled and laughed, because Ilana made it sound like Rose had risked her life to help Scorpius. The funny thing was, she would have. "I barely did anything," Rose said. "Not compared to what he's done for me."

Ilana nodded and gave her a small hug before she turned around and left with Al. Rose didn't think that they would be best friends any time soon, but Ilana didn't seem so bad after all.

* * *

_Section 4_

"Let's go over it once more," Rose pled. She, Albus, and Colin were hiding behind the statue of a knight in the hallway off of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, where, according to James's map, Shunpike was located at this very moment. In her hands, Rose held an enormous container full of Veritaserum, cleverly disguised as one of Colin's cleaning supplies bottles. This was meant to hold all the extra liquid that they could need, whereas Al had a smaller cup filled with the potion, which they had filled with essence of mead, Shunpike's favorite drink. Granted, it was the morning, but they had a feeling that the professor may just go for it.

"It's pretty simple, Rose," Al whined. He had already explained the plan five times, and it wasn't even he who had come up with it.

"Th – that's alright, Rose," Colin said, feeling sympathetic as the nerves took control over him as well. "S – so we have the potion, and we're going to suspend it in the air for him when Sh – Shunpike walks out of the classroom. Then he'll take it and drink it, and you two will follow him to the office."

"Right," Rose said, nodding her head. "Okay. Thanks, Colin."

"Shh!" Al whispered to both of them then. "He's coming out."

All three quickly dropped their heads further below the statue, and Al handed his brother's map over to Rose so that he could place the cup down on the floor. Next to him, Rose took out her wand to do the honors, but Al stopped her. "Er, maybe I should do it?" he asked concernedly.

Rose rolled her eyes but shrugged in agreement. Al used to tease her about this being the only spell she had ever had difficulty with, but Rose figured that now wasn't the time to take it lightly.

Quietly, Al pointed his own wand at the cup and said, "_Wingardium leviosa_." With a swish and flick, the cup was floating mid-air, and Al was concentrating hard on steering it around to the front of the statue and into the middle of the hallway where Shunpike would run into it. Once he got it there, he was careful to keep his wand steady through the stone knight's legs as he crouched down to hide himself.

As Shunpike's door opened, Rose grabbed hold of the Invisibility Cloak and flung it over the three of them as far as it would go. James had been kind enough to loan them his two most prized possessions, and Rose had vowed to make good use of them.

The teacher came out of the room at a leisurely pace, yawning loudly as the door shut behind him. He was dressed in what looked like a suit, but it was torn up in the arms, and he was wearing sandals as shoes. Similarly, his hair was pointed in all directions, as if he had only just woken up after a long night of tossing and turning.

He stood still for a moment before he began walking, rubbing his closed eyes to adjust to the candle-lit hall and morning sun streaming through an enormous stained-glass window just behind the statue where Rose, Albus, and Colin were hiding. After only a few steps, his head bumped right into the floating cup, and Rose grimaced for fear that it might fall to the floor.

Luckily, Al was able to hold it steady, and Shunpike looked extremely curious about it. As he took hold of it, Al released his wand from the spell and watched anxiously to see if Shunpike would drink it. His eyebrows were raised at it, and he seemed interested. After he looked around the room and saw that no one was there, he gave it a sniff and upon smelling nothing out of the ordinary, took one large sip.

Rose, Al, and Colin were each gleaming with thankfulness as they kept their eyes on Shunpike, who was now walking away. Once he had turned the corner, they stood up and released Colin from his place under the Cloak.

"Good luck," Colin said at Rose and Al, who were still invisible. He wouldn't be going with them, as Rose didn't want their presence at the trial to cause him any more trouble.

As she and Al started to run after Shunpike, she whispered back at Colin, "Thanks! See you later."

Once back on the top floor of the castle, the remaining two waited for Shunpike to head past the gargoyle, and then made sure the coast was clear. Rose was fairly certain that Shunpike would have been the last of the large teacher committee to arrive, since he was nearly always late, so the trial should be starting right away.

When Rose and Al approached the gargoyle, however, Al stopped Rose and asked from under he Cloak, "You know what you're going to say, right? You're sure they'll listen to you?"

"Yes, I know, and I'm sure. McGonagall wants him cleared too, and this is the proof she needs," Rose answered confidently.

"Alright then," Al nodded. "Let's do this." He had never been to McGonagall's office before, but he didn't look nearly as nervous as Rose. It had only been a few days, but she felt like she hadn't seen Scorpius for an eternity, and she had never missed him this much.

Staring up at the strange statue that may or may not have been able to see them, Rose said, "Animagus." Shunpike hadn't given a password, probably because he was an expected guest, but Rose knew that she and Al would need one.

"I'm sorry," came a low, monotone voice. "That is not the correct password."

"What do you mean?" Rose asked, panicked, but the gargoyle didn't respond.

From beside her, Al asked, "I thought you said you knew what it was?"

"I did," Rose said. "She must have changed it since the last time." Out of all the difficulties that they could have faced, Rose had never suspected this to be it.

"Well, you got the last one," Al said, still hopeful. "Maybe you can guess again."

Rose gulped, for she had no idea what else McGonagall could have chosen. Of course, it made perfect sense that the Headmistress would change her password on a regular basis, but she had practically hinted at the idea that Rose might stop by for the trial, so she must have chosen something that Rose would be able to think of. Wracking her brain for the one thing she and McGonagall had in common, the thought finally came to Rose, and it was as clear as the day that was awakening just outside these walls.

"Scorpius," she whispered, and the gargoyle leapt aside and led them onto the moving steps.

Al didn't say a word of congratulations to Rose, remaining silent and letting her prepare herself for what she was about to do. When they reached the top of the tower, they both stepped onto the floor and approached the door. Neither could hear anything, but both could feel the icy presence of Scorpius coming from the other side.

Just as Al pulled off the Cloak and stuffed it in one of his pockets with the map, Rose clutched her wand tightly and took the deepest breath she ever had. She then reached out for the familiar, half-lion, half-bird knockers and turned them slowly.

As soon as the doors opened, Rose glided in as if she owned the place, looking straight forward and walking without any hesitation, Albus close behind her. "Professor McGonagall," she said confidently at the old woman who was sitting in her enormous, throne-like chair behind her desk at the center of the circular room. "We believe that there is something you should know."

"Ms. Weasley," said McGonagall, none too surprised to see her there, but looking up at Rose with warning. "I'm afraid it is too late for any such thing. The accused has already come forward with a statement."

Suddenly, the world stopped… or it should have. Rose was left staring down at McGonagall for a split second that somehow turned into hours, wondering how she could have acted so rashly. From what McGonagall had just said, it sounded as if Scorpius was guilty after all, and that he had even admitted it willingly. Rose had been so sure that they were wrong, and it had taken so much effort to make any doubt she had about Scorpius disappear. She had believed in him, after everybody had told her to do so, and now she was left with no understanding of how she could have let that happen.

Around her, Rose glanced to McGonagall's right side, where Professors Flitwick and Longbottom were standing, each with blank faces that Rose couldn't read. On McGonagall's other side was Professor Pontner, whose warm, mothering ways now felt cold and stale to Rose. They were all just standing there, doing nothing, saying nothing. Rose wanted to yell at them, even scream, but nothing came out of her mouth as she caught sight of somebody else in the room.

Next to McGonagall, behind Pontner, was Scorpius. As Rose's eyes met with his, she saw that he looked exactly like himself, yet completely different. His light hair was dirty and his uniform, the same one he had been wearing when Shunpike had taken him out of his exam, was tattered even more so than Shunpike's suit. Even so, his eyes were not the same lifeless, hollow glaciers they had been the last time Rose had seen him. There was a sparkle in them, an admiration of sorts, as he looked back at her. It lasted less than a second, but Rose knew that this Scorpius was in no way guilty of murder. Those eyes could never commit such a crime, no matter what anybody else believed.

This was when Rose saw Shunpike once again, who was standing on the other side of Pontner, with his eyes on the back of the room, which was hidden behind Rose. She didn't have to look at his scraggly face for long before she turned back to McGonagall and stated firmly, "No."

Rose could feel all the eyes in the room now on her as McGonagall said once again, "Ms. Weasley, please."

"Rose," Scorpius pleaded, but she wouldn't look at him again. She had made her decision, and now she was acting on it.

"No," Rose said one last time, before she snapped her head in the direction of Shunpike, pointed her wand at him, and asked, "Professor, I'm sorry I have to ask this, but –" she paused here, for she had never actually let herself imagine this moment.

She had pictured how they would brew the potion, how they would give it to Shunpike, and how she would storm into McGonagall's office, but she had never thought of the exact words she would ask the teacher. Whatever she sais would be the last words he'd remember before being sent to Azkaban prison, the last words he'd ever hear as a free man. Rose would be, for the most part, ending his life, and so she paused here, finally letting herself take in the moment.

"- Did you murder Argus Filch?"

There were whispers all around the room now, and Rose could see wide eyes from the corners of her own. No one but she and Al had expected this, but it was what came after that caused an even greater shock.

Shunpike looked back at Rose with astonishment, and his eyes looked genuinely pained at the idea, the dark circles underneath them growing ever heavier as time continued. "No," he said, "Of course not."

Rose was speechless. She and Al had been completely certain that the potion worked, and they had even watched Shunpike drink it. There was no way he was lying. Rose had been wrong all along. Shunpike was innocent. The only question left was if Scorpius was innocent too.

Her head dropped down in embarrassment and Rose reverted to staring down at the marble floor. She could feel Albus's hand on her arm, but she couldn't bear to look at him. He had always defended Shunpike, and she had convinced him to do otherwise.

In the background, Rose could hear McGonagall standing from her seat and walking around the desk toward her. "Rose," she said kindly, again sounding none too shocked to hear of Rose's own false accusation of Shunpike. "Professor Shunpike did _not_ murder Mr. Filch. What I was trying to inform you of beforehand, however, was that neither did Mr. Malfoy."

Rose looked up at McGonagall with tears in her eyes, and looking more lost than she had ever been. From beside the two of them, Al had turned around to face the back of the room, toward the door, and pointed in the direction as he whispered, "Rose, look."

Vincent Goyle was standing in front of the door, wandless, his face void of any color or expression, and his huge legs looking as if they were about to buckle at the knees. Rose and Al must have walked right past him on their way in, but Shunpike had had his eyes on him the entire time.

Now, Shunpike was walking over to the large boy, a familiar cup in his left hand. As he glanced back at Rose with a bit of a glare, but nothing too fierce, he held up the half-empty glass and asked, "Veritaserum, yes?"

Rose gave a single nod in response, to which Shunpike commented, "Impressive."

From behind them, Professor Pontner could be heard muttering, "I knew somebody had gotten into my cupboards. I found a chewed up ear in there just the other day."

Everybody else ignored the woman as Shunpike gave Goyle the drink to sip. He took it willingly, and kept his eyes on the floor as Shunpike asked him, "Did _you_ murder Argus Filch?"

"Yes."

Everything went quiet, and nothing could be heard but for the steady breathing of the teachers and students in the large office. They were all waiting for something to happen, though none of them knew what exactly they were expecting.

"It's funny, isn't it?" Goyle said, again emotionless. "You think killing people will make them like you, but it doesn't. It just makes them dead."

Things remained silent for a while longer, until Al took a step forward and asked, "It was you? You were the thing I saw in the forest? The one who opened the gate?"

"Yes," Goyle answered, not able to say anything but the truth.

Rose immediately flashed back to that night, when she and Al had been walking back to the castle and noticed that the gate had already been opened for them. Al had thought that he had seen something or someone along the way, but he hadn't been able to get a clear view.

"How did you figure all this out?" Rose asked McGonagall curiously. Goyle hadn't displayed much evidence that might have turned him into a suspect, and it seemed like quite the coincidence that he would be turned in just in time to save Scorpius from taking the blame instead.

"Mr. Goyle turned himself in just before the two of you arrived," McGonagall said. "Apparently, the guilt caught up to him."

This didn't sound much like Goyle, who had never apologized for any of the various injuries he had caused over the years on the Quidditch pitch, nor the bullying he had done to people like Al throughout the hallways of this very castle. Still, Rose didn't bother questioning further. She was thankful enough that Scorpius was no longer a suspect, and was glad to take whatever proof of it she had.

Goyle was escorted out of the office soon after by Shunpike, followed closely by the three other head teachers. Once gone, only McGonagall was left with Rose, Al, and the newly freed Scorpius. Rose and Al had both taken seats on the other side of McGonagall's desk, but Scorpius was still standing by the latter's side, all three of them waiting to be released.

"Now, Ms. Weasley and Mr. Potter," McGonagall said as Rose and Al prepared themselves for a lecture. "What you displayed today was clearly very wrong. Accusing anybody, especially one of Hogwarts's own teachers, is unacceptable and inexcusable. I do hope you both realize that."

Rose and Al nodded, but Scorpius tried to intervene. "Professor, it's not their fault. They were only trying to help me!"

"Mr. Malfoy, while I apologize sincerely for convicting you of a crime you did not commit, I would not advise you to step past your boundaries now," McGonagall spat back, silencing Scorpius immediately.

"While I would very much like to withhold points from the both of you," McGonagall continued to Rose and Al, "I do admire those who value loyalty above all else. You showed precisely that today, and so for this reason you will not receive any punishment, nor any reward."

Rose smiled, for she didn't need a reward. All she needed was to hold Scorpius in her arms again, for the fear of not being able to do so had penetrated her every thought over the past few days. McGonagall seemed to be able to sense this as she said, "I shall see you all at the feast tonight, but until then, you may go."

Rose and Al stood up, and each of them shook McGonagall's hand in goodbye. Just as they were about to go, however, McGonagall turned to Scorpius and returned to him his wand. "Again, Scorpius, I do hope you know how terribly sorry I am. I wish I could have helped you sooner, and I do hope that you have an enjoyable summer. I'll be writing to your father this afternoon to explain the situation. Promise me you will not let him misinterpret it."

"I promise," Scorpius said. "Thank you, Professor." He then held out his hand to shake hers, but she pulled him into an extremely short hug, something Rose had never seen McGonagall do with any student before.

As soon as the trio was out of the office and the door had closed, Rose rushed into Scorpius, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck. It took him a moment to respond, but once he did, he wrapped his own arms around her waist and clasped onto her, lifting her off the ground ever so slightly. Once he put her back down, he moved one of his hands to the back of her head and held her closer.

"I love you," Scorpius whispered into Rose's ear, too quietly for anyone to hear but her.

"I know," she said back.

Reluctantly, the two broke apart, if only to allow Al to give Scorpius a hug and a pat on the back. "Glad to have you back, mate," Al said.

"It's good to be back," Scorpius agreed. "Thank you both. For everything."

Al waved his hand through the air, saying, "It was nothing."

Still, Scorpius rolled his eyes, because the three of them could always tell when another was lying.

"Alright, it wasn't," Al admitted with a chuckle. "But it was worth it."

Scorpius smiled, somewhat guiltily, but Rose took his hand for comfort. They then made their way onto the moving, spiral staircase and were slowly lowered down to the seventh floor together. They didn't say anything to each other as they headed down, but somewhere along the way Scorpius leaned over and gave Rose a kiss on her forehead.

The quiet disappeared, however, when they stepped off the stairs and walked past the gargoyle to find a group of anxious students waiting for them. James, Hugo, Nigel, Lucy, Holly, and Colin were all there, hoping that they might see Scorpius walk out with Rose and Al. When they saw the trio together, everybody ran up to them and patted Scorpius on the back, thankful to see that their plan had worked, even if it hadn't been in the way they had expected it to.

As Scorpius was passed along through the crowd, Rose lost hold of him and stood just outside of the group, waiting patiently for Scorpius to return to her. Across the hallway, standing over by the entrance to the Gryffindor common room, Rose spotted Ilana, looking in on the rest of them almost longingly, as if she wanted to fit in, but knew that for some reason, she didn't. When Ilana saw Rose staring at her, she gave her a small nod with a smile, almost as if she was declaring some sort of truce. Rose smiled back, and then Ilana turned to go.

"Higgs, wait up!" Rose heard Al yell out, and then saw him run after her from where he had been standing across the hall from Rose. She smiled at this too, thinking that maybe Al had finally met his match. In her eyes, nobody would ever be good enough for him, but Ilana may prove to come close. At least, closer than Abby Chang-Turner ever could have come.

"You did good, kid," Rose suddenly heard from just behind her. Turning around, she saw James standing by her side. He had already said hello and goodbye to Scorpius, quickly as usual, and now had a hand on Rose's shoulder.

Rose laughed, feeling the desire to tell James the truth, since she knew he would never be condescending toward her because of it. "It wasn't even Shunpike," she said. "I was the wrong the whole time."

James smiled and said, "Well, people make mistakes. People are wrong. People lose. It happens. It's what comes after that matters, right? I mean, you got him back in the end."

Rose nodded, "Yeah, I suppose I did. And even though we lost the Cup this year, you've already been recruited for the big leagues."

James blushed, something he didn't often do, and said, "Exactly. You know, yesterday, they asked me if I wanted to start training with them this summer. Nearly everyday during the week; it's an amazing offer."

"That's incredible!" Rose exclaimed, giving James as big a hug as she could. "Gosh, you're so lucky." Looking over at Scorpius, who was trying hard to listen to Hugo's crazy stories about their potions cupboard break-in, Rose added, "We both are."

James followed her eyes to Scorpius and said, "Yeah, it seems that way. Anyhow, I best be off. I've got to prepare for tonight." The final feast of the year was to be held later that evening, and James always planned some huge prank to play on the entire student body and staff. Last year, he had set off a batch of fireworks that roared their way through the Great Hall, taking the form of dragons and breathing fire at the ceiling. He always made things exciting, though the event itself was usually relatively dull.

"We'll see," Rose said. "I might hide out with Scorpius instead." She knew that he would not be up for being paraded in front of everybody, and he was probably exhausted to boot. Plus, Rose wanted to talk to him. There were some things she needed to say.

James seemed to understand, as he smiled and then left, off to the courtyard to meet Lysander and Lorcan. Lucy raced after him, probably wanting to catch up with the latter twin herself. Hugo, Nigel, Colin, and Holly all left soon afterward as well, happy to see that their help had paid off, but not close enough to Scorpius to stick around for too long.

Once everyone had gone, and without even having to discuss it, Rose and Scorpius went to their clearing in the Room of Requirement. Having spent so much time in this room, but with a completely different setting, over the past few days, Rose quickly realized how much she had missed the stunning, autumn forest that Scorpius had created for her.

They remained silent as they went to sit down under their usual maple tree, though both could sense the elephant in the room. Rose was determined to wait for Scorpius to speak, and eventually he did. "I'm sorry," he said. "I should have told you. About how I found the ring, I mean."

Rose was immediately relieved when Scorpius apologized before trying to make excuses. Still, she was confused, and wanted more answers from him. "But why were you in the forest that night? What were you doing?" she asked. It was forbidden to be out that late, though it seemed like there had been quite a few students breaking the rules, coincidentally all at the same time.

Scorpius rubbed his eyes, looking both tired and upset. Rose felt guilty for keeping him up like this, but she wanted to talk through everything right away, so that it could all be out in the open. She could tell that it was hard for him to answer as Scorpius replied, "I was following Al; you and Al, actually. I saw him get up from our dormitory, and I knew he was upset about me getting Prefect. I just wanted to make sure he didn't do anything stupid."

He ran a hand through his hair, something he always did when he was nervous, and closed his eyes before continuing, "And then you showed up, and I couldn't help but watch the two of you for a while. Then, I left as soon as you did, but I stepped on this on my way back to the castle."

Rose, who had had her eyes staring blankly ahead of her, looked over at Scorpius and saw the ring sitting in the palm of his hand. "It seems strange," Rose said, "That somebody would leave that there. The forest isn't exactly a place people usually go."

Scorpius shrugged, not nearly as interested in the mystery as Rose was. "Anyway, take it. It's yours. I only took it back to keep you from getting involved, which obviously didn't work."

Blushing, Rose bit her lip and said, "Sorry about that. I shouldn't have gotten involved I suppose, but I just wanted you out. I wanted to find you, to rescue you."

Scorpius's eyes were watering now, and he took a deep breath as he said, "I'm surprised you even believed me. A part of me thought you might think I was guilty, like the rest of them." He laughed to himself pitifully, and buried his head in his hands.

Rose immediately wanted to comfort him, so she pulled his hands off his face and made him look her in the eye. She was going to be honest; they both were. So, she held a hand on his face and said sincerely, "They didn't all believe Shunpike, you know. McGonagall didn't, Al didn't, all those people that helped us didn't. Sometimes there was this voice in my head that said I shouldn't trust you so easily, but then those people all convinced me that my gut was right all along. I mean, I was wrong about Shunpike, but I was always right about you. Scorpius, anybody who knows you would know that you are in no way capable of murder."

Scorpius sniffled for a while before he nodded and said, "Thank you."

Smiling, Rose teased, "You've got dirt on your nose by the way, did you know?" This time, though, unlike on the train on their way to school, Rose wiped it off herself. "Just there," she said quietly as the knuckle on her index finger brushed off a small spot of brown beside his otherwise pale nose.

As Rose concentrated on cleaning off his face, Scorpius unexpectedly pulled her in for a kiss. Afterward, he whispered, "I missed you. I'm sorry I put you through this."

"I'm sorry you _went_ through this," Rose said. "Just, from now on, promise me you'll tell me everything, even if it doesn't seem important at the time. I don't want to question you ever again."

"I promise," Scorpius returned. "Everything."

"Starting with what it was like for you these past few days?" Rose asked, anxious that Scorpius might back away from the request. He was bound to have been emotional, and he never liked to share his feelings.

Reluctantly, Scorpius complied with, "It was as if I was surrounded by darkness, all the time, even during the day. I just kept thinking of the same things, over and over again, wondering what was happening outside, in the real world. I thought so much it would make any sane person go crazy, and I was sure that there was no way out. I had no idea about Goyle, and until then McGonagall and Shunpike seemed pretty certain that I was guilty. There wasn't much I could do to convince them otherwise."

After a long pause, he smiled and continued, "But then, just outside of my cell, which was up at the top of this little tower, there was this bird. Annoying little thing really, it just kept singing and singing, and it was up on the roof, so I couldn't see it. Then, last night, after Shunpike had brought me something to eat, I noticed that the bird was sitting right outside, right next to the cell. It wasn't singing anymore, it was just sitting there. I could barely make out its shape, but then, for just a second, the moon shown on that same spot. It was a cardinal, and it made me think of you, and then I knew somehow that I'd get through it, and that you'd lead me."

The moment he was done with his story, Rose bore a huge grin on her face and gave Scorpius a kiss, this one just as surprising as the one he had given her. When she moved away from him ever so slightly, he flushed and leaned toward her instinctively. She wouldn't give in though, and instead shook her head and said, "Now it's my turn." She then told Scorpius everything that she and Al had been up to over the weekend, leaving nothing out.

Once she had finished, Scorpius asked curiously, "Ilana Higgs? I've never even heard of her before."

Not surprised, Rose answered back, "Well, you will soon enough. I don't think Al will be able to let her out of his sight."

He laughed at this, and then they both went back to staring at their hands, which had become entwined a while back. In Scorpius's free hand, he still held Rose's ring, and when he noticed this, he said once again, "Here. You can have it back now."

Thinking about it, Rose shook her head and said, "No." She had been using this response a lot lately, and she had grown to like the power it bore.

Scorpius looked confused, so Rose explained, "Who knows where you'll end up this summer. I mean, I'm going to be at home with my family, but you haven't even heard from yours. You may go to Al's, but then you might not. So, you should keep it for a while. That way, you won't need some silly bird to remind you of me."

With a nod from Scorpius, Rose clasped his hand shut around the stone and asked for reassurance, "So, you'll take care of it for me?"

"I will," Scorpius responded. "You know I will."

* * *

The next day, this year's final day at Hogwarts, came faster than Rose had expected it to. She and Scorpius had missed the entire final feast, and had fallen asleep together in the Room of Requirement. They had woken up late the next morning, with barely enough time to rush downstairs for breakfast before they had to start packing their things.

After Rose had filled her bags, which she had done much faster than the boys, she told Al and Scorpius to wait for her outside the front entrance with the carriages. She had something she felt obliged to do before she left, and being as Al had already paid his own dues, it was something that Rose had to do alone.

Walking through the newly empty halls of the castle, Rose felt an eerie quality to the air around her. Hogwarts had always felt so safe, but recent events made it seem more threatening. The people in this school were not the saints she had believed them to be at such a young age, and neither was she. Everybody made mistakes, even the ones she looked up to the most, and even herself.

Once through the DADA classroom, which was dark and lonely, Rose arrived at Shunpike's office. His door was wide open, and as she peered inside the small room, she saw that the teacher had an enormous suitcase on the floor, which was being randomly stuffed with various odd trinkets from around the room. For a moment, Rose could have sworn she had seen a tiny, shriveled up head of a person, but it was quickly buried by one of Shunpike's sweaters.

His back was turned to her, so Rose knocked on the wall outside the room to gain his attention. He jumped up upon hearing her, and turned around with a hand wrapped across his stomach as if to keep it from rolling over. "Oh, Ms. Weable, I didn't hear you coming!"

"I'm sorry, sir," Rose apologized. "Er, may I come in?"

"Well, I suppose so, yes. If you must," Shunpike answered.

Rose ignored his rudeness, for she had gotten used to it. Plus, by now it was well deserved. Since the room had no chairs inside, she stood beside his suitcase and looked up at the scrawny man. "I just came to apologize," she said. "I'm so sorry for accusing you the way I did. It was incredibly unfair to you, and completely out of my place. I hope you can understand that I was acting out of judgment, and that it had nothing to do with you, yourself."

"Yes, I know that," Shunpike stated. "And maybe you could apologize to Scorpius for me? What I did had nothing to do with him either."

Rose nodded. "Of course," she complied. She had her mind on something else Shunpike had mentioned, however. "Um, if you don't my asking, why did you turn him in? How did you even find out about the ring?"

Shunpike looked at Rose suspiciously, but eventually answered her. "Harry Potter told me to ask you about it. He's an old friend of mine, but you already knew that."

"I see," Rose said, and she was suddenly brought back to an odd moment at Christmas when her uncle had in fact asked her about the ring she was wearing. It had brought up a whole new argument, thanks to Lily, so Rose had since forgotten about the fact that Harry seemed to recognize it. Of course, this followed McGonagall's insinuation that Harry was the ring's previous owner. Still, Rose didn't want to dwell on it now, and figured that she'd ask Harry in time. He'd have enough to deal with as it was, since Al was planning on asking him about his wand.

Looking over at Shunpike once more, who had turned his back to Rose and returned to packing (with the help of his wand, of course), she said, "Well, I best be off. I'll see you next year, Professor." She then turned to leave.

"Actually, you won't," Shunpike said as he tried to bang his suitcase shut. "I'm afraid you've seen the last of me at Hogwarts."

"What?" Rose asked, shocked to hear that he was leaving so soon. "Why? I hope this doesn't have anything to do with…"

"Oh, it wasn't about the murder, don't worry," Shunpike shrugged her off. "I've just decided that teaching isn't really for me. Plus, I'm much more of a night owl myself. Honestly, I can barely stay awake for most of my classes."

Rose chuckled, for she knew how true his words were. "Well," she said, "Good luck, in whatever it is you decide to do next. Goodbye, Professor Shunpike."

"Goodbye, Ms. Weasley," said Shunpike. It had taken him an entire year, but he had finally gotten her name right.

On Rose's way out of the castle, the eerie feeling she had had before crept up on her again. Hearing an odd tapping noise coming ever closer to her, she spun around to look down the hall. Much to her relief, however, she was met with none other than Holly Longbottom, skipping through the hall, happy as could be.

"Holly!" Rose exclaimed as the small girl came closer. "What are you doing here? The carriages are going to leave any minute!"

Once completely caught up with Rose, Holly replied, "I know, but I won't be on them."

"Why not?" asked Rose.

"Well, because I live here, of course. Dad and I aren't going on vacation this year, so we'll have Hogwarts to ourselves. It's quite the privilege, actually," Holly explained.

Rose nodded, remembering that the only reason she had seen Holly on the carriages that fall was because she had been away for the summer, but normally she lived at Hogwarts year-round. "It sounds sort of lonely," Rose commented. She had continued walking toward the front doors, and Holly seemed to be headed in the same direction.

"Oh no, there's plenty of wrackspurts to investigate," said Holly.

Rose laughed and rolled her eyes. "Well," she said, "If you ever do want some more company, other than the wrackspurts of course, you're more than welcome to pay my family and me a visit. Plus, I know my parents would love to see your dad again." Neville had been very distant every since his wife died, so he hadn't seen Ron or Hermione for years.

"That sounds nice," Holly agreed. "And next year, will we brewing any more potions?"

Rose was suddenly met with a wave of guilt as Holly spoke longingly of the adventurous time they had spent together. "Oh, well I only needed the potion to help Scorpius, and he was cleared, so…"

"Oh," Holly sighed sadly. "That's too bad. I rather enjoyed the meetings. It was like having friends."

"You are me friend, Holly!" Rose said quickly, before Holly might try to question it.

"Do you really think so?" Holly asked, stopping their walk as they arrived at the two front doors.

"Of course," Rose said sincerely. "We get along really well, I think. Not to mention that I would have been lost without you!"

Holly looked up at the open sky that was sitting just outside the castle. She then focused her eyes on the top of one of the open doors. "I don't think that's true," she said to Rose. "After all, my dad always said the things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end."

Confused, Rose followed Holly's gaze to a pair of bright, flowered shoes hanging from the door. She then looked back at Holly, noticing that she was still going barefoot. Once again laughing, Rose pulled her into a hug and said, "Have a good summer, Holly."

Walking outside and petting one of the thestrals in front of a carriage, Holly said, "Oh, I'm sure I will."

Rose then hopped on the carriage with Al and Scorpius, who had been waiting beside it, and waved goodbye to her friend. Beside her, Scorpius whispered, "What was she doing?"

Rose was about to try to explain, but Al beat her to it. "Don't ask," he said. "Trust me."

When the trio arrived at Hogsmeade Station, they found yet another familiar face waiting to bid them farewell. Hagrid was standing by the front of the Hogwarts Express, Colin Creevey at his side. He was already sobbing, and his long, grey beard looked like it was soaked with his tears.

"Ye'd bette' write ter me, ye' hear?" Hagrid was asking Colin as Rose, Al, and Scorpius approached.

"I – I will, don't worry," Colin promised. "Thanks for everything, Hagrid." He then turned around and went to board the train, giving Rose a hug goodbye on the way there.

"Looks like your letters worked their magic after all," Rose praised the half-giant standing before her, not looking scary at all.

"What did ye' say, Rose? Ye' know I'm not allowed ter use magic!" Hagrid yelled, having only heard half of Rose's sentence in between his whimpers.

"Yes, I know that, Hagrid," Rose laughed. "I was just joking." She then gave Hagrid as big a hug as she could manage, joined shortly by the two boys behind her, and said goodbye all over again.

The three of them were the very last group to board the train, so they had to haul each of their suitcases through plenty of aisles in order to find an empty compartment. Along the way, they passed a room with Lucy, Lorcan, Lysander, and James. Lucy spotted Rose through her door and waved, Lorcan smiling beside her. As Rose walked further, she turned her head to see Lysander sitting on the other side, and he gave her a very small, almost unperceivable, nod. She reciprocated the gesture, and though it didn't seem like much, she knew that they had reached a mutual understanding.

Near the back of the train, they also passed Hugo and Nigel's compartment. They were sitting with Lily and Roxanne, of course, and the trolley full of sweets was passing by. Squeezing past it, Rose overheard Hugo stocking up on candy as per usual. When he sat back down, he kindly offered Nigel a handful, not even thinking twice about asking for some sort of payment like he normally would.

Eventually, they found a room at the end of the train and took their seats. It didn't take long for them to get comfortable and be back to their usual habits, with Scorpius falling asleep on Rose's shoulder as she read, and Al flipping through the pages of his potions book. At one point though, instead of Al being called out of the room by some obnoxious twat of a girl, he got up on his own and went looking for his newest pursuit.

At one point, while Al was gone, Scorpius woke up and he and Rose started to talk about the murder again. "I just don't understand why Goyle would kill Filch, or why he would turn himself in," Rose questioned. She had been reflecting over a lot of other things lately, so this was one of her first opportunities to give the idea some thought. After all, Goyle had been sent straight to Azkaban, and he hadn't even been a suspect before he had admitted to the murder himself.

"Because he's an idiot?" Scorpius offered. He didn't know anything more than Rose on the subject, and this was his way of saying such.

"It just seems strange," Rose continued, ignoring Scorpius. "I feel like we're missing something."

"Boy, you weren't kidding about being in detective mode, were you?" Scorpius teased her. She had warned him that over the weekend she had become increasingly paranoid, and it hadn't quite worn off yet. "Maybe we should just be thankful that he did what he did and accept it."

"I suppose," Rose said, though she desperately wanted to find out more. She couldn't let go of things as easily as others could, and she remembered everything. This made it difficult to accept without any questioning. "I do have a whole summer to ponder things."

"Exactly," Scorpius agreed. "You can even make a pro/con list if you like!"

Rose narrowed her eyes and slapped him on the shoulder. She couldn't help from smiling though, since it felt so good to have him back. Now that there was proof that he hadn't done anything, it had been pretty easy for Rose's trust in Scorpius to return, and she never wanted to let go of it again. Of course, he could very well be gone in just a few hours time. Thinking about this, she asked Scorpius, "Do you think your dad will be there?"

Scorpius shrugged. "I dunno'. We'll have to wait and see."

The waiting didn't last much longer, as before they knew it, the Hogwarts Express was pulling into London's King's Cross Station, Platform 9¾. Her hand clasped tightly around Scorpius's just in case this was her last chance to do so before next year, Rose headed off the train with mixed feelings of both disappointment and excitement.

Just like at Christmas, Rose quickly found her father through the sea of heads, his fiery red hair sneaking up above all the rest. She led the way over to him, which was on the far end of the station, over by the brick wall that acted as the portal back into the Muggle world. Ron was standing beside Hermione, with Harry and Ginny not too far away.

Once Rose and company got to their families, they were engulfed in hugs by all of them. Hermione had to tear Ron off of Rose to give her a hug herself, and Harry was trying to juggle both Al and Scorpius and treat them equally. As Hermione greeted Rose, she whispered in her ear, "I'm so glad you're safe! You'd better have a good story to tell about that hair."

"Don't worry," Rose chuckled. "I have a _great_ one."

Hermione smiled in response and then Rose moved along to hug her aunt, Ginny. To her right, Al was still with Harry, and she could just make out a whisper of, "We need to talk, Dad. As soon as possible."

Not wishing to intrude, Rose shifted herself back over to her own parents, but froze when she saw Scorpius, who had just been kissed on the cheek by Hermione, approach Ron cautiously. "Hello, Mr. Weasley," he said, his voice practically trembling.

Hermione, who had her arm wrapped around her husband's, motioned forward to Scorpius. Ron seemed to understand what she meant, as he looked to the blonde boy and reached out a hand. "Hello, Scorpius." He then gave him a firm, but inviting handshake. "It's good to see you again."

Scorpius glanced over at Rose in shock, but she merely shrugged. Her father had promised her to be better around her boyfriend, but she never actually believed he would abide by it. Now, it seemed like there might be some hope after all, as Scorpius turned back to Ron and responded with, "Thank you. It's good to see you too."

Ron looked as if he was about to smile, but then he looked up, beyond Scorpius's head, and suddenly dropped the boy's hand and backed away slightly. Turning to see what her father was looking at, Rose found Draco Malfoy standing amongst a group of tiny first years, his eyes burning and focused directly on Ron and the interaction he seemed to be having with _his_ son.

Scorpius, who was staring up at Ron with confusion, sensed the change in the atmosphere and followed suit, turning around to see his father slowly approaching. "Dad," he said. "I wasn't sure you'd come."

"Wasn't sure I'd come?" Draco asked. "Isn't it summer now? As in, time to be taken home?"

"Well, yeah, but I – " Scorpius started to say, and Rose wondered if he wanted to bring up the fact that his father had kicked him out last summer, or that he hadn't shown up to see him when Scorpius came back from Hogwarts over Christmas.

"Scorpius!" A female voice interrupted. Astoria had appeared from behind Draco, and was peering down at Scorpius with what looked to Rose like love. She hadn't looked like this at all when they had seen her walking by at Christmas. Then, she had been hollow, empty, and unaware of Scorpius's presence. Now, the brunette was radiant, glowing, and grinning at the sight of her son.

"Mum?" Scorpius asked, this time even more surprised than when he had seen Draco, and with a hint of worry in his tone. "You're both here? Together?"

Astoria looked to Draco and took his hand in hers as he answered, "We're trying to make it work. Your mother came home a few days ago now."

Scorpius was speechless, and Rose tried to comfort him by taking his hand. Of course, this only made things worse when Draco scowled at them. "Oh Scorpius, I thought I told you to stay away from this kind of scum?" he spat, glancing back at Hermione as he did so.

"How dare you even speak to my daughter, _Malfoy_?" Came a blaring yell from Ron as he leaped forward at them.

"What?" Draco asked nonchalantly. "At least she's not a Mudblood like her mother!"

Ron leaped again, but Harry was there to hold him back. Once in front of Ron, Harry addressed Draco. "Hey Malfoy, you remember that time you nearly died in a fire? Want that to happen again?"

"Slow and painful," Hermione chimed in from beside Ron.

Rose looked at Draco, waiting for a snarky retort, but he didn't give any. Instead, he remained silent and Rose thought she saw a hint of fear in the corner of his eye. Taking a moment to look around at everyone else, Rose saw that she, along with Albus, and each of their parents, had drawn their wands. Rose and Al weren't allowed to use them anymore of course, but they couldn't scratch the habit.

As Draco backed off from the lot of them, he put a hand on Scorpius's shoulder and said, "Come on. We're going home."

Before he could go anywhere, however, Harry stopped him and said to Scorpius, "You don't have to go if you don't want to. You always have a place with us."

"And if you decide to stay with Mr. _Potter_ here, I'll call the authorities and tell them to arrest him for absconding with my child," Draco fired back, leaving Scorpius torn between the two of them.

Meanwhile, Rose had her eyes on Astoria, who, for a split second, lost all of her previous emotion and was now staring down at Al. When he noticed her too, she said to him, "Albus Potter, yes?"

Al nodded, but his mouth was shut tightly and his eyes were narrowed at her. "Why do you care?" he asked.

"No reason," Astoria said with a shrug. Still, Rose caught sight of a smirk hidden behind her fake smile, and suddenly she was met with those same hollow eyes she had seen so many months ago.

The real Astoria had now returned, and it took all but two minutes for Rose to make the link between her and Filch. Flashing back to Christmas time, Rose remembered the precise moment she had seen Astoria walking across the platform. It had been right before she had seen Vincent Goyle, both of them coming from the very same direction. She had also noticed Goyle's own eyes lately, how still and lifeless they were, as if they didn't belong to him. That was the way all of the DADA students had looked when Shunpike put them under the Imperius Curse.

If Astoria had Goyle under that same curse, than she could have compelled him to go into the forest that night and kill Filch. Rose also happened to know that Filch was a Squib, and from everything that Scorpius had told her, such blood was not acceptable in the eyes of Astoria. Then, of course, Astoria turned Goyle in once Scorpius was framed. She was insane, clearly, but that didn't mean that she wasn't still a mother, and no mother would want her son to spend a life in Azkaban prison.

"Scorpius, come. Now," Draco suddenly said, brining Rose back to the conversation.

Scorpius looked at Harry and shook his head, saying, "Thank you. I'm sorry, but I have to go."

As Scorpius walked forward toward his awaiting parents, a giant wave of panic washed over Rose, and she grabbed his arm more tightly, pulling him back. She quickly caught him in a full embrace and kissed him like she may never kiss him again. When they broke away, their foreheads still pressed together and the both of them panting for air, Rose whispered as quietly as possible, "Don't trust her."

Scorpius was about to ask something back, but Draco had him by the other arm. Trying to ignore what she had just learned and focus entirely on Scorpius, Rose kept her eyes locked on him as Draco grabbed Astoria's hand. Scorpius's eyes too were locked on Rose's, all the way up until his father whispered that familiar, yet completely foreign, word of 'home' before the three of them turned on the spot, leaving Rose to watch the one she loved suddenly disappear.

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_**Note: **__For those of you who got through this entire chapter, thank you so much! I apologize again for its length. If you could leave a review, either on the chapter itself or Part 1 as a whole, please do so! It is always appreciated._

_-Hailey_


	11. Mayhem at the Malfoys'

**_Note:_**_ As mentioned in the previous chapter, Chapter 11 marks the beginning of Part 2 of Blood of the Birds, meaning that the next 10 chapters will follow Scorpius's perspective, rather than Rose's. I hope you enjoy the chapter, and let me know what you think once you've finished reading! Thanks._

_-Hailey_

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**Part 2 - The Scorpius Stings**

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**11 – Mayhem at the Malfoys'**

The world was spinning in every direction, and short, sporadic images were passing by like a slideshow gone wrong. Scorpius Malfoy could feel his body being squeezed through spots of air, as if he had been swallowed by a black hole. One moment, his arm felt as if it was about to detach itself from his shoulder, and next thing he knew he could hear a tiny bone in one of his fingers cracking. Screams filled his ears, but he didn't have time to realize that they were his own.

Rose Weasley's face, smeared with tears, appeared in front of him, and he tried to reach out for her, but was held back. Flashes of Harry and Albus Potter presented themselves as well, but none lasted longer than a millisecond. After each disappeared, they were replaced with the wet, green grass of Wiltshire, and the dark, iron gates that enclosed Malfoy Manor. Soon, Scorpius was back on his own two feet, his knees buckling as he grasped onto the gate that was now directly in front of him. Only moments ago, he had been with Rose at King's Cross Station, and now, somehow, he had arrived at his family's mansion.

The house was not at all a home for the sixteen year-old Scorpius. He had spent the first eleven years of his life here, peering out of the gate at the narrow lane that led anywhere else, and befriending the albino peacocks that his grandfather had insisted on leaving in the gardens. The house itself, like any good museum, was stunningly ornate, but not at all the type of place that one would want to live in.

Now more than ever, Scorpius dreaded the idea of stepping through those enormous, bold doors. The last time he had been here, his own mother had nearly killed herself, and the environment that she had been in could have only encouraged such drastic action.

"Well go on boy, get inside," Draco Malfoy told his son with a harsh pat on the back. Scorpius was still catching his breath from his first go at side-Apparation only moments ago, but his father didn't seem to have much sympathy for him.

Slowly, Scorpius picked himself up and dragged his body into the entryway of the house, which was arguably the starkest part of the building, with the exception of the dining room. Once inside, any light from the outside world was lost and the dark room engulfed the Malfoy family with the same sense of entitlement it had always bore.

"Story, may I speak with you for a moment?" Draco asked his ex-wife tensely. Scorpius could immediately sense that something was wrong between the two of them, but he didn't dare ask what it was. As his father led his mother, Astoria, into a sitting room nearby, he motioned to Scorpius and a small suitcase sitting by the stairs and added to his son, "I assume you can put away your own things?" He didn't wait for an answer, and instead closed the door behind him, leaving Scorpius alone.

Standing still for a moment in order to gather his thoughts, Scorpius wondered how it was possible for things to change so quickly. Less than a half hour ago, he had been on the train with Rose, the love of his life and the only thing that had ever mattered to him, and now he was back here, with a family he had hoped to never be a part of again. Scorpius had never liked change, but by now he was used to it. Life had been able to find curveballs to throw at him in every direction, and somewhere along the way he had stopped fighting them and just let them hit him, one after the other. That was until he and Rose had met and later gotten together; before he realized that if he didn't find the courage to fight, she would fight for him.

As the silence crept its way under his skin, Scorpius decided that he was ready to try to move again. Looking down at his broken finger, he clasped his free hand around it and pulled as hard as he could. After biting his lip to keep himself from screaming from the pain, he felt an immense sense of relief when the bone snapped back into place. He had never set one before, but his fingers were prone to fractures throughout his many years playing Quidditch. The Hogwarts school nurse had reset nearly every one of them at some point, and he had watched her do so each time.

Feeling nearly back to normal now, Scorpius walked over to where Draco had left his green and silver-colored trunk and ferret cage, lifted them, and headed up the wide, curving staircase. His luggage wasn't heavy at all, for he didn't own much to bring to school every year. Most of what was inside was clothing, and only a few books were thumping onto the bottom as he carried it all upstairs.

His bedroom was located at the end of the long, narrow, second-floor hallway. On his way, he shook his head at the walls around him, which held no frames of family photos, no newspaper cutouts, no Quidditch memorabilia. There wasn't even a scrap of artwork, nothing. It was the complete opposite of the Potter house in Godric's Hollow, which had become much more like a home to Scorpius after spending so many summers there throughout the years.

Harry and Ginny had decorated their own house with everything they had and more. Harry, being as sentimental as he was, was always tacking up articles from the Daily Prophet, while Ginny would pick out all the worst pictures of everybody and put an unfitting, formal frame around them. Scorpius even had one of his own, up on the wall just off the kitchen. Inside a grand, silver adornment, was a photo of him and Al, his eleven year-old self sneaking up on his best friend from behind, holding up fake bear claws and looking like he was about to pounce. As the picture moved to illustrate more, it showed him roaring, which resulted in a hilariously frightened Al, whose first instinct was to go into combat mode, resulting in the two of them butting heads and falling to the ground laughing. From there, the picture would repeat itself, always ending happily.

That, Scorpius thought, was a real family, a real home. This place, on the other hand, was clearly not. Pondering such, he sighed to himself as he entered his room. It was across the hall from the master bedroom that his parents used to share, and looked just as empty as it had always been. Across from the door was his bed, which was the hardest and most uncomfortable piece of furniture Scorpius had ever encountered. Above it hung a Slytherin banner, the one thing that his father had let him hang on his wall. On the bed's left side sat an antique desk with nothing on it, and on the right side was a dresser that was positioned beneath a tiny window. Walking over to it, Scorpius pulled open the curtains that were nearly always shut, allowing a few rays of light in, and inspected his small collection of chess pieces that were sitting on the windowsill, one of the only things he had always treasured as a child. Picking up his favorite of the bunch, the knight, which was composed of a strapping young boy mounted atop a strong, white horse, Scorpius looked it over quickly before dropping it into his pant pocket, where it fell next to his only other prized possession, Rose's ring.

She had given back the stone he had found in the Forbidden Forest before they had left Hogwarts, just in case they didn't end up seeing much of each other over the holiday. Like always, Rose's hunch had been right, as it hadn't taken long for the two of them to be separated, and the chances that they would reunite before September seemed unbearably slim. Until then, though, he'd have her ring to remember her by, along with the kiss and message she had left for him upon leaving the station.

Right before Draco pulled him away, Rose had warned Scorpius not to trust Astoria. Scorpius still didn't understand what exactly Rose had meant by this, but he also had no idea why his mother had even shown up at the station. She was supposed to be in the hospital, though Scorpius knew that she had left some time ago, since he had seen her over Christmas. Still, he had assumed that she had escaped, but now that she was walking around, out in the open, it seemed as if she must have been discharged. Otherwise, she would have been more stealth about her hiding.

An explanation for all of this would probably be provided in due time though. If not, Scorpius would at least overhear something during his stay here. What he wouldn't get the chance to hear, however, were Rose's thoughts. Becoming too curious to resist, Scorpius rushed over to his desk and pulled open all its drawers, searching for some scrap of parchment. Upon finding one, he took out a quill and some ink from his schoolbag and began to write:

_Rose,_

_ Explain, please. What's going on with my mum? Write quickly. I love you._

_-Scorpius_

The last time he had written a letter to Rose had been the summer of the year before, and he remembered how long he had taken to make it perfect. Now, he could write to her without even thinking about it. That's how comfortable they had grown to be around each other, and Scorpius was immensely grateful for it. Granted, the letter was barely a whole line, but he wanted to be efficient about things.

Searching his room for something to seal it with, Scorpius came up completely blank. Sighing, he set off into the hall, headed for his father's office to find more stationary. He wasn't meant to sneak around like this, but he'd need to use the family owl anyway, and the old black bird, fittingly named Eldritch, was always perched atop Draco's coat rack.

This part of the house looked slightly more used than the rest of it. Unlike his late father, Lucius, Draco hadn't been able to live off of his inheritance forever. Long before Scorpius was born, his father had taken up a position at the Ministry of Magic, in the Department of International Magical Cooperation. This was where he had met Astoria, and it was also why they had both been so absent throughout Scorpius's childhood. Draco was always either traveling or cooped up here, inside his office with a bottle of mead on his desk.

Moving quickly so as not to get caught snooping by his father, Scorpius went straight to Draco's desk. He had his hand upon the stamp which issued a seal in the form of the family crest when his arm brushed a piece of paper off the table. Placing the stamp back down momentarily, Scorpius knelt to the floor and picked up the letter, only to find that it was addressed to his father from Hogwarts. Unfolding it slowly, Scorpius saw that it was from the Headmistress, who happened to be his Transfiguration teacher as well, Professor McGonagall.

The letter detailed a recent event that had taken place regarding Scorpius. The teacher was informing Draco about the trial for the murder of Argus Filch, why Scorpius had been accused, and finally, that he had been innocent all along. Scorpius now understood why his father had come to greet him at the station. Draco would be disappointed, Scorpius knew, and he would be in for a good scolding any day now. It didn't matter if he was innocent in the end, since Draco barely ever had the time to read an entire letter. Usually, he'd get past the first line and then act on it. Second chances, along with forgiveness, weren't a part of his nature.

Setting the letter back down, Scorpius stamped his own paper, wrote out Rose's address on it, and handed it over to a grumpy bird. He then headed out of the office, but left the door wide open, anxious to hear back from Rose as soon as possible. On his way back to his room, however, the perpetual silence in the house was interrupted from a soft whispering coming from down the hall, what sounded like the room next to the office that Scorpius had just been in.

Slowly turning around, Scorpius smiled to see that it was his grandmother, Narcissa, her white head popping out of her bedroom door. She was nearly always asleep these days, but when awake, she was the only person in the house who seemed at all interested in conversing with the youngest Malfoy.

"Is that you, Scorpius?" she asked lazily. She didn't have her glasses on, and old age was taking away her ability to see clearly. Even so, she could still hear everything perfectly, and must have heard Scorpius walking through the halls just now.

"Yeah, it's me, Gran," Scorpius answered as he walked over to her. Once close enough, he pulled her into a gentle hug. For as long as Scorpius had known her, Narcissa had been very different from the rest of the Malfoy family. She was kind, caring, and most of all, undeniably protective of her family, and Scorpius had always valued her for that.

"Why didn't you tell me you were home?" she asked, opening her door wider to let Scorpius inside. Like the rest of the house, her bedroom was stark and void of color, but she had tried to make it as homey as possible, with floral bedding and pictures of Draco growing up all over the walls. "You know you're free to wake me any time. I can always sleep, but I can't always celebrate my only grandson's homecoming."

Scorpius chuckled lightly. "I know," he said, "but I didn't want to bother you." He had taken a seat in an antique chair across from Narcissa's bed, and she was examining him intently, as if he had just come back from a war, and she was trying to read the scars that had been etched across his face.

"How are you, my dear?" she asked sincerely. She hadn't witnessed the events of last summer, having been too preoccupied with slumber, but Scorpius suspected that she had been quite shocked to wake up the next morning and find that half of the household had disappeared overnight.

Scorpius was about to answer the usual response, that he was fine, but he couldn't seem to get the words out. Instead, he soon found himself replying, "I'm confused."

Upon seeing the curiosity on Narcissa's face, Scorpius continued, "My mum came to the station today, with Dad."

It only took a moment for Scorpius to be sure that Narcissa hadn't known about this until now. Her eyes were widened with surprise and worry all at once, as she asked, "Is she here now?"

Nodding, Scorpius said, "She's downstairs. They both are."

Narcissa sighed, and Scorpius knew that she was concerned not just for him, but for Draco as well. There was nothing in the world that Narcissa loved more than her own son, even if she didn't receive the same sort of kindness in return.

When Narcissa remained silent, Scorpius asked, "Gran, was she let out of St. Mungo's?"

Shaking her head, Narcissa answered, "I've no idea. But if she was, I pray for the sense of her Healer, because there's no way she's ready to come back home. Or anywhere, for that matter."

Scorpius nodded. As much as he would love to see his mother healthy again, he didn't want her to be home prematurely. He wouldn't let her try to hurt herself again, or anyone else. Still, he wasn't sure he'd be able to stop her this time.

"Don't worry about her. Your father will handle it," Narcissa said, as if reading Scorpius's thoughts.

Scorpius snorted at this, not being able to stop himself. All Draco had done was get Astoria into the hospital, and clearly that hadn't worked out as well as he'd hoped it would.

Narcissa, refusing to side with one of the boys, decided to change the subject. "So tell me about your year, Scorpius. Have any fun? Meet anyone special?"

Slowly, Scorpius felt a smile penetrating his lips, curving its way across his cheeks and turning them a shade of bright red in embarrassment. This was what happened every time somebody asked him about Rose, or even the idea of Rose. He had always felt that way about her, something more than friendship. This past year though, this had been when everything had changed between them. Now, he couldn't imagine his life without her. Every thought he had, everything he did, was somehow linked to her. They had been tethered to each other, an invisible rope connecting the two of them across immeasurable distances, refusing to be broken. He had never felt surer of anything in his life than the way he felt about Rose, and he had also never felt safer than when he had her in his arms. Now, she was at her own home, miles from where Scorpius was, but he still felt as if he could feel her next to him.

Her gorgeous, fire red hair was flowing around her porcelain skin. Its waves gave off an endless supply of her signature scent: salty sea air that can only be found on the most beautiful, secluded beaches. Her freckles were the same color as the darkest grains of sand, the way they looked right as the sun shined down on them, and her lips were like the wild raspberries that grew just off the shore. Best of all were her eyes. As he closed his own, Scorpius could see them perfectly, bright as the bluest sky with darker ripples encircling the iris, so delicate that they could only be seen if he got so close to her that their noses were touching. Secretly, Scorpius liked to imagine that only he could see this part of her, and that she had closed it off to the rest of the world.

Waking him up from his reverie, Scorpius's grandmother suddenly asked, "So who is she?" She must have sensed his daydreaming, and like any observant woman, had deduced that Scorpius had been put under the most powerful spell there was, and one of the only ones that didn't require any magic at all.

Blushing yet again, Scorpius replied, "Her name is –" but was interrupted by the sound of flapping wings coming from the room next door. Standing from his seat instinctively, Scorpius said, "Actually, that might be her now. Excuse me for a minute." He then walked out of the bedroom and back into Draco's office, where Eldritch was once again perched atop the coat rack. Below him, an already crumpled letter had been dropped onto the floor.

Unfolding it to the best of his ability, Scorpius read:

_Scorpius,_

_I don't want to assume anything, but I wanted to warn you as best I could before you got home. You remember when we saw your mum over Christmas? Well, I also saw Goyle at the same time, and they seemed to be headed in the same direction. I've also noticed that lately, he's had this sort of glazed-over look on his face, like he's not really himself. Do you think it's at all possible that Astoria's put him under the Imperius Curse?_

_I could be completely wrong, of course, but it makes some sense. Otherwise, I can't think of why Goyle would have murdered Filch, or how he would have even been capable of it. I know this isn't something that will be easy for you to think about, but Filch was a Squib, and you said that Astoria was pro purebloods... Anyway, let me know what you think, or if you get any more information on the subject._

_Also, I hope you don't mind, but I asked my dad about what's been going on with her, your mum. It turns out she was let out of St. Mungo's, but she's on probation. Her case has been passed down to a lower ranked Auror for now. Do you think she's ready for that? How is she acting?_

_Write back when you can. I'm already worried about you, cooped up there alone. How bad is it? I hope you can get out at some point, but I'll keep sending letters either way. Gosh, it's only the first day of summer, and I already can't stand the thought of not seeing you. I love you too, more than you know._

_Come back to me when you can,_

_Rose_

Scorpius had to read through the letter a second time for Rose's words to fully sink in. Could all this be true? Rose was rarely wrong about these things, and it made perfect sense. Astoria had always detested Squibs, nearly as much as Muggle-borns, and she seemed to have a soft spot for that particular Unforgivable Curse. Rose was definitely right about one thing though: this was the last thing he wanted to be assuming about his mother. She may not have been all that present as he was growing up, but she was his mum. He just couldn't imagine her as a murderer; that would be too much to handle, even for him.

Plus, if only lower ranked Aurors were watching over her now, it was safe to assume that they wouldn't be observant enough to see the signs that Rose had. They'd only be checking in once a week or so, and they'd never check at Hogwarts. Scrambling as he thought this, Scorpius raced through his father's desk for a piece of paper. He would need to tell Harry about this immediately, even if it was just a speculation.

He was about to start writing, granted with a less than steady hand, when the incredibly loud sound of a slamming door came from downstairs. Looking up, Scorpius saw Narcissa standing in the office doorway and looking curiously in the direction of the marble stairwell. Draco and Astoria had been arguing in the dining hall for hours, but now it seemed as if they had moved into the entryway, their yells echoing throughout the house.

"You need _help_! Why can't you accept that?" Scorpius's father screamed.

"Because it's not true!" retorted Astoria in a devilish tone. She made it sound as if this was a fact, and Scorpius could tell from the tone of her voice that she would be completely unwavering with her opinion on this particular matter.

During a moment of silence, Narcissa motioned for Scorpius to stay put as she began to descend the staircase. Growing impatient all too quickly, Scorpius decided not to follow his grandmother's advice and instead followed _her_, running over to the top of the stairs where he'd have a decent view of his parents' row.

Draco was standing at the bottom of the staircase, a few steps away from Narcissa. In the middle of the entryway stood Astoria, right underneath an old chandelier that had had to be redone before Scorpius was born.

"If it's not true," Draco went on, "Then why can't you answer this simple question: why are you _here_?"

"I already told you!" Astoria screamed, coming closer to Draco. In response, he backed away, almost as if he was frightened by her. "I'm here for our son. I've been apart from him long enough, and now I want him back."

Back upstairs, and yet to be noticed by his parents, Scorpius held his breath. His mother looked and sounded nothing short of crazy, her long brown hair that was normally so perfectly done-up falling in front of her face and hiding her shifting eyes. Her voice was raspy and desperate, when it used to be calm and polite. Even her clothes looked cheap and slightly ratty, when they were usually expensive and perfectly tailored to her thin form. Whoever his mother once was, that person was gone now. This woman, reaching out to her ex-husband's hand as if he were a weapon, was a stranger to Scorpius. A stranger who, so it seemed, might also be a murderer.

"But _I_ have sole custody of Scorpius, which means that _I_ decide whether or not I want you anywhere near _my_ son!" Draco yelled, making Astoria coil over in disappointment. As rage sizzled behind her eyes and her hands balled into fists, one of which was clasped tightly around her wand, Scorpius decided it was time to intervene.

"Actually, I think I can tell the wrong sort for myself, thanks," Scorpius announced as he came down the stairs, passing Narcissa as she reached out her hand for him, as well as Draco, whose face looked more aged than ever, and finally taking his place directly in front of Astoria.

"Scorpius, darling," Astoria said to her son, a twitching smile spreading across her semi-wrinkled, pale white cheeks. "I've missed you so much."

"Yeah, I've missed you too," Scorpius admitted, all the while telling himself to stay strong and hold his ground. This wasn't going to be easy, but he needed to tell her what she wanted to hear if he was going to get any kind of truth out of her.

"Scorpius, don't do this," said Narcissa from behind them. "She's not safe."

"Oh yes, well that's very easy for you to say, isn't it, _Narcissa_!" Astoria spat back. The two had never gotten along, but this sort of behavior was worse than they had ever displayed in front of Scorpius before. He couldn't help but marvel at how perfect the scenario was, Narcissa, old, wise, and white-haired, looking down at the younger, naive, and dark-haired Astoria. Like any good game of wizard's chess, the two sides were complete opposites, and it was difficult to tell which would prevail.

"I'll admit to having my days of weakness, held under the persuasion of the one I loved. However, I will NOT let that happen to _either_ of my boys!" Narcissa yelled, and before Scorpius had time to blink, his grandmother had her wand pointed at Astoria and flicked it ever so slightly, the action that went along with her silent spell that Scorpius assumed was _Expelliarmus_, meant to disarm the opponent.

Unfortunately, Astoria's reflexes were much faster than Scorpius's, as she was able to produce a counter-curse just in time, defending her own wand and knocking Narcissa's right out of her hand. As she did so, her eyes widened with power, and Scorpius felt a shiver of fear. He already knew that Astoria was no longer in her right mind, but now it seemed as if she was dangerous as well. Her skills as a witch were better than they'd ever been, and she was prepared for anything that came her way.

"Don't you _dare_ pick a fight with me again," Astoria threatened.

Draco was in front of Narcissa now, trying desperately to protect his mother in any way possible, but Narcissa didn't want any of it. Pushing him away from her, she looked straight back at Astoria and said fiercely, "I am _not_ afraid of you. You will not hurt me in my own house."

"What makes you think I won't?" Astoria fired at her, taking a step closer so that there was only a foot between them. Her eyes fixed on Narcissa, Astoria flicked her own wand and flew Narcissa's from the ground and into her free hand. She then rolled it between her fingers, examining it, and asked sinisterly, "Elm, yes?"

Narcissa nodded, her lips pursed tightly.

"And the core?"

"Dragon," said Narcissa. "Dragon heartstring." The Malfoys had been using wands made of dragon heartstring for generations, until one with unicorn hair had chosen Draco. Though he had lost that wand some time ago, Scorpius's was also made of a unicorn hair core, but his wood was willow, the most pliable type there was, and therefore the best for Transfiguration.

Astoria stared down at the wand in her hand, her fingers brushing over the grip on its end that was shaped as a snakelike handle. As she held onto it, her face tightened and she pulled, absentmindedly snapping the grip off the wand. "Not anymore," she mumbled.

Across from her, Narcissa let out a sharp breath, but didn't dare move. Astoria had two wands now, and Narcissa had none. Sadly, she turned to her son for help, but Draco was lost in his own world. Staring blankly at Astoria, he had the same pained expression Scorpius had seen on him that day in Diagon Alley, nearly a year ago now. Realizing that he wouldn't be able to provide any help at all, Scorpius stepped in.

"Stop it!" he yelled at Astoria, stepping in front of her once again. When she looked at him in surprise and attempted to turn her expression of anger into admiration, Scorpius added, "If you're here for me, then there's no need to argue with anybody else." He was testing her, and he already knew that she would pass. She had always been cunning and diabolical, now more than ever before.

Astoria's face softened at this, and she put a hand on her son's shoulder. She was a very tall woman, but wasn't much taller than Scorpius anymore. He had grown quickly over the past year, and wasn't done yet. Soon he'd tower over her, but for now she'd take advantage of their difference in stature. "Of course, you're right," she surrendered. Then, straightening her back in order to regain her lost power, she suggested, "How about we talk things over… alone? We could have a nice chat in your room."

Scorpius knew what she was doing, but he wasn't about to hand over the control. At the moment he was safe, since Astoria couldn't lay a hand on him whilst they were out in the open, in front of Draco. He had put her in the hospital before, so she knew he could do it again. She was trying to get Scorpius away from his father, but the former wouldn't budge.

"I'm all right here," Scorpius said, knowing full well that Astoria wouldn't protest. "But I do have a few questions," he added, trying to shape his face so that it looked like he was sad and confused all at once. If she pitied him, he may just be able to lure something out of her.

"Anything you want to know, I'll tell you," Astoria replied. It seemed as though Scorpius's tactics were working.

Looking down at the annoyingly clean, cold floor, Scorpius thought about what he might say. He needed her to trust him, if only for a moment, and then he could lead into the real questions, the hard ones. Until then, he'd start out with one less intimidating, one that had an answer. Once he decided on something, he took a deep breath and asked, "Where have you been, all this time? Since you got out of St. Mungo's, I mean."

"The Leaky Cauldron," Astoria answered without hesitation. "It's the only place the Aurors will allow me to stay."

Scorpius nodded, and he did in fact believe her. She probably was staying there. What he didn't believe, however, was that that was the _only_ place she was staying.

Going backwards in time, Scorpius's next question was, "And when exactly were you let out?" He already knew the answer to this, but was curious to see if Astoria would lie about it or not.

"Just before Christmas," she answered.

Nodding once more, Scorpius was glad to see that she still respected him enough to be straight-up about things. From behind him, he could hear his father's unsteady breathing, sharp and quick. Draco had most likely asked all of these questions already, but he probably wasn't able to get such answers.

"I came home for Christmas. I didn't stay at school." Trying to make Astoria feel guilty, Scorpius turned on the heat by asking, "Why didn't you come to see me then?"

Astoria took a moment to think this one through, but eventually she said, "The Aurors wouldn't let me. They wanted to make sure I was ready first, so they made me be on my own for a few months. I wanted to see you, I did. I even went to King's Cross, just to get a look at you, but I – I knew I wasn't supposed to come talk to you. I'm so sorry. I wish I could have explained it all then."

She was a brilliant liar, Scorpius tried to tell himself when a part of him believed her. What if she was being honest? What if that was why he had seen her at the station? What if Rose was wrong? Draco was feeling the same way, Scorpius could tell, as his breathing was steadying and the air around him had grown more relaxed. Narcissa, however, was firm in her beliefs, and grunted at Astoria's explanation.

Determined to get more answers though, Scorpius ignored his gullible side and carried on. "Did you happen to see Vincent Goyle that day, at the station?" he asked. He didn't want Astoria to grow suspicious too quickly, but he was running out of the easy questions.

"Yes," Astoria said, much to Scorpius's surprise. He thought that out of all these questions, she would lie about this one, but apparently she hadn't. "I wanted to say hello. His father is an old friend of ours," she said, glancing at Draco at the last word.

Scrutinizing her expression, Scorpius was beginning to lose his grasp on his goal. She hadn't stammered yet, and he wondered if she ever would. Still, the next question may be a game changer. Staring her down, he said slowly and with perfect annunciation, "So did you know, then? Did you know that he had recently murdered Argus Filch?"

The next moment was crucial, and Scorpius knew that in the few short seconds following this question, Astoria would reveal the truth, not in her reply, but in her reaction. As soon as she heard Filch's name, Astoria's eyes widened and steered away from Scorpius. She tried her best to steer them back, but it was too late. She had already let out a tiny chuckle, and was blinking furiously by the time she said, "No. Of course not. What in the world would make you think that?"

He didn't expect to feel this way, but Scorpius was suddenly met with a giant wave of disappointment. Her flustering had proven her guilty, and though he had predicted this to be the case, he hadn't been prepared to hear it. His mother was a murderer, there was no denying it. His mother was a _murderer_. His _mother_ was a murderer.

With a shake of his head, Scorpius told himself one more time that this person was not his mother, not anymore. He wouldn't let himself feel any sympathy for her, nor would he fear her. That's exactly what she wanted him to do, and he refused to abide by her wishes. Instead, he decided to answer her rhetorical question with, "Because you were the one who made him do it."

Everyone went silent then. Any sounds of rustling and bustling disappeared, and all the focus turned to Astoria. Scorpius could feel all of the eyes on her, from Draco, Narcissa, and even himself. Astoria, however, didn't look back at any of them. She was staring at the floor, taken aback to hear none other than her own son accuse her of something she had been sure nobody knew about.

Since he couldn't stand the stillness, Scorpius began to pace, walking in steady circles around Astoria, slowly leaching all of the power she once had away from her and taking it for himself. He knew that he was in a dangerous position, not being allowed to use magic even in a case of self-defense, but he was confident that she wouldn't hurt him… at least not yet.

"You put him under the Imperius Curse," Scorpius said. It wasn't a question, it was a statement. He wanted to make her scared; he wanted her to see just how much he knew. Then, maybe she would realize that whatever she was up to wasn't going to work. Soon Draco would know everything, and then he would tell the Ministry, and she would be put into Azkaban. Scorpius wanted Astoria to know that her options were frighteningly slim, and that she had better choose carefully.

"You murdered Argus Filch, through Goyle. You planned it all. You planned that it would be in the forest, where nobody would be watching. You even waited for a night when other students happened to be outside, so that maybe they'd be framed for it instead." Scorpius couldn't have explained where all of this inside information was coming from. For a moment, he felt as if he could suddenly read her mind, all of her motives had become so incredibly clear. Either that, or all of these answers had been in front of him all along, and they were just now clicking together to form one coherent train of thought.

On the inside of his circular path, Astoria's body was growing tenser. Her lips were pursed, her eyes like daggers preparing for aim, and her hand was clasped so tightly around her own wand that she might just snap that one in half too. Still, she didn't say a word, nor move an inch. She wanted to hear more; she needed to know just how much he knew.

"Over Christmas break," Scorpius continued, "You checked in with him, made sure everything was going as planned. Then, things got more complicated."

With a glance at Draco, whose eyes were puffy and red, Scorpius said, "Then, _I_ was accused for the murder, and that wasn't part of the plan, was it?" He didn't know just how far Astoria would go to get what she wanted, but he knew that there was still a part of her that cared about him, or at least wanted to protect him. Otherwise, why was she here now?

"You didn't want me to pay for your mistake, but of course it didn't matter to you if Goyle did," Scorpius continued. "So you made him turn himself in, in turn proving _my _innocence."

Scorpius had stopped walking now, and was standing in front of Astoria, who was looking back at him. He just had one thing left to say to her, but it would be the hardest thing to admit. As his eyes began to water, he found the strength to say, "You saved me, but it wasn't because you love me. It wasn't because you want me back. It wasn't even because you think I might be useful. It was for the same reason why you're not going to hurt me, or anyone else in this room. It was because, like you, we all have _pure_ blood."

Astoria held her breath then, and Scorpius could sense that she was scared. "How did you know?" she asked, not bothering to refute. Her face held no emotion, and all the love it had shown for Scorpius before had gone now.

"I didn't," Scorpius admitted, and it was completely true. He had gone out on a whim at the last part, because he hadn't known why Astoria had done what she'd done. Rose had suspected that blood status was the reason, and Scorpius didn't think that Astoria would answer if he just plain asked her why she had done it. So instead, he had set her up. "I didn't know," he repeated, "But I do now."

Fuming all of the sudden, Astoria's rage took over as she pointed her wand at Scorpius and yelled, "_Stupefy!_" making him fly back onto the stairs, collapsing on the step below Narcissa.

Her protective instincts immediately kicking in, Narcissa knelt down beside Scorpius to see if he was all right while spitting at Astoria, "How could you? He is your _son_!"

As Scorpius struggled to pull himself back up, his eyes caught onto his father. Draco had just gulped upon seeing what Astoria had done, and he was clearly struggling with which side to take. He had never been good at differentiating between right and wrong, and in that moment Scorpius could see why. He loved Astoria, more than anything in the world, and that love had consumed him for most of his life. All those years in this house, he had been cooped up in that office of his, worrying about her. He had done his best to prevent what had happened last summer, and that took all of his time; all the time that he could have, and _would have_, spent with Scorpius had he not been preoccupied.

Turning back to Astoria, Scorpius was just in time to hear her respond with, "Oh, I am capable of doing _much_ more than that, Narcissa!" She then held her wand straight out toward Scorpius and stated clearly, "_Imperio_."

Before he could have run off, Scorpius found himself being dragged back toward Astoria. With every fiber of his being, he tried desperately to fight the spell off, but he hadn't had the same practice that Al had. All those times Shunpike had used the spell on his students, Scorpius had refused to be one of his guinea pigs. Of course, now he was greatly regretting that decision.

Before long, Scorpius was back underneath the chandelier, Astoria's arms wrapped around him and her wand still pointed at his head. He couldn't do anything unless she let him, and he had never felt so helpless.

"Our boy was wrong about one thing," Astoria said, addressing Draco and Narcissa, who were both in their same spot on the stairs. "I do want to protect him. And that's why he's leaving with me."

Everything that occurred in the next minute was a blur. Scorpius could feel Astoria's hand turning on his shoulder, and he was sure that they were about to Apparate all over again, a sensation which he was not looking forward to experiencing once more. However, the turn did not end up pulling him into a black hole like it should have, and he could tell that something had gone wrong. Still at Malfoy Manor, Scorpius could hear his father screaming and could see the flick of his wand just before Astoria looked up at the ceiling with terror beneath her eyes. Backing away from Scorpius, the Imperius Curse was lifted and Scorpius unknowingly ran in the opposite direction, right underneath the falling chandelier and into his father's open arms.

Once back to safety, and after the structure had shattered across the floor, Draco stated simply, "Leave. Now. Get out. Don't come back. Ever."

And then, with a soft crack, Astoria was gone. Now it was just the three Malfoys remaining, Narcissa collapsing onto the stairs in exhaustion, and Draco holding onto his son for dear life, the way he wished he had held him since the day he was born.

As Draco relaxed some, Scorpius was able to break away and stand on his own. "Are you all right?" Draco asked, with more concern than he had ever shown toward Scorpius.

"I'm fine," Scorpius said. "But Dad, we have to tell the Ministry. Now." He was done with all the false accusations, all the undeserved blame, and, most of all, all the pain it caused. He wanted it to be over, and for that Astoria needed to be taken care of.

"It's too late," Narcissa answered blankly. "She'll be long gone by now."

"We can at least tell them what she's done!" Scorpius yelled. He wouldn't normally be so adamant about one receiving punishment for their actions, but he knew now what Astoria was capable of. If she was aiming for a pureblood world, Rose and her family could easily be next, and Scorpius wouldn't stand for that.

"With what proof?" asked Narcissa. "I'm sorry to inflict you with this Scorpius, but our family does not have the best record when it comes to the Ministry. They will not trust us, I can assure you of that."

"Harry will trust us," Scorpius argued, ignoring the shot of jealousy that came from Draco. "Or he'll trust me. I know he will."

Narcissa shrugged then, and Scorpius was pleased to see that she didn't have a retort. Little did he know, Harry had earned Narcissa's trust many moons ago. Draco, on the other hand, looked outraged.

"No," he said. "I'm not about to let Harry _Potter_ go after her. I can find her myself, and I can help her."

"Dad," Scorpius shook his head. "You can't help her. Not anymore."

"Yes, I can," Draco said, and once again Scorpius could feel the tension between the two of them, as if the wall they had been separated by was suddenly back up. Scorpius didn't want things to stay that way, so he didn't press further. Instead, he nodded as Draco said, "First thing in the morning, I'll head out and look for her, but I don't want you involved in any more of it."

At that, the conversation came to a close, and Narcissa was the first to head to bed. It was already late, and Scorpius had forgotten that he had spent the first half of the day on the train coming home. Time had stretched itself out somehow, and made the day feel like years, and yet it had gone by so quickly.

Upon realizing this, Scorpius noticed just how tired he was. He had been awake for a very long time, and hadn't slept much over the past week, for various reasons. Because of this, he ate his make-shift supper quickly and then headed upstairs to his bedroom to get some rest. He wanted to write to Harry, despite his father's own wishes, but knew he wouldn't be able to. Sure enough, Scorpius saw Draco sitting alone in his office as he passed by. The only owl in the house was well protected now, so he wouldn't be able to write to anyone tonight, not even Rose.

Instead, he undressed and got into his pajamas, a pair of striped bottoms and an old, white wife-beater, and climbed atop his uncomfortable bed. His rucksack sat just next to his pillow, and he was careful to stuff the objects he had been carrying in his pocket into the front compartment of the bag. After last summer, Scorpius had learned to always keep a bag with all the essentials handy, in case he needed to make a quick runaway.

With Rose's ring and his own white knight tucked safely away, Scorpius lay on his back and stared up at his stark, white ceiling. Though he tried to close his eyes, he knew that there would be no use in it. He hadn't slept a full night in months, and tonight was sure to be even worse than usual.

Scorpius had had trouble sleeping ever since Astoria had tried to commit suicide last summer. Her screams, along with Draco's, haunted Scorpius's dreams, and he couldn't find a way to stop them. The only thing that seemed to work was having Rose there. Recently, she had noticed his insomnia, and had offered to help. Though he had been hesitant, she had been right, like always. Somehow, having her there had made him feel safe, and had reminded him that he wasn't alone after all.

Now though, he was alone, and so he merely rested his body to the best of his ability, all his muscles still, and his thoughts subsiding slightly. His eyes and ears, however, were wide open. He stayed this way for the next few hours, alert but resting all at once, until he was completely awoken by, yet again, a slamming door.

Sitting up against his headboard, Scorpius waited for Astoria to appear. It didn't take long for her to creep up the stairs and slither across the hallway toward Scorpius's room, and when she arrived she merely said, "Hello again."

"What are you doing back here?" Scorpius asked fearlessly. He was defenseless, that he knew, but he wanted to know why she felt as though she needed him so badly.

"I told you," Astoria said, not bothering to whisper, "I want to protect you. So grab your rucksack and let's go, before that god-awful grandmother of yours stupidly tries to get in my way again."

"Or before I do," a voice said from behind her. Scorpius immediately looked over to find Draco, still fully dressed as if he never went to sleep at all, standing tall with his wand pointed at Astoria. He looked as frightened as ever, with his eyebrows twitching and his forehead sweating, but Scorpius could see something else in his eyes that hadn't been there before. He looked determined, a quality Scorpius had always thought, until now, he had gotten from his mother.

"You wouldn't," Astoria said as she turned around, smiling at the idea of a challenge. "I know you wouldn't hurt me, because you still love me."

Scorpius, now standing just beside his bed, waited for Draco to respond. He was hoping and praying that his father would be able to do what needed to be done, but he was ready to it himself if Draco couldn't. He could pin her down easily without magic, so long as her back was turned.

Luckily, he didn't have to, since Draco said, "I do love you, but that's exactly why I can do this." His proclamation distracting her, Astoria didn't see the curse coming as Draco yelled out, "_Petrificus totalus!_" It had always been his favorite spell, though he never would have thought that he'd have to use it on her.

Scorpius watched Astoria suddenly freeze and fall to the ground, rendered inept for the next few hours at least. Rushing over to her as Draco knelt down and patted her head, Scorpius was about to tell his father to lock her up now, in the cellar downstairs, but Draco spoke first.

"Scorpius, I hate to do this again, but I have to ask you to leave this place," Draco said. "She seems to want to get to you, and I can't let that happen. So please, just go, as far away as you can get, and somewhere she won't expect."

Scorpius heard his father, but he didn't move just yet. For the first time in a long while, he felt like he had a home here, and yet he had to leave it. It all just didn't seem fair.

"Quickly, please. We can't risk her waking up," Draco said, more harshly this time. "And use your broom. It'll be much faster than walking, and flying isn't under the Trace."

Scorpius nodded and got to his feet. He was about to get his bag when a thought dawned on him, and he turned around to face his father once more. "You know about my broom? The Falcon Flyer?" He had been using a broom from Hogwarts before somebody had mysteriously sent him the newest, fastest broomstick on record back in November, on that day that had probably been the best of his life.

"Of course I do," Draco said sincerely. Though his hand was still entangled in Astoria's hair, he was looking up at Scorpius now. "Why do you think I was in Diagon Alley that day we ran into each other? I would have sent it to you sooner, but I wanted you to feel confident without it first. I never got the opportunity myself, you see."

Scorpius smiled, and said, "Thanks, Dad." He hadn't given much thought as to who had sent him the broom, but he would have suspected that it had been his grandmother. Draco probably would have been last on his list of possibilities, but he couldn't have been happier to be proven wrong.

"Go," Draco said, brushing off the father/son moment. "Here, I'll help. _Accio Flyer._"

Within a few seconds, Scorpius could hear a broomstick swish past his open window, and so he took one last look at his parents, the two of them having never appeared so small as they sat sprawled across the floor of his bedroom, before turning around. He then grabbed his bag and jumped out the window to land on his broom, all the while knocking his chess set to the ground below him. For a split second, he looked down at the broken pieces and wanted to go collect them, but he knew he shouldn't. Flying off into the night, with no idea where he was headed, Scorpius said goodbye to the family and the house that, earlier today, he had hoped to never see again. Of course, one should always be careful what they wish for. After all, it might just come true.


	12. Flight of the Falcon

**12 – Flight of the Falcon**

This day would never end. That's what Scorpius kept thinking to himself, over and over again, as he flew through the night sky. It must be past midnight now, right? It couldn't possibly still be that first, fateful day of summer, the one in which he had simultaneously regained and lost the only real family he'd ever had. That day was gone now, it must be. Today was new and fresh and different, and that meant that he could start over. Today was just beginning.

Keeping that in mind, Scorpius leaned forward on his broom, the Falcon Flyer. He was travelling at speeds Muggles would never be able to see, even if they happened to be looking up at the stars through a telescope. The ability to fly, even on a broom, was something that Scorpius was incredibly grateful for, and it was one of the only reasons he appreciated being a wizard. He could live without the spells, jinxes, and potions; they didn't mean all that much to him. What he wouldn't be able to bear however, if he had been born a Muggle, would be the inability to leave the ground.

Scorpius had spent his childhood held up in Malfoy Manor, so naturally he had always felt somewhat imprisoned. That was why, in his second year at Hogwarts, he had decided to try out for the Slytherin Quidditch team. He never thought he'd actually make it, as he was quite young, and never suspected that he would have made the most sought-after position of Seeker. Things only got better from there though, as he was constantly growing as a player, and eventually earned the title of team captain this past year, and he was able to lead that team to first place in the House Cup.

He had always been determined to succeed, and that attribute of his personality helped him in Quidditch. Still, it was the feeling of flying that really did him in. Scorpius could still remember the first time he had ever ridden a broomstick, and that inexplicable and irreplaceable feeling of freedom that had accompanied it. The wind in his face, blowing his hair back and sending chills down his spine, mixed with the impossible act of defying all laws of gravity, was something that he would cherish forever. When he was on a broom, when he was in the air, he could _do_ anything, _feel_ anything, _be _anything. It was like having his own personal oasis, where everything was perfect, and where no one else could touch him.

Even on a night like this, one as dark, cold, and humid as a summer night could ever be in rural England, Scorpius was grateful to have that freedom. With barely any possessions, apart from the Falcon Flyer, the rucksack on his back, and Ally, his pet ferret, buried in his sweater, Scorpius didn't have much else to rely on. He couldn't very well return to Malfoy Manor, and he suspected that he wouldn't be back there again all summer, so for now he really just had his freedom.

He wasn't sure yet where that freedom would take him. As soon as he had left the valleys of Wiltshire, he had instinctively headed west, which gave him two options of where he might go: Godric's Hollow or Ottery St. Catchpole. Both located in and around the province of Devon, Scorpius was nearby either one, but couldn't bring himself to choose.

The Potters' was easily the safest bet. He had stayed there many times before, and he knew that Harry and Ginny would welcome him with open arms. Plus, it would be nice to spend the summer with Al, since he hadn't seen all that much of him during the year. Scorpius had been with Rose whenever he had any spare time, and Al had fancied that Chang girl, whom Scorpius couldn't stand. Still, his parents were well aware of Scorpius's newfound safe house, and that included Astoria. If she were to escape Draco's grasp and come looking for her son once again, the Potters' would be the first place she'd go. Harry would be able to hold his own against her if he had to, but Scorpius didn't want things to have to come to that.

The Weasleys', on the other hand, would be a less predictable hideout. As far as Scorpius knew, Astoria had no idea of his relationship with Rose, so she probably wouldn't think of it. Plus, Scorpius would give just about anything to see Rose again, and to spend the entire summer with her would be a gift worth more than any amount of money he could ever conjure. Then again, as he had thought the day before, Astoria seemed to be aiming for a completely pure-blood world, and the Weasleys weren't pure-bloods. In fact, Rose's mother, Hermione, was Muggle-born. That put them all at huge risk if Scorpius were to show up at their doorstep, and the last thing he wanted to do was put Rose, who had helped him through so much that year, or her family in any sort of danger.

Going through the pros and cons of each option, Scorpius's mind continued to run in circles, and so it seemed he had reached an impasse. He was already in Devon, and like his thoughts, he had stopped flying in any clear direction. Perhaps he should just turn around and head back east, or even up north, toward London. There was always the Leaky Cauldron, and maybe they'd let him work to pay off the rent for a while? But no, that wouldn't suffice, since Astoria was supposed to be staying there. Her Aurors would ask him questions, and she could easily come back, so it wouldn't exactly be the best place. And so he was back again – an impasse.

Looking through the darkness that surrounded him, Scorpius searched for some sort of sign. No such thing appeared, but he did have a realization. Here he was, making pro/con lists, something that he would normally never do (clearly, Rose had worn off on him). Logic rarely panned out for him, and though he enjoyed the systematic approach of practice and diligence, he usually followed his instincts in questionable situations such as this one. That being said, all he needed to do now was turn his thoughts off, if only for a split second. If he could do that, then he'd just start flying, in whichever direction the wind blew him.

This was how Scorpius wound up on Rose Weasley's front porch, standing on the welcome mat, his hand in the air and ready to knock on her door. It must have been 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning by now, and Scorpius didn't wish to disturb anybody, but he didn't have much of a choice. It had started raining only moments ago, and now the drops were pummeling down across the Weasleys' front yard, the roof of their porch protecting Scorpius from being drenched in the storm. It would be too difficult to try to fly anymore in this weather, and he needed to find a dry place to rest for a while.

As he took a few good hits at their knocker, Scorpius was reminded of the last time he had been inside this house. Made mostly of wood that looked like it had just been picked up off the beach, with hundreds of tiny, brown shingles that made up the roof atop the various floors, the house looked much more welcoming than Scorpius knew it to be. Inside, it was the complete opposite of Malfoy Manor, and even homier than Godric's Hollow. The ground floor was wide open, a circular enclosure around a crowded kitchen and a patterned living room. The only parts that were closed off from it were Hermione's office, the neatest room in the house, and the downstairs bathroom.

Though Scorpius held a fond memory of a kiss between he and Rose in the office, the living room hadn't been so kind to him. That had been where he and the Potters had spent Christmas morning with the rest of the family, and where Ron, Rose's overprotective father, had nearly kicked him out after finding out about his relationship with Rose.

Wincing at the thought of running into Ron again, Scorpius lowered his fist and nearly turned around to get back on his broom. He stopped himself, however, when a different memory flooded his mind. Recently, just before Draco and Astoria had showed up at King's Cross, Ron had shaken Scorpius's hand, as if to call some sort of truce between the two of them. Perhaps that meant that Ron had forgiven Scorpius, and that he'd be okay with him showing up like this? And even it meant nothing of the sort, what were the chances that Ron would be the one out of the family of four to open the door? After all, Rose had always joked about how her father would sleep through his Auror alarms at night, so he probably wouldn't even hear the doorbell.

Keeping this in mind, Scorpius took the knocker for a second time and banged twice before he could talk himself out of it again. He then took a step back and waited, stuffing his hands in his pocket. Rustling in his sweater, he found Ally and pulled her out to hold her in his hands. The ferret had been named after Alastor Moody, a late Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts. Though he had died long before Scorpius was born, Harry had once told him the story of how Moody had turned Draco, Scorpius's father, into a white ferret using a Transfiguration spell. Inspired by the tale, Scorpius had spent the money Draco had given him for an owl before his third year on the ferret instead. Scorpius always suspected that he had done it to get a rise out of Draco, but looking back now, he was certain that he hadn't been hoping for any confrontation, but a laugh instead. To this day, he had never heard his father laugh.

Distracted, Scorpius barely noticed the porch light turn on in front of him, along with one that could be seen through the door window, inside the entryway. Someone had been banging down the staircase, and now they were about to open the door. Sensing this, Ally jumped out of Scorpius's hands just in time to land on Ron Weasley's shoulder, which she clawed onto for dear life before racing down his right arm and taking a vicious bite off one of his fingers.

"Merlin's beard, I'm so sorry Mr. Weasley!" Scorpius scrambled, reaching over for Ally.

"Bloody hell, get your amazing _bouncing_ ferret off me, will you?" yelped Ron, shaking the hand that Ally was now attached to by her teeth. Eventually, the rodent let go and burrowed back into Scorpius's clothes, but she managed to leave an already distraught Ronald looking irritated and infuriated all at once.

With tousled hair sticking out above his head, bright red ears, and enormous bags under his blue eyes that were the spitting image of Rose's, Ron looked positively dreadful. He was wearing bright orange pajama bottoms, which Scorpius recognized as Chudley Cannons merchandise, and a large, brown t-shirt that was folded in at the bottom, as if he had just now thrown it on and hadn't yet pulled it all the way down his chest. At the moment, he was licking his finger clean while he knelt down to pick up his wand, which had been dropped amongst all of the turmoil Ally had caused.

Ignoring Scorpius and holding the wand to his gnawed-at finger, Ron whispered, "_Episkey"_, and the missing skin suddenly reappeared, good as new.

As Ron inspected his hand for any trace of the wound, Scorpius tried to apologize once again, saying, "I'm really sorry about that sir, she's a little frazzled at the moment. It won't happen again."

"Oh, I'm used to it," Ron mumbled. Scorpius was confused by the comment, but Ron didn't give him a chance to ask for an explanation before he took a step onto the porch, closed the door behind him, and said, "What are you doing here, Scorpius? Do you have any idea what time it is?"

Intimidated, Scorpius nodded feverishly and kept his eyes averted as he answered, "Yes, I know, but-"

"But what?" Ron interrupted. "Decided to take a little midnight stroll, did you? Thought you could come say hello whenever you pleased? Because if you think that I'm about to let you inside to have some _alone_ time with my daughter, you're going to need to straighten out your priorities."

"No, it's not that!" Scorpius practically screamed at him, his hands in the air as if to surrender. "I – I just wanted to talk to her, to Rose. Just for a minute. It's important." He was trying to be honest, but mid-way through his sentence he realized that that might not work out, since Ron's eyes grew wide at the mere mention of Rose's name.

Looking down at Scorpius with rage, Ron asked, "_'Talk with Rose_' at 4:00 in the morning? You do you realize you're talking to her father right now, don't you? Do you know how easy it would be to push you off a glacier and make it look like an accident?"

At first, Scorpius assumed that Ron was kidding, but at second glance his eyes looked nothing short of serious as they glared directly at Scorpius's rain-soaked face without blinking. "I understand sir," Scorpius said sincerely. He then tried a different route by adding, "But you see, my parents sort of kicked me out. I don't have anywhere else to go." This time, Scorpius was trying to avoid mentioning Rose while gaining some sympathy from Ron, but yet again it seemed as though this was the exact _wrong_ way to go about things.

"And that's my problem why?" Ron asked, refraining from any sarcasm, irony, or joking. When it came to his family, Ron would do anything to make sure that they remained safe at all times. Anyone with the name _Malfoy_ might jeopardize that.

"Look, I have my own family to think of," Ron continued. "I can't just take in another member and expect things to stay the way they are. If you're looking for someone to take in a stray, then you've come to the wrong door."

Scorpius knew that Ron was referring to Harry, who had not only opened his home to Scorpius on numerous occasions, but who had also helped to raise Teddy Lupin like his own son. Still, Scorpius knew all that, and yet something had made him come here instead. It was too late to turn back now.

Shaking his head, Scorpius refuted, "If this is still about my father, then please, try to understand that I'm not him. I barely even know him, but what I do know isn't all bad. And if you'd give me the chance, maybe you'd be able to see the same in me."

When he looked back up, Scorpius was surprised to see that Ron was more relaxed now, and was sighing to himself, almost as if Scorpius had gotten through to him in some way. As he rubbed his forehead and pushed some of his hair back, the color yet again reminding Scorpius of Rose, Ron said, "This isn't about Malfoy. Or Draco, I mean. In some ways, yes, you remind me of him, and that's a hard thing for me to ignore. But Malfoy was never capable of doing any _real_ harm. I was never afraid of him. I think we both know that he's not the person in your family who's really worth fearing."

Of course, Scorpius thought, he should've known. Rose had mentioned in her letter that she had asked Ron about Astoria. He had probably thought that his troubles with her were over, but Rose's questioning would have been sure to send Ron's thoughts for a loop.

Not knowing what else to say, while at the same time not wanting to admit to too much of Ron's speculation, Scorpius said, "Look, Astoria doesn't know anything about Rose and me, I promise. You have to know that I would never let my mother anywhere near her. Rose is much more important to me." Before today, Scorpius may not have been so sure about what he had just admitted to. Now, however, he felt like his mother had disappeared a long time ago. Rose, on the other hand, was more present than ever.

"I'm sorry," Ron began, "But you can't protect her now, not while you still have the Trace on you. And if I let you in this house, Astoria will be here in no time. I know the lengths that Rose would go to protect _you_, and I'm not about to let my only daughter sacrifice her future for you."

He was right. It seemed selfish to think such things, but Scorpius knew Rose only too well. For the most part, her decisions were rational and planned, but when it came to Scorpius, she always acted more impulsively, following her emotions rather than her logic. This is what had happened during Scorpius's trial, and Ron himself had seen a glimpse of it during his row with Rose at Christmas. The best thing for Scorpius to do may in fact be to stay away from Rose, so that Astoria wouldn't come looking.

"I made a promise to Rose," Ron continued. "I told her that I would let her make her own decisions, that I wouldn't step in or try to control her in any way. I like to keep my promises, so I'm not going to tell her that I don't want her seeing you anymore. But until I or another Auror find Astoria, I am going to ask _you_ to stay away from Rose. Whether you can handle a relationship where you don't ever see each other, or if you end up having to break things off between the two of you is your decision. But I can see that you want to protect her, and I think you can agree that this may be the best way."

In that moment, Scorpius could tell that this was in no way personal anymore. It was much bigger than that. Though he may not have trusted Scorpius before, Ron's reasoning for refusing to let him inside had nothing to do with him, but rather everything to do with Rose. Of all reasons to leave, this seemed like a pretty good one to Scorpius. He could at least respect Ron, and could easily see where he was coming from.

Now that they had reached some sort of common ground, a compromise if you will, Scorpius nodded and said, "Fine. I'll go then." He then turned around, adjusted the rucksack on his back and looked out at the stormy night in front of him. As he wondered where he may go next, he couldn't help but notice that Ron's heavy yet steady breathing could still be heard from behind him. He hadn't gone back inside yet, and so Scorpius waited for him to speak.

"Er, hold a minute," Ron said to Scorpius, nearly shouting in order to project his voice above the thunder that had just commenced.

Stepping back underneath the roof, Scorpius stayed on the porch, but peaked through the crack that Ron had left between the half-closed door and the outside of the house. He couldn't hear anybody else, so they must have all been asleep. Just past the entryway however, the living room was illuminated by a floating flame of blue fire, enclosed by a small glass jar sitting on the coffee table. The Bluebell charm had always been one of Rose's favorite spells, and Scorpius remembered how she had liked to conjure them back in their first year at Hogwarts. He would hate to never see those flames again, but he also knew that at least for now, Ron was right… it may be for the best.

When Ron returned, he opened the door, but this time didn't step past the threshold. Instead, he stayed inside and extended his arm out to Scorpius, an enormous roll of brown fabric in his hand. "It's a tent," Ron said. "It's, er, bigger than it looks, and it'll at least keep out the rain." It seemed as though Ron had answered Scorpius's question for him. He wouldn't be going to Godric's Hollow, as it would be much too easy to see Rose there. Instead, he'd be on his own, camped out somewhere, hiding.

"Thanks, Mr. Weasley," Scorpius said in earnest as he took the tent and stuffed it into his bag.

"Yeah well, I'll have to come up with some excuse for losing it once Hermione notices it's gone, but I doubt I'll ever need it again," Ron answered. "Oh and, you can call me Ron, if you like."

As Ron held out his hand to shake, Scorpius took it, gave him one firm swing, and said, "Well then, thanks, Ron." He then turned around and walked off the front porch and onto the grass.

Scorpius was just about to mount his broom when Ron called from behind, "I'll tell Rose to send an owl tomorrow morning. You can reply however you like, but I know how lonely it can get out there."

Scorpius gave a wave in gratitude before he flew off, all while thinking that at least the owl would give him something to look forward to.

* * *

Scorpius ended up making camp in the woods near Godric's Hollow, just behind the Potters' house. He remembered it to be a rather good spot from when he had been lured into the forest while playing Quidditch with the Potters last summer. The rain had calmed down by now, and Scorpius had found a small, relatively dry enclave amongst a group of maple trees. It didn't look too much like the clearing he had made for Rose in the Room of Requirement, lacking the color of the leaves, the lightly flowing creak, and the sporadic rays of sunlight, but it would do for now.

He was quick to set up the tent Ron had given him, as he desperately needed to get dry again. Scorpius was surprised to see how small it was, looking like not much more than a piece of tarp held up by a few metal rods. However, as soon as he took a step inside, the space was transformed into a multi-room shelter, complete with furniture and other living essentials.

"I love magic," Scorpius whispered to himself as he explored his new home, walking through the bare entryway and up a few steps to a small dining table, which led to a large enough kitchen along with one of two bedroom spaces, where a tiny cot was sitting, already equipped with sheets and a pillow. On the other side of the entryway was the second bedroom, with a bunk bed and a few chairs. The place was clearly big enough for just him, and Scorpius wondered what the Weasleys had ever used it for.

Searching through the cupboards in the kitchen for a match, Scorpius was able to light a small candle that sat on the main table. Once he could see a little better, he set down his bag, released Ally to roam as she pleased, and laid down on the lone cot.

It was then that Scorpius was met yet again with the unbearable condition of insomnia. Nowadays it seemed as if it had taken control of his life. With only a few hours of night left to sleep through, Scorpius begged anyone that might listen to grant him the one small pleasure of a moment's rest. He was tired, exhausted really, and he had been for nearly a year now.

Trying to take his mind off of things, Scorpius turned onto his side and faced the wall of the tent. He then stayed very still, closed his eyes, and thought only of Rose. Her arms were wrapped around him, her wild hair blowing past his cheek, and her soft breathing in his ear. She was here with him, and in the morning she would still be there, through the chirping cardinals that would wake him up, and the letter that would be waiting for him. _Think of only Rose_, Scorpius thought._ Dream of only Rose. Wake to only Rose._

* * *

Scorpius woke as soon as the sun came up over the meadow, and he was immediately met with a growling stomach, which reminded him that he hadn't eaten much in a long while. After pulling on the only set of spare clothes he had, he wandered out of the tent that had recently become his home and into the forest he was hiding in.

He had been lucky enough to find quite a perfect spot for his camp, as the night before he could barely see anything. This morning, however, the sun was shining brightly through the canopy of leaves above him, illuminating the soft, green ground Scorpius was standing on. He had pitched the tent at the top of a small hillside, where there were fewer trees than down below, and as he descended toward the main floor he could already hear the sound of flowing water.

Less than a kilometer north, Scorpius discovered the stream. It was relatively small and narrow, but would surely be big enough to provide him with fresh drinking water and a good place to wash his clothes. After splashing a handful of the water on his tired face, Scorpius headed back the way he had came in order to mark a trail. Once this was settled, Scorpius checked his watch: it was still only 7:00, but at this point he was starving. He'd need to find something to eat as soon as possible.

"If only I could use magic," Scorpius whispered to himself. He wasn't willing to risk his place at Hogwarts, but he also didn't have any sort of hunting supplies with him, nor had he ever gone hunting before. Being a Malfoy may have had its downfalls, but the family had never been short of food.

Determined, Scorpius rummaged through the tent, searching for anything that he could use to catch a small animal. He didn't much fancy killing an innocent rabbit, but he knew that he'd need the protein. Eventually, he found a relatively sharp knife and decided to give it a go. Exploring the forest in any direction that seemed logical, trying to get deeper and deeper into the woods, Scorpius spent a good hour quietly following a rustling sound that turned out to be a mere squirrel.

Scorpius headed back to his tent highly disappointed. Trying to ignore his hunger, he sat defeated underneath an enormous oak tree, fiddling with Rose's ring out of pure boredom. If the entire summer was going to be like this, with a constant feeling of loneliness mixed with extreme hunger, Scorpius wasn't sure that he'd be able to bear it. He felt the same way he had felt a few days earlier, back when he had been locked up in a cell at the top of a Hogwarts tower after being falsely accused, except this was almost worse. At least the pending trial and that stupid little bird had given him some hope. Now, he didn't feel as if he had any left at all.

It was then that Scorpius decided to take a walk. He needed to gain some perspective, plus it was clear that he had nothing better to do. This led him to the edge of the forest, which he remembered flying over the night before. Now that he was on the ground however, he had a much different view of the small wizard town he had camped near.

Godric's Hollow, looking as quaint and homey as always, was only about a Quidditch pitch away from where Scorpius stood now. At the corner of the neighborhood, which was closest to Scorpius, sat a decrepit old house that he had walked past many times before. It was in the style of a Tudor, with a base structure of dark wooden beams holding thick white clay in place. That style was barely visible from this house however, since the entire top floor looked as if it had been blown apart, and its remains had been covered with vines and weeds. It was the old Potter house, once home to Harry's parents, and Harry had been adamant about keeping it exactly the way it was rather than restoring it.

For himself, Harry had built a slightly larger house just next to the one he had nearly died in. It had the same style and layout as the other house, and the two next to each other looked a little like a before and after shot, a reminder of just how easy it would be for a person's life to be turned into ruin. This was exactly why Scorpius hadn't gone to the Potters', and why he had agreed to stay away from Rose as Ron had suggested. Voldemort had been desperate and threatened when he had attacked the Potters, but Scorpius could sense those same feelings every time he looked at Astoria's eyes. If she wanted to ruin a life, she'd have to come find Scorpius's hideout in the woods. Of course, this made Scorpius slightly thankful that he really had very little for Astoria to tear apart.

After a few more moments of Scorpius staring at the backs of various houses in the neighborhood, he was surprised to see a familiar-looking man of medium height come out the back door of the Potter house and jog out onto the yard. It was much too easy to recognize Harry once his black hair, large spectacles, and trailing golden snitch came into view, and at first Scorpius thought he had been spotted, since Harry was headed in his direction. As Harry slowed, however, and as Scorpius ducked behind a tree, he noticed that Harry was holding his broom, a Firebolt, in his right hand, and looked like he was calling out toward the house.

"COME ON!" Scorpius heard him shout. "Let's show James what he's got himself into!"

At that, four more bodies made their way out of the house and onto the field which Harry was standing right in the middle of. It was still early in the morning, but unlike the Weasleys, the Potters were all early risers. Plus, it was never too soon in the day to play a good game of Quidditch in this family.

Lily was the first to arrive by Harry's side, and she too was holding a broomstick that looked very similar to Harry's. Scorpius assumed that it must have been new, probably a birthday present for the recently turned fourteen year-old. She had gotten very interested in Quidditch this past year and was on the Gryffindor team. Plus, Scorpius remembered her birthday celebration from last year, as it had been his very first day at the Potters, in early June.

Albus was next, and Scorpius was met with a strong urge to run up and hug his best friend, but refrained himself from doing so. Al looked slightly less enthusiastic about the morning events than his father and sister, but looked ready to play nonetheless, a large red quaffle tucked under his arm.

Next was Ginny, and she had on some of her old Quidditch robes, from way back when she had been captain of the Holyhead Harpies. Now, Ginny was the head Quidditch correspondent for the _Daily Prophet_, so the game had always been a big part of her life. Every time that Scorpius had seen her play, she'd take things very seriously and get extremely competitive, especially when against Harry.

"I want James," Ginny announced as she came closer to the rest of her family. To Harry, she added, "You're _way_ too out of practice."

"Oh yeah?" Harry challenged his wife. "Then I get Al _and _Lily." He then crossed his arms against his chest, and Lily soon followed suit, standing by her father and staring Ginny down as best she could.

Shrugging, Ginny said, "Fine, but you'll need more luck than that." She then knocked the quaffle out from under Al's arm with incredible speed and ran away, Harry and Lily in her wake. As Harry yelled out directions for Lily to help him corner her, Scorpius turned his attention back to Al, who was now alone in the middle of the field, unmoving.

Al had his head down, and now that his hands were free, he had acquired his wand from his pant pocket. Staring down at it, Scorpius caught Al glance over at Harry every now and again with a questioning expression. It looked as if he hadn't yet asked his father about the Elder Wand, but Scorpius could tell that his friend was planning what he would say at that very moment.

James came out of the house then, carrying a long, stable stick with a hoop attached to the end of it in each hand, his own Firebolt trailing behind him by about a foot, floating in mid-air. He seemed to have some enchantment over it, and Scorpius remembered that James must be seventeen by now, thus over age and finally allowed to use magic outside of school. Scorpius had always envied James, for his Quidditch skills and his family, but now he was only jealous of the fact that he happened to be a year older.

After setting up a hoop at each end of the yard, James ran over to Al while calling out to the other three, all of whom were now rolling on the ground laughing after Harry had used a hex to trip Ginny, and then Lily had tripped on her. Upon hearing that James was ready, they pulled themselves up and headed back to centerfield.

As each of them noticed James's outfit, a brand new Montrose Magpies training uniform, they cheered proudly for their boy, who was well on his way to becoming a professional Quidditch player before he even graduated from Hogwarts.

"Alright, alright," James calmed them down. "Thanks for the support, but I could actually use some real practice, since McLeod wants me there first thing tomorrow morning."

"Which is why you're on my team," Ginny boasted, a hand on her son's shoulders.

With a raise of his eyebrows and a look at the clearly less professional team opposite him, lacking in both uniform and ultimately skill, James laughed and said, "Oh, you guys really don't stand a chance."

Before Lily could lunge back at her older brother, both James and Ginny were on their brooms and were flying off, Ginny already very near to a goal post. As Lily chased after her and Al headed to the ring to block her shot, James had accelerated in the other direction, having spotted Harry's snitch. Harry followed close behind, trying his best to make James struggle, but he was no longer anywhere near a match for James, so the two ended up dueling mid-air as tried to maintain balance on their Firebolts.

The game continued on like so for some time, until James and Ginny had all but obliterated the rest of the family, James having caught the snitch multiple times, and Ginny scoring twice as many goals as Al and Lily combined. Once they were all too tired to carry on any longer, they flew back down to the ground and Harry checked his watch, only to be surprised to find that it was nearing midday.

"We're supposed to be at Ron and Hermione's in twenty minutes," Harry said, sounding flustered. He then corralled the rest of the Potters back inside the house, where Scorpius assumed they'd be traveling to the Weasleys' by Floo Powder.

Once Scorpius was sure that the Potters had left the house, he was struck with an idea. After all, he didn't want to put any of Al's family in danger, but if they weren't actually in the house, than theoretically Scorpius wouldn't be causing any trouble at all. Keeping this in mind, he set off for the back porch of the Potter house, where he took a minute to search for the spare key that Harry had hid behind a faulty wooden beam, and used it to open the door to the house.

The back door opened into the living room, which was rather messy but still semi-presentable. It had a large couch and a few extra chairs centered around the fireplace, which a small bowl of bright green Floo Powder was sitting next to. Above the fireplace was an old Holyhead Harpies banner, and below it was a freshly hung banner for the Montrose Magpies. The family's broomsticks had been put away on their respective hooks on the wall, each of which had a small label above them, signaling the name of the person whose broomstick it was. They were in order of age, and the middle one, which belonged to James, held a broom that looked to be about a half a foot longer than the others.

There was a large pile of various reading material and other items slathered atop the coffee table, making the actual table almost impossible to see. Scorpius noted that today's _Daily Prophet_ was at the top of the pile, just above this week's _Quibbler_, Luna Scamander's magazine. As Scorpius approached the table, he looked down at the front page of the _Daily Prophet_, only to find a rather large photo of his mother staring back at him.

"'_Astoria Malfoy: Dismissed or Missed?_'" Scorpius read from the headline, which was written atop the photo that looked similar to a mug shot. Scorpius recognized it as the same picture they had put in the paper when she had been admitted to St. Mungo's last summer. Of course, that hadn't been quite this large, nor had it been granted the front page slot.

Skimming through the article, Scorpius smiled to see that Draco had sent in the tip, and that he had finally told the Ministry everything about Astoria, with the exception of Filch's murder. Unfortunately, as Scorpius read further, the description of his mother's recent history was followed by the latest update on her whereabouts: 'unknown'.

"Brilliant," Scorpius sighed with sarcasm. "I should've known." Draco hadn't been able to hold her off for long, and she had already escaped Malfoy Manor. Now, she could be anywhere, and the Aurors would have no idea where to start. Of course, Ron Weasley knew exactly where to start… with Scorpius himself.

"I'd better get out of here," Scorpius mumbled. Ron would be telling Harry everything at this very moment, and then Harry would probably go looking for Scorpius, as he'd want to protect him. Scorpius would need to be long gone by the time Harry got back to the house.

At that, Scorpius raced into the kitchen, failing to notice the unusual clock on the wall that separated this room from the living room. It had been there for a long while, as Molly Weasley had given it to Harry and Ginny as a Christmas present soon after Lily was born. This clock was not like a normal Muggle one, however. Instead, it was rather special, and had various hands, each of which represented a member of the Potter family, that could all point toward a different location: home, work, school, Quidditch, the Weasley house, lost, or, worst of all, mortal peril. What was new to the clock, however, was that while five hands were pointed at the Weasley house, a sixth had been added. Scorpius was now included in the device, and was already headed in the direction of mortal peril.

After rummaging through all the cupboards and collecting all sorts of food, along with a couple of pans, water bottles, matches, and utensils (including an enormous steak knife that might be useful for hunting), Scorpius ran back out of the house the same way he had came and headed back into the forest.

Once he put everything he had gathered away and had taken a bite of bread to eat, Scorpius stepped outside the tent once more and took a seat on the grassy hillside. Just like the one before, he felt as if this day might never end. He was beginning to get the feeling that he'd be in for a very long and difficult summer, unlike any that he'd lived through before. With that same feeling of loneliness that haunted his sleep, Scorpius told himself once again to think of Rose.

Luckily, he didn't have to work too hard. Just as Scorpius lowered his back onto the ground, he looked up at the sky to see a tiny, spotted owl headed his way. In its beak was a white letter, the envelope much bigger than the bird itself, and Scorpius knew immediately that it was Pigwidgeon, carrying a much anticipated letter from Rose. Finally, something to look forward to.


	13. The Letters from Nowhere

**_Note: _**_I'm back! I'm sorry I haven't updated in so long. I got an unexpected job for the summer, so I didn't have much time to write. Anyway, Chapter 13 is finally here, so I hope you enjoy!_**_  
_**

_-Hailey_

* * *

**13 – The Letters from Nowhere**

_Scorpius,_

_ Is everything all right? My dad told me that you may not be able to reply to my last letter, and that I should write you instead. What's going on? I asked Dad, but he wouldn't say. Of course, I also read the _Daily Prophet_ this morning… was it your father who finally told the Ministry about last summer? And how is it that Astoria escaped so quickly? And if she did, are you okay? I know I already asked that, but I'm really worried about you._

_ The atmosphere around here is very strange right now. The Potters are over, and Harry's been having a 'private conversation' with my parents for quite some time. Hugo and Lily tried to use some Extendable Ears to hear what they were saying, but Ginny stopped them. Even James can't seem to figure out what's going on, which is really saying something. Of course, he's very preoccupied at the moment (his first try-out is tomorrow). Plus, I'm guessing that my dad used that _Muffliato_ spell to make sure we couldn't overhear even if we tried. He always did like that spell. _

_ Al's with me now, and I've filled him in on everything that I told you in my last letter. Can you confirm any of it? The article in the _Prophet_ didn't mention Filch, but I assume that's just because Astoria escaped before Draco could turn her in to prove it? Let us know as soon as you can, but for your sake, I do hope that I'm wrong._

_ Oh, Al wants me to tell you that if you get sick of Malfoy Manor, you can always 'crash at his place' (his words, not mine). Apparently, Harry's more worried about you then ever, and it'd be much less annoying for Al if you were there to calm him down. I wouldn't mind myself, since then at least I'd know you're safe, and I'd probably be able to see you sometimes. But of course, if things are going at all well at your house, then I wouldn't want you to leave just for us._

_ I think I just heard the office door open, so I'm going to go try to interrogate my mum and dad while Al works on Harry. I'm sorry for rambling on so much, but I've been feeling rather jittery lately. I guess it's harder than I imagined to be without you, even worse when I don't know how you're doing. I hope that you can shed some light on the darkness I've been living in for the past 24 hours, but like I said in the last one, I'll keep sending letters even if you can't reply. I love you so much Scorpius, and I can't imagine that ever changing._

_Come back to me when you can,_

_Rose_

Scorpius's eyes were watery by the time he finished. He hated to hear how lost Rose was, as she was so used to being in complete control, and he couldn't believe how much he missed her. That feeling hadn't quite sunk in until now, after reading Rose's last paragraph. He really wanted to talk to Al too, since there was so much ground to cover with him, but he knew that he couldn't.

Pig was the only owl Scorpius had access to now, and the back of Rose's letter was the only piece of parchment he could use. It would be difficult enough to try to reply fully to all of Rose's letters, and poor Pig couldn't carry more than one at a time, so Scorpius wouldn't be able to send an extra letter to Al even if he wrote it on a leaf.

"Oh well," Scorpius sighed while giving Pig a pat on the head. Rose would have to be enough, and he knew that she would be. Plus, any information he told her was sure to be passed on to Al eventually. The two of them told each other everything, and Scorpius didn't see that changing any time soon.

Looking over the letter once more, Scorpius noted the fact that Rose didn't know about his encounter with Ron from last night. He must have just told her to send a letter, that's all. Not wanting to cause a feud between Rose and her father, whom Rose adored, Scorpius decided that he wouldn't mention it. But what would he tell her? Should he say that he's left Malfoy Manor and is camping out in the woods? That didn't seem like the best idea, since Rose would probably come looking for him. Still, he didn't want to lie to her about _anything_, let alone _everything._ This was getting complicated more quickly than Scorpius had anticipated.

Deciding to just write and see what came out, Scorpius turned the paper over, searched his rucksack for his quill and some ink, and wrote a reply:

_Rose,_

_ I'm fine, don't worry. I'm not at my house anymore, but I also can't tell you where I am. I wish that I could, you know I do, but it's just safer this way. Before my mother escaped, she said she had come back 'for me'. She's after me, Rose, and I don't want to put you or anyone else in danger by being near you. If you don't mind, can you also keep this a secret? You can tell Al of course, just make sure that Harry and Ginny don't find out, because they'll go ballistic searching for me. I suppose that goes for Lily and Hugo as well, since we all know if they find out, everyone will. Oh, and please don't come looking for me yourself. I'll be fine where I am, and I don't want to have to worry about you the same way you've been worrying about me. I'm not as strong as you in that department._

_ Yes, I can confirm your hunch about my mum. I left before my dad wrote to the Ministry, so I'm not sure if he felt like he didn't have proof or if he just didn't want to tell them, but Astoria admitted it to me. She was using Goyle the whole time, but figured she didn't need him anymore once I was accused. She seems to want to get to me (which I suppose is why she didn't want me to be framed), but I don't know why exactly._

_ When I left, my dad had Astoria and was going to lock her in the cellar, but she must have escaped somehow. I've no idea where she is now, but your dad and Harry are probably planning to go look for her, which I assume is why they were having that 'private conversation'._

_ I wish that I could stay at Al's place too, but I just don't want to risk anything. The best place for me to be right now is nowhere, so that's where I'm going to stay until they find her. Speaking of which, keep me informed of any news, because I doubt that I'll be getting the _Daily Prophet_ where I am._

_ Say hi to Al for me, and send more paper with your next letter, so that I can leave a longer reply. Also, send letters as often as you can. Reading them might help me sleep at night. And don't worry, I doubt that I'll ever stop loving you either. That'd be way too difficult._

_-Scorpius_

After reading the completed letter once over, Scorpius folded it in half, the backside showing remnants of Rose's handwriting, and then gave the letter to Pig. With a whisper of, "Give Rose a kiss for me," Scorpius watched the miniature owl fly away from his hideout in the forest.

The rest of the day passed by slowly, and Scorpius had a light supper of the bread he had stolen at the Potters' before laying in bed and awaiting sleep once more. He wondered about Astoria – where she was, what she was plotting, if she was looking for him. If she was, how long would it take her to find him? Was he safe here, or should he move his campsite every few days? Traveling seemed like a logical option, and the long walks would provide something for him to do all day, but it would mean getting further away from Godric's Hollow, and therefore further away from anything familiar. Plus, he didn't want to make it any harder for Pig to find him, because he knew that Rose's letters would be the only things that would keep him sane.

_Rose. Rose. Rose. _Every thought Scorpius had always came back to Rose. He couldn't imagine a life without her, and yet they hadn't been together all that long. She was the one thing that made all of this worthwhile. As long as she promised that she'd be waiting for him once he got back to Hogwarts, he knew that he could get through the summer on his own.

With that thought, Scorpius slept. It was light and still somewhat interrupted, without very much dreaming, but it was exactly what his body needed. In the morning, he woke to a clear blue sky, the same color of Rose's perfect eyes, and went for a short run before grabbing his broom and taking off. He had decided that he'd stay in his spot in the woods, at least until there was some sign that it wasn't safe anymore. Still, he wanted to get out on the Flyer for a while so that he could get a better picture of the area.

He took a spin around the neighborhood, but Scorpius instinctively ended up in the skies of Ottery St. Catchpole, stalking the Weasley house and hoping that Rose might step outside for a while. She never did, but eventually Scorpius did notice the living room window open, which Pig flew out of, a small letter in his beak. Excited, Scorpius raced the owl back to his tent and landed on the grassy hill just in time to catch Pig in one hand, and Rose's falling letter in the other. Opening it up, he read:

_Scorpius,_

_ Thank god you're all right! I've been so paranoid lately, my mother's actually been saying that I'm beginning to remind her more of Dad than of her. Still, now that I've heard from you I'm a little more comfortable about things. Of course, I do wish that you could tell me where you are, but I've come to expect your 'obsession with protection' I suppose. Just at least be honest with me about how you're doing, and I'll try my best not to go looking for you._

_ How is it where you are though? I hope you're getting enough to eat, and have some sort of company. Are you sleeping okay? You mentioned it in your letter, and I had a feeling that the voices might be coming back ever since you saw Astoria again. If they're there, are they still telling you to stay awake so that you can save her, or is it something different this time? Either way, just shut them out. None of it is real, not anymore._

_ I'm doing all right here, at least for now. It turns out you're right about my dad. He left this morning, saying he was off for his next mission, and doesn't know how long he'll be gone. (Harry's not going with him though; I think they want him to stay at the Ministry, since he's Head of the Auror Department and all.) Dad wouldn't say anything more about it, but my mum seemed to know everything, and she was clearly worried. It's funny, but the way she looked at my dad as they said goodbye sort of reminded me of the way I looked at you when you were being dragged away at King's Cross. I didn't know if I'd ever see you again, or if you were at all safe. Gosh, that feels like years ago now, it's hard to believe that it's only been a couple of days._

_ Anyway, my point is that the way my parents were looking at each other had me all worried. I have a lot of confidence in my dad, but he actually looked scared, which I've never really seen in him before. Hugo seemed to sense it too, because as soon as Dad had left, he ran up to his room and slammed the door. Mum and I thought he was in there crying, too ashamed to do so in front of us, but it turned out to be even worse. When he came back downstairs, he had his trunk with him, packed to the brim with clothes and other personal items as if he was ready to go back to Hogwarts for the year. When Mum asked what he was doing, he announced that he was going to stay with the Creeveys for a while, at least until Dad came home. I know it upset Mum that he wanted to leave, but she let him go anyway. He and Nigel Creevey are pretty much inseparable these days, for reasons that aren't exactly mine to share. I think Mum can see that though, so she sympathized._

_ So now it's just the two of us, and Mum's delved into her work as a distraction from worrying about Dad. I suppose I've been acting similarly, since I've started planning Al's birthday party, and it's taking up most of my time. Of course, it'll be a surprise, since he doesn't want any sort of celebration, but he'll only turn 16 once. I so wish that you could come, as does he I'm sure, but we both understand why you can't._

_I hope you know that we would join you in a second if you told us where you were. You wouldn't have to be putting anybody else in danger, and we'd be prepared for whatever came our way. At least then we'd be together, and we'd form some sort of united front for whenever Astoria came knocking. Just please say that you'll consider it._

_Anyway, I'd better stop writing now, since I've run out of news to share. I can't wait to hear from you again, and please don't be afraid to ask for help or company if you need it. Don't start being stubborn like Al and me, just because you're too selfless to know any better. You're not the only one in your life, after all. You have people, and we care about you, and we always will. Don't ever forget that._

_Come back to me when you can,_

_Rose_

How is it that she could see right through him? This was the main thought running through Scorpius's head once he finished reading Rose's newest letter. Everything she wrote made Scorpius feel as though she was right next to him, and could see the fear in his eyes, along with the bags underneath them. For a moment, Scorpius had to remind himself that this wasn't true, even though he desperately wanted it to be.

Even so, Rose could sense his loneliness from miles away. She knew that the voices and nightmares had returned to Scorpius, and she knew that he was once again struggling with them. Of course, she was right that this time around, things were different. Instead of hearing his own whispers to stay awake and to save Astoria, he had been hearing _Astoria's _voice, confident and controlling, saying repeatedly, "I want to protect you. I want to protect you. I want to protect you."

Upon hearing those words each night when he tried to go to sleep, Scorpius would try to turn them into something less intimidating and more hopeful, which is what always made him think of Rose. He was here to protect her, and unlike Astoria, he meant every word. If he was lucky, Rose would lead him to his dreams, and he'd finally sleep. It was the only thing that had worked so far.

Before he began to wallow in self-pity, Scorpius quickly brushed the thoughts away, took one of the extra pieces of parchment that Rose had provided him, and wrote his reply:

_Rose,_

_ I'm fine, honestly. I know you're worried, as I am about you, but really, I'm okay. I have plenty of food and I'm completely sheltered from any type of rain that may come my way. I don't have too much company, but I enjoy being alone. Plus, I have your letters, and so I have you. That's really all I need._

_ You are right about my sleep, though. The voices are back, but this time they're all hers, Astoria's. She keeps saying that she wants to protect me, but I know it's a lie. I just wish I knew what she _really_ wanted with me, and then maybe I'd feel a little better. Anyway, it's not that bad, so long as I can change the subject in my head._

_ I'm sorry your dad had to leave home. I can't help but feel like it's slightly my fault, ever since I heard that Astoria had escaped again. I never meant for your dad to get overly involved in any of it, but I do hope that he finds her as soon as possible. If he does, then maybe I'll consider your proposal about telling you and Al where I am, or even going to stay with the Potters'. Until then though, I just can't do that to either of you._

_ Speaking of Al, tell him 'Happy Birthday' for me. And don't let him be too down about the surprise party. He's had a rough time lately, and he could really use a little pick-me-up. Maybe you should invite that girl who helped with the Veritaserum? I'm sure a bit of snogging with her would cheer him up. I don't mean to be vulgar or anything, but it did seem like she was all Al could think about on the train coming home from Hogwarts._

_ Anyway, I hope everything goes well, and I have the utmost confidence in your party-planning skills. I also hope that you and your mum aren't alone for too long. The sooner your dad comes back the better, plus it's never easy having a family that's split apart. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, especially you. But like you said, your parents love each other; you can see it in the looks they give. As long as they have that, there's no need to worry about your dad. It's impossible to be away from the one you love for too long, and it's also impossible to quit fighting for them. That's why I'd never be able to stop fighting for you._

_-Scorpius_

After giving a small piece of bread to Pig, who had been waiting anxiously to be rewarded for his impressive letter-carrying, Scorpius folded the letter and handed it off to the owl. Once again, it was difficult to watch Pig fly away, as Scorpius had begun to associate the bird with Rose herself. Still, he knew that she'd send a reply as soon as she could.

Scorpius felt slightly guilty for fibbing to Rose about his living arrangements, but he couldn't stand knowing that Rose was worried about him. It would be easier for both of them if she continued to think that he was perfectly safe and happy. Plus, what he had written at the end of the letter was completely true: he loved her, and would continue to fight for her, which was exactly why he first needed to protect her.

* * *

Over the course of that week, Scorpius and Rose continued to send letters back and forth to each other, but less often than they had been sending them initially. While Scorpius gradually ran out of the food he had stolen from the Potters' kitchen, Rose continued to plan for Albus's surprise birthday party.

On the day of the party, Scorpius kept close watch over Godric's Hollow, hoping to catch a glimpse of Rose and Al. Luckily enough, the group of people, who seemed as though they were all part of the Weasley-Potter family, spent most of their evening outside, some in the yard and others on the back porch, making it easy for Scorpius to spy on them from his spot in the woods.

Harry, Ginny, James, and Lily were of course all there, but they had taken Al out for most of the day and let Rose into the house to set up all of the decorations. She had brought Hermione with her, in order to move things along faster, since Rose couldn't use magic. It was bittersweet watching Rose from the sidelines, since Scorpius could feel how close she was, but couldn't touch her… couldn't hold her, couldn't kiss her. It would have been torturous if she hadn't looked so cheerful.

Her smiles were partly due to the fact that all of her hard work over the past week was finally paying off. She was positively glowing as she called out directions to Hermione, and Scorpius was reminded of each time she had finished writing a long, difficult essay for Potions or Astronomy. Neither one was her favorite subject, which only made her focus on their assignments even more. Afterward, she'd always wear the proudest expression on her face, just happy to know that she had done her best.

Rose looked even happier, however, when the Potters arrived with their own special surprise. After bringing Al out back and watching his stunned expression, Rose proceeded to give him a giant hug before anybody else got the chance. When she let go of Al, she was met face to face with Ron, who had slyly appeared from behind Harry. He must have been dragged away from work for the night, but a part of Scorpius hoped that perhaps he wasn't going back. The chances were slim that he had found Astoria, since there hadn't been any news regarding her whereabouts for days according to Rose's letters, but maybe he had passed the task along to someone else? Scorpius figured that he'd just have to wait and see.

The crowd stayed outside a little longer, and was soon joined by George Weasley, the owner of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, and his two kids, Fred and Roxanne. Percy, another of Ron and Ginny's older brothers, also stopped by with his two daughters, Molly and Lucy. Lucy spent a large deal of time with Rose, since they were good friends, leaving Al to fend for himself for a while.

Everybody seemed to have a great time, celebrating under an exquisite array of floating green lights. The large table that they all ate at was set with cauldrons of food, meant to look like various potions. Ron spent a great deal of time inspecting the food, dragging Hermione along with him, since it seemed as though she wouldn't leave his side.

Unfortunately, the night had to end at some point. Around midnight, people started walking outside of the property and Apparating home, or inside to the fireplace in order to use the Floo Network. Harry was quick to take all the decorations down before Rose could do so herself, and then worked hard to usher her back inside. When she finally obliged, Scorpius sighed and lifted himself from the ground, ready to get some rest now that Rose had disappeared.

He was distracted, however, when he noticed that Al was still outside, alone and staring up at the stars. This was rather odd behavior for him, and Scorpius wondered if his friend was okay. Eventually though, a beautiful, grey owl came into sight and flew straight toward Al, where he landed on his shoulder and dropped a letter into his hand.

Al didn't look the least bit surprised as he opened the envelope and read, and Scorpius was curious to know whom it was from. The owl wasn't one he recognized, and Scorpius knew just about everyone that Al did. He didn't want to dwell on it though, so after Al finished reading, Scorpius decided to call it a night, assuming that the mysterious letter was probably from that girl Al had been goggling on about, the one he had told Rose to invite. (She had, as a matter of fact, invited her, but Ilana never replied to the invitation.)

After another long night, Scorpius was excited to wake up and find Pig on the table in his tent, Rose's next letter tied to his talons:

_Scorpius,_

_ Sorry I didn't write yesterday. I was planning on at least sending a short note at some point, but then I didn't even have the time for that during Al's party. I think the whole thing was a success though, since people seemed to be having fun._

_ Ilana didn't show up after all, which I suppose I expected. That didn't bother me of course, but I think Albus was a little disappointed. He seemed really lonely most of the night, even though there were loads of people there. He just didn't want to chat to anyone, it was quite odd. I suppose he's pretty quiet most of the time, but I can't help but worry. He looked like he could use a friend, but the best one he's got isn't around to keep him company. Anyway, I don't want to make you feel badly about it. It's not your fault, after all. And I've been keeping him updated on all of our letters, so he knows you're okay and everything, which is good._

_ Oh, and you'll never believe this, but my dad showed up! He came just for the party, and spent the night at home, but was off yet again early this morning. Still, it was great to see him for a couple of hours, and I know Mum really needed it. It's been hard for her lately with Hugo gone; I've never seen the house so empty, and especially so silent. It's taking some getting used to for the both of us._

_ Most of my other aunts, uncles, and cousins came for the party as well. Lucy was there, and we talked for a while. She's been having a great summer with Lorcan, and I'm starting to think that they'll always be together. They've become one of those couples now, the ones everybody looks up to, as some sort of symbol of hope for the world. It seems to suit them though, and I definitely think they'll stick it out for a while longer, since Lucy's never been happier, and she swears that they never fight at all. Do you think we'll be like that? I suppose it's way too soon to be thinking about forever, but to me that's what it feels like already. Is that odd, or do you feel like that as well?_

_ I talked to James for a while too, and he also seems more cheerful than usual. His practices with the Magpies are going extremely well apparently, and he said that he'd leave Hogwarts now so that he could play with them full time this season, but Harry of course won't let him. I'm happy about that too, since he said if he left I'd be the new Captain for the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and I figure I'll be taking enough NEWT courses next year as it is._

_ Speaking of which though, our OWL results should be arriving soon. I'm so nervous about them, they're practically all I can think about. I mean I thought I did well on most of the exams, but Potions and Divination could be horrendous considering how little natural talent I have for the both of them._

_ I've been scouring the _Daily Prophet_ as usual, but once again there's no news on Astoria. Everything seems to be under control in the wizarding world, but I realized this morning that that might not be the case in the Muggle world. Sure enough, I asked my mum if she'd read about anything that seemed at all strange in the Muggle newspaper lately, and she told me that there have been quite a few break-ins reported this week. Other than that, nothing too serious, though there was this one article I read detailing a mysterious bird that's been sighted a few times now, always in a very different part of the country. It's supposedly a hawk, but has this interesting golden color in its feathers, which is apparently very uncommon. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about, but I thought you might want to know anyway. _

_ Nothing else to share, I'm afraid. Are you still doing all right? I miss you more everyday, and sometimes I could swear I feel like a part of me is missing. To be honest, I can't wait for this summer to end. It's lasted too long already, and I think I'd be a lot happier at Hogwarts. I suppose I understand better than ever how you say you always feel there, like it's your real home. I didn't realize until now, but I think I've started to feel the same way. I mean, I'd miss my family if I were there of course, like I always do, but you and Al, and everybody else at school, are like my family too. And now here I am, missing you _and_ my dad. But I'll see you both soon enough… or at least that's what I keep telling myself._

_Come back to me when you can,_

_Rose_

Scorpius had to take a number of deep breaths once he finished reading this letter. He had already been having a hard time being apart from Rose himself, not to mention being all alone in the woods. Knowing how much pain Rose was in though, that was a thousand times harder. All he wanted to do was take it away from her, but he didn't know how.

Instead of replying right away like he normally did, Scorpius decided that he'd wait until tomorrow. He wanted to take some time to mull things over, especially regarding what Rose had mentioned about Al. That, along with what Scorpius had seen of him last night, seemed a little suspicious. Still, he wouldn't be able to tell Rose anything about it without giving away his location.

Later that night, Scorpius eventually fell asleep with a full stomach of some rabbit he had caught, but more exhausted than ever just from having caught it. He woke up ready and replenished for a new day, but only a couple hours into the morning, he was met with a somewhat expected surprise that he had been hoping he wouldn't have to face, even though Rose had warned him that they'd be arriving soon.

The barn owl, instantly recognizable as one of Hogwarts' birds, was waiting patiently outside the tent when Scorpius came back from the stream where he had been collecting his drinking water. He had been hoping that whichever owl that would be delivering the exam results wouldn't be able to find him all the way out here, but of course owls knew where to go, even without an address.

Hesitantly, Scorpius took the letter from the bird's beak and watched it bow and fly away before he opened the envelope. Luckily, he had been preparing himself for the worst possible outcome regarding his OWL results, so he knew he'd be okay with whatever he found. Yet again taking a deep breath to calm his nerves, Scorpius opened the letter and read:

**Ordinary Wizarding Level Results**

_**Pass Grades: **_Outstanding (O); Exceeds Expectations (E); Acceptable (A)_**  
**_

_**Fail Grades: **_Poor (P); Dreadful (D); Troll (T)

_**Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy has achieved:**_

Astronomy: E

Care of Magical Creatures: E

Charms: E

Defense Against the Dark Arts: E

Divination: P

Herbology: E

History of Magic: T

Potions: A

Transfiguration: O

Instantly after reading his scores, Scorpius was relieved. He had done well, better than expected even, in nearly every exam, even Charms. Of course, Rose's one-on-one tutoring with him on the subject had helped tremendously. He had failed Divination, but who hadn't? History of Magic, he hadn't even been given the chance to finish before Shunpike had taken him from the room and Professor Binns had set his answer sheet on fire. And then Potions, which he had been so sure he'd failed, he'd actually passed!

Of course, what he was most proud of was that final mark at the very end of the list: a perfect 'Outstanding' in Transfiguration. Though Al and Rose had reassured him time and time again that he would do well on this particular exam, he hadn't been able to believe it himself… until now. It was nice to know that he was especially good or talented in a certain area, and he couldn't help but smile with joy upon finally seeing the proof on paper.

Anxious to share the good news with Rose, Scorpius stuffed the results into his back pocket and took out a fresh piece of parchment:

_Rose,_

_ You were right; I got my OWL results just now. Did you get yours? I know you think you did terribly, and I felt the same about mine, but they turned out to be okay! I got an 'Exceeds Expectations' in Charms, no doubt thanks to you. The only exams I didn't do so well in were Divination ('Poor') and History of Magic ('Troll', of course), but I'm fine with that. I even passed Potions ('Acceptable'), which is a miracle in of itself. Oh, and you were right about Transfiguration; it was my only 'Outstanding', but that's one more than I could have hoped for. How'd you do?_

_ I'm glad the party went well. It's good that you got to see your dad, though I still feel bad that he's had to leave at all. As for Al, I wish I could talk to him, see what's got him down. Of course, I'm not sure that I'd be much help. We talk all the time, but never about anything too serious. To be honest, I think he feels more comfortable speaking with you about things like that. But he's probably fine anyway. I mean, maybe he finally asked Harry about the Elder Wand? He was pretty nervous about that, so it may not have gone so well._

_ It's good you got to talk to Lucy for a while as well. I know how angry she was with me at the end of the year, having taken up so much of your time, time that you could have spent with her. She really has no right to complain though, since she was with Lorcan all the time anyway. And about what you wrote, it's hard for me to think about forever right now. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to be with anyone else. It's just that I have a hard enough time thinking about tomorrow, let alone years from now. Taking it one day at a time is about all I can handle at the moment._

_ Don't worry about James. Even if he left, you'd be a brilliant Captain, and I could help you. Of course, you'd never be able to beat Slytherin, but you could give it a go. But you're probably right: with all the amazing marks you must have gotten by now, you'll be busier than ever with schoolwork (which is a little hard to believe), and I wouldn't want you to be too stressed._

_ Thanks for sharing the news. I agree that the hawk thing probably isn't that important, but maybe the break-ins are? Is there any reason why Astoria might want to break into Muggles' homes? I almost feel like she'd do it just for fun, like to send a warning or something. Anyway, keep me posted if anything else pops up. _

_ I'm fine, don't worry about me. I can't stop worrying about you, though. I know what you mean, about feeling like a part of you is missing. I feel like that as well, constantly. It's like I can't think straight half the time, because I'm always waiting to hear what you have to say. I can't make up my mind on things without having your input. I feel like one of those colorful cubes that Muggles are always playing with, the ones where you're supposed to make each side into a different solid color, after they've all been mixed into one huge puzzle. I feel like that, except instead of all my sides being put back together the way they're meant to be, I feel like they're being taken apart, all the colors mixing into one huge mess that can't seem to sort itself out. I keep waiting for somebody to come along to fix me, but I know that you're the only one who can. You're the only one who knows how._

_-Scorpius_

He hadn't meant to leave the letter on such a somber note, but it had just turned out that way. He hoped that it would signify to Rose just how much he cared about her, while at the same time he was trying to be honest. There were so many things that he couldn't share with her, even though he had promised at the end of the year to tell her everything. He hoped that, for now at least, this would be enough.

So he said goodbye to Pig once again and was left alone, another day to fend for himself. Finally, after stealing from the cupboards of various houses in the neighborhood, Scorpius had a light supper, and received Rose's reply after a short midnight swim in the nearby stream:

_Scorpius,_

_ God, I miss you. I don't want to waste an entire letter telling you that, because I know that you already know, but I needed to write it. I miss you and I love you, and I want to make sure that you always remember that. Any time that you ever feel like you're about to disappear, just remember that I'm still here, and I won't ever go anywhere. I'll always be here to fix you when you break, of that I'm completely positive._

_ But I do have other things to tell you, so I'm going to stop myself before I start crying, ruin the letter, and then have to start all over again. First, congratulations! Those are fantastic marks that you got on your OWL's! I'm so proud of you! I did all right, I suppose. I don't mean to be snobby, but I am actually a little disappointed. I got an 'Exceeds Expectations' in Divination. I know I should be thrilled with it, but I really would have liked to have shocked Professor Trelawney and left her with no option but to mark me with an 'Outstanding'. Still, I did well in everything else, and passing Divination means that I received more OWL's than even my mother! _

_Second, I talked to Al about what you mentioned in your last letter. He did ask Harry about the Elder Wand, on the day of his birthday. Harry told him that even though he had originally wanted to return the wand to Dumbledore's grave, he ended up keeping it locked away in his house. He says that he had a feeling that it might come in handy one day. So, he decided to give it to Albus last summer, because he was scared that Al was beginning to feel inferior to James, and even to you. He didn't tell him that the wand was abnormally powerful though, because he didn't want Al to give it back, nor did he want him to relish in all that power. He said that Al was welcome to keep it now, that it was his and he could do what he wanted with it, but to be careful about what he used it for. I think Al's just having trouble trying to figure out what to do._

_ Still, I feel like there's something he's not telling me. He just seems distant, but I can't explain why. I suppose it's quite ironic, isn't it, all three of us feeling lost at once? It's as if we're either united or not, and there's no in-between. I'm determined to bring us back together though, all of us. I won't give up on either of you._

_ Oh, I nearly forgot, but I also met baby Remy today. Mum and I thought we'd go and visit Teddy and Victoire, since nearly everyone's seen Remy except us, and Mum really wanted to help out around the house in whatever ways she could, since they've been too busy taking care of the baby to do anything else. As it turns out, Teddy and Victoire both know that Remy's a werewolf, since Harry told them (after Al told him). They're not sure what it means for her childhood either, but there've been a couple full moons since she was born already, and she didn't transform during any of them. They said she acted a little strange, and couldn't sleep at all through the night, but it wasn't any worse than that. They'll definitely be keeping an eye on her though, and I think she'll be okay because of that._

_ Lastly, an article came out in the _Daily Prophet_ today, saying that the Muggle break-ins have in fact been orchestrated by wizards, but Astoria wasn't mentioned. One of the break-ins turned out to be an attack, and a Muggle was found dead, done by the Killing Curse, which is how they put the pieces together. There were a few descriptions of who the murderer was from witnesses, most very vague, and only a few possible names, none of which I recognized. I had a feeling that they might be her followers or something, but then I would have thought that she'd be more involved. If they are working with her, then she's doing a good job of staying in the sidelines._

_ Anyway, this means that the Auror department now wants to focus on finding the Muggle-killer, so my dad's been called off Astoria's case so that he can lead a team on this new one. The good news is that he's not the only one hunting them down, so he'll be able to come home more often than before. I just hope that it's not all some plot of Astoria's to get him off her tail._

_ I don't mean to leave you with bad news, since I know you'll probably be reading this before you go to sleep. Just know that whoever these people are, and if they are working for Astoria, they're not anywhere near you. They're all off in Muggle neighborhoods, so I don't think they'll find you off in nowhere. Think about that distance as you try to go to sleep, about how far they are and about how many people are now looking for them. And then think of me, because I'll be thinking of you. You know I will._

_Come back to me when you can,_

_Rose_

Unfortunately, Rose's advice didn't work. Once again, Scorpius had a sleepless night, and so was up and about incredibly early the next morning, long before the sun would come up. After writing a reply to Rose, he relaxed for a while, sitting lazily against a maple tree and staring at the Potters' backyard.

Ally was scurrying around the ground in front of him, and she almost seemed nervous. Other than the tiny sounds she was making against the brush and the leaves though, the atmosphere around was dead quiet. It was almost eerie to Scorpius, as if everybody in the world had somehow disappeared.

Thinking this, Scorpius was caught off guard to see Harry walk out the back door of his house, closely followed by Ginny. It was much too early for most people to be awake, including the rest of the Potter family, so Scorpius was curious to see what the two were doing.

Once the couple got further onto their yard, where Scorpius knew the property line was, Harry gave Ginny a kiss, which was so heartfelt and sad that Scorpius could only assume it was meant to say goodbye. Looking closer, Scorpius noticed that Harry was dressed in his Auror uniform, the one that dark wizard catchers used when going out on a mission. He had only seen him wear the dark, army-like clothes once before, since Harry barely ever went on missions these days. He had to hold the fort back at the Ministry, so he'd only ever go out if absolutely necessary. Otherwise, this would be Ron Weasley's job.

With this in mind, Scorpius was struck with a sudden wave of panic. If this would normally be Ron's responsibility, did that mean that something had happened to him? Or maybe to his family? What if something had happened to Rose? _What if something had happened to Rose?_

Just as Harry Disapparated, Scorpius knew something was wrong. Ginny, who rarely showed her emotions, had worry etched across her face. She was moving tensely as she walked back to the house, almost as if she had to remind herself to put one leg in front of the other, and in what direction to place it.

Scorpius too was no longer thinking straight, but he didn't know what else to do but keep his eyes on the Potter house, hoping that the people left inside, which now included Ginny, would give him a sign as to what was going on.

For at least a couple of hours, no such sign appeared, but Scorpius remained glued to the ground. Finally, after a short eternity, Ginny stepped back outside, now looking both anxious and exhausted. James was right behind her, though for once he wasn't wearing his Quidditch robes. Just as Harry and Ginny had done before, James and his mother walked onto the lawn, where they stood still, hand-in-hand, before turning on the spot together.

Wondering what was going on with Al and Lily, the other two Potter children, Scorpius looked to the house. Though he couldn't see through any of the windows from where he was, there was definitely a light on in the living room area, as it was shining out the back door. There was no sign of movement, but Scorpius did notice a few small puffs of bright green smoke waft out of the chimney. Al and Lily had left as well, but unlike the rest of their family, they had traveled by Floo powder.

Desperate for information, Scorpius ran across the field in front of him, already searching for the spare key that Harry had made for the kids many years ago. When he found it however, instead of using it to unlock the back door, he noticed that the window next to it was opened just a crack. Inside, on the indoor sill, sat Pig, the Weasleys' owl which Scorpius had become so acquainted to as of late.

The bird didn't have any sort of letter in its beak, nor was anything attached to his talons. Whatever he had brought the Potters had already been delivered, and he was just munching on a treat that they must have left him. Unfortunately, before Scorpius could make a move to snatch him so that he might use the owl to send another note to Rose, Pig was out of the window and flying away.

Of course, Scorpius was left dying to know what was going on with the Weasleys, and he was sure that something was. Still, there wouldn't be anything to find inside the Potter house, and he soon realized that all he could do was wait to hear from Rose. Until then, he'd try his best not to over think things or get too paranoid, but he knew it wouldn't work.

* * *

Three days later, Scorpius still hadn't heard from Rose. The past few nights had probably been the longest he had ever had, and they reminded him of the few days that he had spent in that tiny cell at the top of one of Hogwarts' towers, guilty until proven innocent of Filch's murder. So much had already happened since then, and he felt as though the world was now a thousand times more dangerous than it was before.

Something was clearly wrong now, there was no denying it, and with every day that passed, Scorpius grew more and more frustrated, and more and more worried. Most of the time, he watched the Potter house in silence, but they were barely ever home. Harry was long gone, and Ginny only came back to sleep every other night. The only thing that was slightly reassuring was the fact that though Al and Lily seemed to be off with Ginny, James had come back to the house only to leave for Quidditch practices. Since James would surely be with Rose if something too serious had happened, Scorpius hoped that this was a sign that things were okay after all.

Even so, Rose had never gone longer than a day before writing a response to Scorpius, and so with each passing moment that Pig couldn't be seen flying toward his tent, Scorpius's worry grew even larger.

That day, Scorpius was drifting in and out of sleep, something he hadn't experienced much of as of late, in the spot that he always used to look over Godric's Hollow, when he noticed a small creature flying toward him. The bird, though small and fluffy, was definitely not Pigwidgeon, as he had a very different coloring of white and black, and lacked the scruffiness that Pig had acquired from old age.

Regardless, the owl was soon at Scorpius's feet, and had dropped a letter onto Scorpius's left leg. Anxious to finally hear back from Rose, or anyone for that matter, Scorpius grabbed the paper and read:

_Scorpius,_

_ I'm sorry I haven't written in so long. I know how worried you must be, but I can assure you that I'm okay. Something did happen though, and you're not going to like it. Just know now that this is in no way your fault, so please don't blame yourself._

_ A few nights ago, the night I sent my last letter actually, there was an attack on the Creeveys' house, where Hugo's been staying. It was led by Astoria, but there were others there too, her followers. They all got there in the middle of the night, after everyone had fallen asleep, and started sending spells through Colin's window to try to break in. From what I've heard, Astoria was after him, the next Squib on the list._

_ Colin of course woke up right away, but he couldn't do anything but run. His dad, Dennis, woke up as well, and he immediately sent word to the Ministry. Unfortunately, none of the Aurors got there in time, but luckily it was the last night that my dad was still following her, so he found her at the house about ten minutes after she'd gotten there. The followers all Disapparated when they saw Dad, and then he and Dennis tried to fight off Astoria. _

_At this point, Hugo and Nigel had both woken up as well, and everybody was outside. Apparently, Hugo tried to fight back a few times, but Dad disarmed him from behind before he could produce a spell. Then finally, the other Aurors got there, and Astoria fled as soon as she saw that Harry was with them. Right before she left though, she hit Dad with some sort of jinx that I've never heard of, and he was knocked out. He was taken to the hospital straight afterward, and Harry and a few of the others went after Astoria._

_Dad's okay now, and we got to take him home this morning. He had quite a few shattered bones that were difficult to mend, and it all looked very painful, but he's nearly back to normal now. He was well tended to also, with Mum, Hugo, and Ginny never leaving his side. Pig's also refused to go anywhere but Dad's bedside table, which is why I couldn't use him to send this letter. Al and Lily were at the hospital a lot as well, keeping the rest of us company. Harry refuses to stop tracking Astoria though, so he's been off doing that._

_We're all pretty shell-shocked after what happened. Hugo's come back home, under Mum's strict orders, but the Creeveys all seem to be okay. They have their own personal Auror protecting their house, and Colin's under close surveillance. It all sounds quite extreme, I know, but for now it's necessary._

_Nobody's been more upset than Dad though. He's been killing himself for missing the opportunity to bring Astoria in, and hates the fact that Harry won't let him come back to work for the rest of the summer, at least not out in the field. He's been in a terrible mood because of it, but we've all been trying to cheer him up._

_All of us are fine though, really. Astoria wasn't after any of us, we know that. Plus, I think Mum and I are secretly happy to have Dad and Hugo back, and to feel like a family again. Mum nearly had a heart attack when she heard from Ginny that Harry had been called to the Creevey house for an attack, and I know she feels better now that Hugo's under her roof. _

_As for me, I just wish I could have seen it coming. I mean, I knew that Colin was a Squib all along, and I knew that Astoria had already killed Filch, who was a Squib as well. I should have made the connection; I should have warned them! I've been so busy worrying about you after what you said about Astoria wanting to 'protect you', and then Dad once he started following her, I haven't had time to think about anything else. But I know better now, so I'll be more careful. After all, it's not anybody's fault… not mine, and most definitely not yours._

_Oh, and I should mention that there was an article detailing the attack in the _Daily Prophet_. It came out the morning afterward, and now everyone in the wizarding world is well informed of Astoria's power, and has been warned to stay as far away as possible. Shacklebolt has started calling her and her followers the Forbidden Flock, trying to make the message loud and clear that everyone should stay away from them, that they're not to be trusted, etc. It's still unclear what exactly she wants, but the Ministry's under the impression that the pure-blood front is rising again, just like it did when Lord Voldemort was in power. When I asked Mum about it, she said that it feels a lot like it did the last time. She suspects that Astoria's busy trying to build up an army, not just with witches and wizards, but all manner of dark creatures. _

_The Ministry has also taken your dad in for questioning, according to my mum. They'll be asking him about Astoria, anything else that she may have done, or any signs of the purpose behind the attack. Mum thinks they might ask about you as well, but I'm sure your dad will just say that you're back at home, camped out in your room or something._

_Anyway, that's just about everything I know about what happened. I thought you deserved to know as well, but please, please don't take any of this the wrong way. All that you can do right now is keep yourself safe, and so that's all you should focus on. She's powerful, Scorpius, really powerful. There's nothing you can do to stop that._

_I love you. None of this has changed that, and nothing ever will._

_Come back to me when you can,_

_Rose_

As soon as he got to Rose's signature, Scorpius sighed and his head instinctively fell into his hands, his eyes burying themselves in the cracks between his fingers. His head felt heavy, much heavier than it should have. He could feel both the pulse from his temple as well as the smaller, faster one from his thumb. Both were racing, as the contrasting deep breaths coming from his open mouth didn't seem to be working.

His forehead was throbbing, and he could feel his eyes starting to water, the ducts quickly filling with tears. He didn't want to let them out, even if there was nobody around to see him cry, so he knelt back his head and opened his eyes to the sun, as if it would automatically dry them clean. Of course, this didn't work as well as he had hoped, and so one single, yet full teardrop fell down Scorpius's cheek.

He didn't know why exactly he was crying. He could feel something in him, something deep in his chest, knotting its way through the rest of his body. The pain, though rooted in his emotions, had become highly physical, and it was unlike anything he had ever felt. His joints, from finger to toe, were on pins and needles, fighting the numbness that was coming over Scorpius, his body's immediate defense against the torture within him.

His feet ached, and he could no longer stand up. Astoria was not his mother anymore. She was a completely different person now: a terrible person, a dangerous person. She had once been the woman who had taught Scorpius how to walk, but now that person was gone. So he knew that if he fell, she wouldn't be there to lift him back up again.

His back ached, and he was sure that an enormous amount of weight had just been dropped upon it. Both the Creevey and Weasley families had been put into life-threatening positions from what they knew to be an insane villain. What they didn't know, and what Scorpius _did_ know, was that the person that villain was after wasn't really Colin, and wasn't really Ron, but rather him. Astoria was looking for Scorpius, and until she found him, he'd have to bear the weight of all those she used as pawns, throwing them away so that she could get to the fleeting knight.

Most of all though, his heart ached, not because he had lost the ability to love, but because he knew above all that soon enough, he'd have to say goodbye to it. Rose had once been the girl who had taught Scorpius how to feel, but now he felt too much. He had let himself take advantage of his feelings for her, and because of that he had put her in danger. All along, just like Ron had said, Scorpius had known that his relationship with Rose couldn't possibly end well for either of them. Now, he needed to put a stop to it, before it ended badly for them both.

Even so, he knew Rose better than that. Like she had said in her very first letter, she'd keep writing even if he stopped. She'd make sure that he didn't run away, and that they didn't lose touch with each other. She had learned that determination from him.

Accepting that there was nothing he could do, at least for now, Scorpius decided to just reply to Rose. If he couldn't keep her pain away, he could at least try to reduce it. She had been through a lot these past few days, and maybe he could lighten the load she'd been carrying. After all, knowing her, she'd be carrying an even larger one soon enough.

_Rose,_

_ I don't know what to say. Of course I was expecting the worst, since I haven't heard word in so long, but reading the truth still comes as a shock. And how could I not feel responsible? It's my crazy mother we're talking about, don't forget._

_ Anyway, I'm not going to waste my time blaming myself, since I've done enough of that. I just want you to know that everything's all right now. Your dad and Hugo are both safe, and your family's back together again, that's what matters. You're going to be fine, and Astoria will never be able to touch you. I don't care if she finds me next, but I'll never let her near you. Getting that close to Hugo was bad enough._

_ Speaking of which, if Astoria's building an army, then I want to fight. I know I can't do anything where I am, but you have to start telling people the truth about what's going on. Tell your parents about Filch, and then tell them to spread word to everyone they know. We have to start getting people on the right side, before it's too late. The more witches and wizards fighting against Astoria, the weaker she'll be. This has all been going on for too long as it is, and it's got to stop. _

_ I love you too, and don't ever keep me wondering whether or not you're alive again. It was pure torture, and I'm not sure that I'd survive a second round. Keep looking after your family as well, because it sure sounds like you could all use each other to lean on right about now._

_-Scorpius_

That was the best he could do. He knew it wasn't much, but the only other things Scorpius had to say wouldn't do Rose any good right now. He hoped that she would do as he said regarding the idea to spread word around to other witches and wizards, though. He had been honest about wanting to fight back, and this seemed like the best thing to do at this point. Still, he couldn't let Rose in, not anymore. It wouldn't be fair. Instead, he'd have to wait for an excuse to let her go.

* * *

The next morning, a new letter arrived. Scorpius was still upset over what had happened at the Creeveys', and he still felt as though he needed to figure out how to fix things. Even so, opening the envelope and seeing Rose's handwriting was oddly comforting, like seeing a patch of sunlight poking through the clouds after a giant rainstorm.

Unlike his own, Rose's writing was neat and refined, with perfect cursive and not a speck of splattered ink on the page. Remembering his last letter to her, Scorpius grimaced to think of how torn and tattered it was, the writing crooked and smudged from his shaking hand, with splotches of spilt ink all over the margins. He hoped that today he'd be better. He hoped that what he read from Rose today would help make it easier for him to do what he felt obligated to do next.

_Scorpius,_

_ I took your advice. Mum and Dad both now know that it was Astoria who technically murdered Filch. The moment I told them, I expected to see huge reactions from the both of them, but none of that occurred. My dad didn't seem very surprised at all, and Mum was off rummaging through things before I even suggested to start telling other people. She had found this old, golden coin, and was performing some sort of magic with it. Before I knew it, the Longbottom and Scamander families were both over for dinner, looking rather distraught and quite anxious to know what 'the emergency' was._

_ Mum and Dad called Professor Longbottom and Luna (Lorcan and Lysander's mum) into the kitchen right away (strictly speaking, Dad's not supposed to be out of bed, but Mum made an exception), and when they saw how confused all of us kids were, they decided that Lysander, Lorcan, and I could join them in their conversation. The twins are overage now, after all, and I was the one who told Mum and Dad everything in the first place, so they probably figured that it wouldn't do any harm to keep me involved. Hugo and Holly weren't allowed in though, which was slightly awkward, considering how much they both seem to resent each other._

_ Anyway, Mum filled Professor Longbottom, Luna, and the boys in on everything about Astoria, and we started to discuss what we're going to do about it. Professor Longbottom seemed pretty shocked, but he was also the most enthusiastic about raising forces for a rebellion. He went on quite a few tangents, mumbling about somebody named Seamus blowing up a bridge, then something about a snake and the Sword of Gryffindor. I could swear he even called himself a 'freedom fighter' at one point; I've never seen him so rattled up._

_ After Mum calmed him down, Luna started coming up with a whole list of ideas that sounded like a load of rubbish. It's one of the first times I've met her, since she's distanced herself from old friends ever since her husband was taken to Azkaban. I wonder if she's always been this loony, or if it's just a result of what happened to Mr. Scamander. She reminded me a lot of Holly actually, with the way she acted as if she was from a different world or something._

_ Mum and Dad chimed in after Lorcan shut his mum up (and after quite the slew of rolled eyes from my father, I might add), and they were mostly concerned with gathering people, just like you suggested. They asked Professor Longbottom to inform all the other teachers at Hogwarts of everything we know about Astoria so far, and then they asked Luna to write up an article about it in her magazine, the _Quibbler._ Apparently, unlike the _Daily Prophet_, the _Quibbler_ doesn't need proof that it was Astoria who planned Filch's murder. According to Dad, _Quibbler_ readers have believed things much more outlandish than that, with absolutely no evidence at all._

_ Lysander, Lorcan, and I kept quiet through most of the conversation, since we didn't want to suggest anything that could be deemed as foolish. I also think Lysander was a little uncomfortable being in my house, which I felt a bad about._

_ Once we had a plan though, Mum shuffled us all out of the room (except for Dad, since she still won't let him be away from her, not to mention the fact that he wasn't too keen on being alone with Luna) so that she could cook dinner. The atmosphere was a little harsh after talking about Astoria for so long, but eventually things mellowed down. Holly was utterly fascinated by Luna's wild stories, and Luna and Professor Longbottom seemed to really hit it off. I knew they were friends back when they were at Hogwarts, but I never realized just how close they were. They were all smiles the whole evening, and I have a feeling this won't be the last reunion they have together._

_ Hugo talked to Lorcan for a while, mostly asking him about Quidditch, and what some of his best Beater moves were. I suppose he could have asked Lysander, but of course Lysander would never give anything away, whereas Lorcan's much too open about such things. Anyway, with the way everybody had split up, that left Lysander and me alone together._

_ Before I go any further, you should know that nothing happened between us. I know things always get awkward whenever I mention Lysander around you, but I want to feel like I can tell you anything. Now I should probably mention that back at Hogwarts, Lysander told me that he still liked me, that he wasn't over me. He'd accepted that I'd never like him back, that I only loved you, but he still wanted to tell me. So last night, I asked him how he was doing, and he said that he's been having a really hard time. He doesn't know how to move on, even though he desperately wants to. I wish I could do something to help, but of course I can't._

_ The reason why I'm telling you this though, isn't because I want to make you at all jealous. I just wanted to warn you that when we go back to Hogwarts, he might still be going through a rough patch, and I don't want you two to get into any sort of argument over me. I'm yours, and I'll never belong to anyone else. What happened last fall was a huge mistake on my part, and last night I apologized to Lysander for it, but I wanted to apologize to you as well. I know I've said it before, but I'm so sorry that I ever put you through that. I can see how you must have felt, because that's what Lysander looks like now. I hate to think that it was me who put that on the both of you._

_ So like I said, I'm yours, and I always will be. But if that's the case, then we need to keep each other safe, and in order to do that we'll need to work together, with each other as well as people like Lysander and his family. I hope that we'll be able to do that, and that you both can forgive me for having acted so incredibly naïve. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted last year, whether it was you, or just the idea of you. Now though, I'm completely certain. I want you, Scorpius. Only you._

_Come back to me when you can,_

_Rose_

This would be his excuse. Scorpius had just barely finished reading when he realized that this would be his ticket out. He had been thinking a lot lately about how he would break things off with Rose. The day before, when she had sent word of Astoria's attack, he had accepted the fact that the relationship was over. Still, he had been waiting for something that he could use to make her believe him. He had been wracking his brain for the perfect lie, and Lysander was it.

He hated the idea. He hated what he'd have to do. Even so, he knew that it was time. He also knew that Rose would never forgive him, but that that consequence would be worth it. After all, if Scorpius could do something to make sure that Rose was safe, then he needed to do it. He loved her, and like she had said so many times now, he knew that that would never change. But because he loved her, he couldn't bear to continue putting her or her family in harm's way.

Before he could change his mind, Scorpius took out a fresh sheet of parchment, steadied his shaking hand, and composed the letter that would, quite literally, seal his fate:

_Rose,_

_ I want to believe you. I want to believe you when you say that you sat down and talked with Lysander, and that though he may still have feelings for you, you don't have any for him. I want to believe you, but I don't know how._

_ I know that when you say you're sorry about last fall, you mean it. I know that you never meant to hurt me, and I know that for a while, I pretended that you hadn't. But really, you had. You tried to use somebody else to rush me into a relationship that I wasn't prepared for, and I realize that now. _

_ This isn't your fault. I don't blame you for any of it; I only blame myself. I can't keep using you as an excuse to push myself into situations that I'm not comfortable in. I can't keep loving you while I'm worried every second that you might get hurt, or disappear, or fall in love with someone else._

_ Even if you don't have any feelings for Lysander, I can't help but think that you do. Even if you don't blame me for Astoria attacking your own father, I can't help but blame myself. Even if you say that you love me a thousand times, I can't help but wonder if it's true._

_ I am so sorry that I've kept this going for as long as I have. You don't deserve any of this. You just have to realize that I'm not cut out for this, Rose. I don't know how to trust people, even you. I wish that I did, and maybe I will one day, but right now I don't. And it's just not fair for me to keep going with you, not when you can have something more, and not when I can go back to something less._

_ You once told me to never let go. You told me that you'd wait for me, that you'd hold me, and that you'd never let go. The truth is, I'm not ready to hold you, or to never let go. I'm not ready to love you. I'm not ready for forever. So don't keep waiting for me to be. _

_-Scorpius_

Slowly, and without even taking the time to read it over, Scorpius folded his last letter, sealed it shut, and handed it off to Pig.

"Go," he whispered to the bird, and with the order, Pig was off, flying up into the skies to deliver the short piece of paper that would surely break Rose's heart.

With his feet glued to the ground below him, Scorpius stood where he was and waited. A part of him had wondered if Rose would believe him, but deep down, he knew that she would. All that he had written made perfect sense; he might just start to believe it too.

Of course, it wasn't true. He _did_ trust Rose, and he _was_ ready. He was ready to love her, and he was ready for forever. He knew all this as soon as he had written otherwise. He knew now, as he tried to imagine a future, that it was completely blank if Rose wasn't in it.

Still, there was one thing that Scorpius could see ahead of him… Astoria. She had become his reason to live, not because he loved or wanted to help her, but because he wanted to defeat her. He knew that one day, perhaps not so far from now, he would have to face her alone, and so he needed to be prepared for whenever that day might come.

So for the first time, as Scorpius lay down in that small cot in his tent and tried to fall asleep, he told himself repeatedly _not_ to think of Rose. She may have been the one who had saved him from his recent nightmares, but he knew that this would no longer be the case. After all, if the thought of anyone were to haunt his dreams now, it wouldn't be Astoria. She may be terrifying and dangerous, but Scorpius knew that his days with her were far from over. On the other hand, the thought that his days with Rose _were_ in fact over was far more terrifying, and far, far more dangerous.

* * *

**_Note: _**_I know that was a sad chapter. Sorry! There's not much fluff in Scorpius's head right now, unfortunately. Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts, so please review if you can!_

_-Hailey_


	14. Talons and Torture

_**Note: **Once again, I am so sorry about the delay in uploading this chapter. I have been incredibly busy with schoolwork this year. Also, this chapter was particularly difficult for me to write, for reasons that will become clear as you read. Anyway, hopefully you're all still reading, and hopefully this chapter will be worth the wait._

_-Hailey  
_

* * *

**14 – Talons and Torture**

"I can't sleep anymore," Scorpius whispered. "Only an hour or two." He was standing in the middle of a dark field, underneath a black, night sky, with nobody around to hear him speak. Still, he knew that she was there somewhere, and so he hoped that maybe, just maybe, she'd hear his plea.

Suddenly, his ears tickled, and Scorpius could have sworn that he had heard the snap of a twig coming from behind him. Quickly turning around, he said, "I hear your voice in my head," but no one was there. Disappointed, he faced forward yet again and sighed, "Or at least I try to."

And as the world went silent, without a pin drop or the slightest breath of air for miles, Scorpius shook his head and opened his mouth to say, "But I can no longer hear. My ears are too weak."

Then once again, noise returned to him, and Scorpius zipped around, looking in all directions for the sound of her melodic, sing-song voice, as he yelled, "Say something! Wake me up!"

But no such sound could be heard. With his head locked back into position, his body facing what was clearly nothing more than a boring, old patch of woods, Scorpius said as quietly as possible, "Help me to fall asleep."

Before he had completely regained his composure, the air around him turned cold, so crisp and sharp that he felt as if it was cutting at his throat. "I can't breathe anymore," said Scorpius. With his neck swelling, closing in around all conceivable air ducts, he was just barely able to cry out in an extremely raspy voice, "The pain is strangling me."

As he lifted his hands to his chest to try to tear away at the invisible rope that had cut off his circulation, Scorpius could suddenly sense another hand, a different one, brushing down his arm until it reached his, where it enclosed its own in his and grasped tightly. "I feel you here," Scorpius said, and as his breathing returned, he took in a large gulp of air before exhaling with, "You're holding me."

And then the hand was gone. It disappeared suddenly and completely, as if it had been its reflex to jerk itself away. "But I can no longer feel," he realized. "My body is too weak."

With that, Scorpius went numb. Not a nerve on or underneath his skin seemed to be alive, with the exception of those around his mouth. Desperate to regain feeling, he yelled, "Shake me! Wake me up!"

Then all feeling was miraculously returned to him, and yet he still stood there, completely alone. Not knowing what else he could say to bring her back, Scorpius repeated, "Help me to fall asleep."

Next thing he knew, after a single blink of the eye, Scorpius opened his lids to see a sea of smoke encircling him on all sides, a morning's mist multiplied tenfold so that it now reached as high as his shoulders. Looking around, Scorpius whimpered, "I can't find you anymore. The fog is too thick."

And then a tiny piece of the smoke disappeared, only to reveal her face, half shining and half hidden, with perfect, porcelain skin underneath sandy freckles, and bright blue eyes from the sea, no doubt the creation of this mysterious mist. "I see your face," Scorpius said, now on the verge of tears. "And missing it makes me sick."

With one more blink, all vision was lost. Just like his other senses had done before, his sight had now left him, and the only thing Scorpius could make out was a large, black abyss. "But I can no longer see," he explained. "My eyes are too weak."

As his dark view of the woods slowly returned to him, Scorpius searched for her, yelling, "Wave your arms! Wake me up!"

But she was nowhere to be found. Rejected and lonely, Scorpius mumbled, "Help me to fall asleep."

Now that she was gone again, Scorpius knew that the only pieces of her he had left were the memories they had created together. Diving into the back of his mind, Scorpius wracked his brain to find one of them, but it was empty, as if someone had just recently broken in and stolen his entire past. "I can't remember it anymore," Scorpius admitted. Still, there were images, slight and sporadic, that were passing him by, and that he could just barely make out. "But I remember you."

Closing his eyes in order to maintain his focus, Scorpius took one incredibly deep breath and smiled, explaining, "I smell your hair." As that sniff brought him back to the misty beach from before, Scorpius added, "And it smells like morning dew."

Then it was gone, and Scorpius was left yet again with nothing, no sign of her, only the smallest piece of hope that she might come back. "But I can no longer smell," he said. "My nose is too weak."

"Come closer!" he yelled, praying that she might be as near as he wanted her to be. "Wake me up!"

But once more, no one came. "Help me to fall asleep."

Scorpius was distracted then, by the distant sound of what was surely an animal, sneaking up on him from behind to graze in the grass he had recently claimed. He knew that he should go after it, hunt it, for he hadn't had a piece of meat in much too long a time, but his feet wouldn't move. "I can't eat anymore," he said. "My health is not in check."

With his body about to collapse onto the wet ground, an odd sensation came to Scorpius, like the hand that had appeared before, only now it was a pair of lips, heart-shaped and a gorgeous shade of wild raspberry, making its way up his shoulder. "I taste your lips," he exhaled slowly, "As they move onto my neck."

And along with everything else that had tempted him to go back, to apologize, to tell the truth, her lips disappeared, and all feeling from his mouth was gone. "But I can no longer taste. My tongue is too weak," Scorpius sighed.

With every bit of him having been taken apart by now, Scorpius was left with one last wish, and one last chance to say it before he knew she'd be gone forever. "KISS ME!" he screamed. "WAKE ME UP!"

But Rose didn't come. She didn't hear him. She didn't feel him. She didn't see him. She didn't smell him. She didn't taste him. She was gone, and she had left Scorpius alone in his black hole, waiting for forever to end, and waiting to wake up from this endless dream. "Without you," he said in the softest and most tortured of tones, "I cannot sleep."

And with that, Scorpius shot up on his cot, breathing deeply, with a profuse amount of sweat dripping down his naked chest. He should be used to this by now, but with every glimpse of Rose he had, even if in a nightmare, his heart would ache.

It had been a week now since he had sent her his last letter, and as he had expected, he hadn't received any reply. Instead, he'd been here, hiding out in his tent, trying his best to keep his mind off of Rose. Obviously, that wasn't working.

Exhausted, but knowing that he wouldn't be able to fall back asleep, Scorpius stood up and set off for a walk. It was still dark outside, but the sun would be rising soon, and Scorpius knew he could use the fresh air.

He hadn't gone outside of the tent very often lately, for fear of looking up and seeing a cardinal singing in the trees, or even worse, spotting Rose at the Potter house while visiting Al. Both seemed highly probable, and Scorpius had a feeling that he wouldn't be able to handle either situation.

Of course, he knew that it had been his decision to break things off with Rose. He knew that he would have to live with the consequences, including the fact that he would be alone for the rest of the summer, with absolutely no distractions. Still, there had been no way of knowing beforehand how hard it would be to say goodbye.

Rose had been the one person that Scorpius had ever fully trusted. She had been the one person that he had ever let in. He had Al too he supposed, but that was different. And before he had gone to Hogwarts, he had literally had nobody. Scorpius had been taught at a very young age that friends weren't really necessary. He had been taught to shut himself off from anyone who tried to open him up, and for many years he had stuck by that lesson. This year though, he had finally realized that people are what matters. Now, he had let the one person that ever mattered go.

Still, he knew that it was for the best. This way, nobody would have to die for him. Scorpius had heard the stories of the last wizarding war, and he could feel another coming his way. He had read about all of those who had been killed in the Battle of Hogwarts, but most of all he had seen the damage it had done to Harry. Al's father had never stopped feeling responsible for all those who'd become martyrs for the greater good, and Scorpius could see the guilt every time he turned his face. Scorpius refused to let that happen again.

This was why, for the past few days, Scorpius had been trying to think of a plan to stop Astoria, and what had now been deemed the Forbidden Flock. A part of that planning had been the decision not to return to Hogwarts this fall. He hated the thought, since that castle, and now more than ever, the people in it, had become his home over the years, but he didn't want to risk it. Plus, once everybody else, including Rose and Al, was safe at school, Scorpius could try to lure Astoria to him without getting anybody else involved.

That's where things became more complicated. After all, getting to Astoria, or getting her to him, wouldn't necessarily be that difficult. What would be was actually fighting her, and possibly her followers as well. Scorpius had only five years of magical training, and technically wasn't even allowed to use a wand. Astoria, on the other hand, had obviously been building up both her power and her army. Going at it alone sometimes seemed like a brilliant idea to Scorpius, until he thought about how he would actually handle it.

Meanwhile, one of the last things he had told Rose was to start raising forces to form a rebellion. That could end up being useful, though not with Scorpius's current plan.

"Ugh," Scorpius groaned upon thinking all this. He didn't want to deal with any of the things he had gotten himself into, but he also dreaded the position he had _been_ put into by those around him.

Telling himself that this walk had been meant to _clear_ his head, rather than cluster it, Scorpius shook the thoughts away and carried on through the forest, thinking only of what a beautiful day was on its way.

Eventually, Scorpius arrived at his stream, the one he had been using for both drinking and washing water since he'd gotten here. The current was quite heavy, since it was the middle of summer now, but this morning it was calmer than it usually was. After splashing some of the cold water onto his face, Scorpius looked beside his feet to see a pile of small rocks, all perfectly rounded from the sand and the water, but flat enough to maintain their spot on the ground.

Scorpius instinctively picked one of the rocks up, fumbling with it a few times in his hand. Then, knowing full well that it wouldn't work, but still wanting to give it a go, Scorpius knelt lower to the ground, stood firmly with his feet placed shoulder-width apart, held his arm back, and then flung the stone across the water. Just as he had expected, it didn't skip. Instead, it made a small splash before sinking straight to the bottom of the shallow creek. Scorpius had known before he'd even tried that he wouldn't be able to skip a single stone without Rose there to show him how.

Defeated, Scorpius collapsed onto the ground, sitting beside the rushing waters and wondering what to do next. He had taken Rose's ring out of his pocket and was now brushing his finger over its crack, something he often did out of boredom. It used to comfort him, but now it just made him even more nostalgic. He thought a few times of throwing this stone into the water as well, since Rose would probably never take it back, and he didn't want to keep it for himself. Still, Scorpius had a strange feeling that it was important, and so he wasn't able to part with it just yet.

Over the next half hour or so, Scorpius remained where he was, now laying on his back against the cold, slightly damp rocks, watching the sun come up over the horizon. He had gone back to thinking of Astoria, and was just waiting for an idea to come into his mind. He needed to do something that might give him an edge against her, something that would make him more powerful. Unfortunately, he didn't know what that could possibly be just yet.

If he was Al, Scorpius could just brew some fancy potion and try to slip it into Astoria's pumpkin juice. That was the great thing about potions, Al had always said: that making one didn't require a wand. Sure, the ingredients were rare, and ultimate focus was often necessary, but actual skill as a wizard was completely arbitrary. Scorpius thought this was rather ironic now, considering that Al possessed the most powerful wand in the world, and yet the thing he was best at doing didn't even need one in the first place.

Anyway, Scorpius would never be able to rely on one of _his_ potions to take down Astoria. He'd need to think of something else, something better… something realistic. That was why, within the next few minutes Scorpius spent still staring up at the newly lit sky, he was finally struck with the perfect idea.

The sun had risen higher by now, and beneath it laid the vast, blue sky, clear of any clouds on this fine morning. The birds had just begun to wake up, and Scorpius could hear their chirping all around him. One specific bird call, however, seemed considerably stronger than the others, as if it came from a much larger, more dominant bird.

As the sound came closer to him, Scorpius kept his eyes on the sky and waited for the animal to reveal itself, since he was certain that she was flying in his direction. Sure enough, a hawk soon appeared, circling overhead, her golden color so bright that she nearly blended in with the sun. She was the same bird that Rose had described in one of her letters, Scorpius was sure of it. After all, he had never seen or heard of a hawk with these kinds of markings, so pure that she had barely any spots or flecks of another color.

All other sound subsided as the hawk made her way across the sky, the other, smaller birds silencing in the same way a group of people would make room on the street for the Minister for Magic to go by, since he was the most important and intimidating individual in the wizarding world. This bird was another world's royalty.

Mesmerized by her gentle gliding, Scorpius watched her body float atop the wind, mindlessly finding those warm spots of air that would act as pillows underneath her incredible wings. For a moment, Scorpius wished that he could be that bird. That way, he wouldn't have a care in the world. All he'd have to do was fly, and eventually he'd land in the right place.

As the hawk disappeared, Scorpius could only think of one thing. Though it might be slightly crazy, he already knew that it would work. So quickly, he sat up, washed his hands with the water from the stream, and ran back to his tent, faster than he had ever run before. Once there, he began rummaging through his things, most of which were still packed neatly inside his rucksack (Scorpius had always been extremely organized), looking for something that he hoped he had remembered to bring.

Eventually, his hand brushed over something hard-backed and nearly forgotten, and he pulled it carefully out of his bag. The book was called _Theories of Transubstantial Transfiguration_, and it had been given to Scorpius by Professor McGonagall earlier that year. Inside, she had marked a special chapter for him, and at the time he had received it, Scorpius remembered being quite intrigued and flattered that she believed him to be talented enough to perform such advanced magic, but at the time he hadn't seen the point in putting his body through something so painful. Now though, it seemed well worth it.

Curious to read the note that McGonagall had written at the beginning of the chapter, Scorpius flipped through the book excitedly until he found a section right in the middle of the thick bundle of pages. The chapter was titled _Animagi: Transfiguration as its Best. _Just underneath the title, in McGonagall's perfect, cursive handwriting, were the words, _'Scorpius, certain types of magic do not require a wand, but they do require talent.'_

Magic that required no wand meant that Scorpius wouldn't be caught by the Trace. Having an animal form would mean that he could hide himself from Astoria, all while looking for her with the perfect view of the world. It would give him the edge that he so needed to win against her. It would give him the secret weapon he had been searching for.

At the back of his mind, Scorpius also knew that the highly difficult and painful process may even be enough of a distraction to keep him from missing Rose. And so Scorpius had a new goal, a new destination, a new motivation. Once again, Scorpius was determined, and when he set his heart on something, or even on someone, there was no stopping him.

* * *

Scorpius decided to start small. His transformation into that light falcon that he had once produced with a Patronus Charm would not be easy, that much he knew, and so he would take it one step at a time.

After reading the chapter in McGonagall's book all the way through, Scorpius was not completely confident that he knew what he was doing, but he hadn't lost any determination. The book warned that not every wizard would be able to complete their transformation, and that it was possible that things could go terribly wrong. _How _wrong, or in what way, wasn't mentioned. It also went into detail about the penalties of becoming an Animagus without registering oneself through the Ministry. Unfortunately, Scorpius had no choice about that, so he'd just have to keep it a secret. That part shouldn't be too difficult, considering how little time Scorpius was spending with other people these days.

The only other thing in the book was the fact that the transformation was different for every person, depending not only on the animal they were to become, but also on the strength of their body. This meant that the process could be especially painful for adolescents, since their bones were still growing.

Even so, Scorpius wouldn't let any of that throw him off. He knew that he was young, and he knew that his body was weak after being out here with little food for so long, but he also knew that he had to do this. So in the end, he had decided to start with something small.

Transfiguring his toenails into talons couldn't be _that_ difficult, Scorpius thought, so this would be his first task. Sitting down outside his tent, Scorpius rolled up his pants and took his shoes and socks off. "I'm ready," he whispered, before closing his eyes and focusing only on the nerves of his right big toe.

He kept focusing for a few seconds, trying to imagine his nail growing longer, curving, and finally sharpening. In his head, he saw the whole thing clear as day, but he couldn't actually feel anything happening. Sure enough, when he opened his eyes, nothing had changed. His feet were exactly as they had been before: long, pale, and human.

Frustrated, Scorpius ran a hand through his hair, which had grown quite long recently, falling messily over his ears and constantly blocking his eyes. He wasn't sure what he was doing wrong, but he tried not to get discouraged. He had a long road ahead of him, that much he knew, and this was only the beginning.

After checking in the book for some sign of mistake, of which there was none, Scorpius was at a loss. He didn't know what else he could do, so he decided to just try again. This time, however, instead of treating the transformation like any other spell and imagining the results only in his head, he concentrated on the feeling itself. He took his body back to the pain he had felt all those times he had broken his fingers during a Quidditch match, but intensified it, imagining how it would feel if it was one hundred times worse.

It was excruciating. He could feel his nail magnifying itself, growing thicker, and curving over, all while rooting itself deeper into his skin. His foot was being punctured by something akin to a sharp knife, and his bending nail felt similar to the way a finger might feel if it was stretched back and over one's hand. As his big toe completed its transformation, his spell held and carried on to his other toes, and then onto his other foot. Scorpius was panting hard now, his body writhing in response to the pain, but the worst was yet to come.

Sprouting feathers, even small ones surrounding the bottom of his leg, was no simple task. As his mind gave them the will to grow out of nowhere, Scorpius began to feel something he could never have imagined possible. It was as if tiny needles were ripping through every single layer of his skin, one by one, only they were coming from the _inside_, rather than out. They were starting with the most fragile, sensitive layers, and gradually making their way through the more pliable ones. Scorpius quickly found himself praying that the feathers might stop, but his mind seemed to know that there weren't enough yet, even without looking. They just kept coming, piercing and then expanding, leaving a tiny tingling sensation as they cemented their new place over Scorpius's bird skin.

Finally, the transfiguration came to a halt. After a number of deep breaths while he waited for the leftover tingling to stop, Scorpius slowly opened his eyes and looked down at where his feet had been before. Now, in the exact place where his feet should have been, at the bottom of his calves, were two pure white, feathered stubs of a leg, each of which was connected to four long, narrow fingers with claws on the end of them.

Bewildered, Scorpius just stared at them for the longest time. There was something very surreal about looking down at one's foot, a part of the body that is so essential and instantly recognizable, and seeing something completely different than what was expected. It was like living in the same house over one's entire life, and suddenly waking up in a different bed, walking down a different hall, and greeting a different family in the morning. Scorpius knew that feeling only too well, but it wasn't until now that he had appreciated just how frightening it truly was.

Scorpius shook his head at the thought, reminding himself not to get distracted. He was putting himself through all of this for a reason, after all. So, curious to find out what it would feel like, Scorpius tried to move. He couldn't do much, but he did manage to stretch his four new toes (which were an odd shade of mustard yellow) ever so slightly. Once he had reassured himself that his lower half hadn't been paralyzed during the transformation, Scorpius tried to do the only thing that seemed logical at this point.

He had seen birds, particularly large predatory ones like falcons, do it before, and so he assumed that he would need to learn. So Scorpius focused on his talons and bit his lip, trying to get his brain to send a nerve message to his foot that might make it curve over, as if it had just caught something and needed to hold it in place. Luckily, it seemed to work out, as his claws had suddenly shaped themselves into a curled-over 'U', a flying position.

Scorpius was pleased with all that he had accomplished so far, even though in the back of his mind he knew that it had been nothing in comparison to what he still needed to work on. Even so, he was proud of himself for persevering, and smiled down at his beautifully transfigured feet.

Unfortunately, Scorpius soon realized that, just as he had transformed his feet into claws, he'd need to transform his claws back into feet. There was no way that these talons would be able to support his body weight enough for him to walk on them, and Scorpius had decided that he wasn't going to try any new transformations for now. Dreading the pain that was sure to come with it, Scorpius shut his eyes all over again and made vivid pictures in his mind of what he hoped would happen next.

The return to normal was surprisingly much less dramatic than the first transformation had been. Scorpius had his feet back fairly quickly, and all those sensations he had felt before, from the abnormally exaggerated growing pains to the stabbing from inside-out, were practically non-existent. Thinking about why this might be, Scorpius realized that the initial transformation was the painful part, because it required his body to form into something completely foreign. Once it was accomplished, however, it was as if he had two totally separate bodies, and all he had to do was flick a switch to hop between the two. It made sense to Scorpius, because it was just like any other great change in life. Whether it was moving to a different house, living with a different family, or even ending a relationship, it took some getting used to. Eventually though, the change might not be so bad.

* * *

Throughout the rest of July and the beginning of August, Scorpius continued to work on his transfiguration. Each morning he would wake up, go for a short run before stopping at the creek to clean himself up, get a quick bite to eat in the tent, and then start work on the next 'phase' in the transformation. He found that the larger and more complex part of his body that he tried to reshape and mold into something else, the harder and more painful the transformation was. Still, he pushed through them all, one by one.

Before too long, his legs were complete. This part proved to be fairly simple, as Scorpius didn't need to shrink any of his organs. The bones around his knees had the hardest time with the process, and so Scorpius suffered from a couple of horrendous bruises, slowly fading from a gorgeous purple into a jaundice-like yellow. His muscles were also growing weaker, and he suspected that some of them had been torn along the way. He tried to run everyday anyway, in hopes to build up his dying strength.

Scorpius was also getting used to the sprouting feathers feeling. It was just as difficult to grow them as it had been the first time, but at least Scorpius now knew what to expect. Plus, the outcome was mesmerizing. Now, Scorpius could completely transform the lower half of his body, until he was less than half his normal height and was covered in light, airy feathers that were even softer than the one attached to his favorite quill. Unfortunately though, just as he had received bruises and torn muscles from the pain he'd caused on his bones, tendons, and skin, Scorpius' new feathers were leaving tiny red marks all over his human body.

The marks, unlike a normal kind of acne or rash, started off as the tiniest punctures with only the sight of some blood sitting just under the surface. However, they soon grew into massive amounts of bubbles that resembled severe bug bites, both pink and red, stinging and itchy at the same time. Being that Scorpius was so determined though, whenever his human body ached, he would just push himself even more to keep going with the transformation, because the sooner he got through it, the sooner he could get stronger again.

And so Scorpius moved on to his arms. This part, with the exception of growing even more feathers, was actually something Scorpius was looking forward to. After all, this was the part of the bird that would give him the edge against Astoria. This was the part that would give him the ability to fly.

The morning that Scorpius started work on transforming his arms into wings was the hottest morning of the summer. The sun was blazing down with incredible force, and it was as humid as could be. Scorpius was exhausted before he had even started, after having another hard night's sleep, but he wasn't about to waste the day away. He had a limited amount of time, and so he didn't care that his body could only take so much.

Like he had done with his toes, feet, and then legs, Scorpius started from the tips of his fingers and worked his way up to his shoulders. It didn't take too long to get the general shape down, since Scorpius merely had to meld his fingers together and then force his bones to make tiny breaks in order to put themselves back together in a way that would let his arms bend backwards. The shoulders were a bit tricky for that reason. Scorpius needed to have enough flexibility to stretch his wings beyond his back and curve slightly over his head, which was all dependant on a rotating shoulder-blade. He must have dislocated it fifteen times before it finally held, and in the end Scorpius had long, thin slices of skin akin to a butterfly's wings, and could rotate them backward just about as much as his normal arms could move forward. He had the urge to try to fly now, just to see if it might work, but he stopped himself. His wings weren't even finished yet.

The bristles from his growing feathers were stiffer than they had been in his legs. They were large, long, and surprisingly durable, and Scorpius couldn't exactly understand how such a small skeleton, with extremely thin, nearly hollow bones, could even support such incredible plumage. This was what Scorpius thought about as he tried to ignore the familiar pain of what felt like a million needles piercing his skin from the inside out. The magical thing was that unlike the feathers on his legs, these kept growing, becoming longer and longer until his arms were like giant tarps, so thin and buoyant that they'd be able to float on anything.

Scorpius had a new-found sense of purpose once he had full-fledged wings. He felt oddly powerful, like he imagined Al might feel every time he produced an abnormally impressive spell with the Elder Wand. Of course, Scorpius had never had that type of feeling from a spell or even his wand in general. He had never felt the same attachment to magic that Al and Rose did. He did feel it with Quidditch, though. Not the game, necessarily, but the ability to fly. Granted, he still had his broom and could use it any time he liked, but there was something even more exciting about being able to fly entirely on one's own. It was so incredibly natural that it didn't even seem like magic, at least not the kind that Scorpius was used to. Just thinking about it, Scorpius grew antsy. He told himself once again that he'd be able to try it before too long, but that he couldn't lose focus yet.

Tired from another hard day's work, Scorpius transformed his wings back into his normal arms, where those tiny blood marks had appeared just like the ones he had all over his legs. Slowly, he dragged himself into his tent, ate a small piece of bread (which he was quickly running out of), and climbed onto his cot. With Ally curled up in his arms, Scorpius tried to get his body to shut down, like it so desperately needed to do, but yet again, sleep was nowhere to be found. After a few long hours of staring up at the tent's canvas and imagining that it was one huge wing, Scorpius's eyes closed and he fell into another one of his nightmares.

The next morning, Scorpius woke up screaming. It was the perfect start to a particularly daunting day. That day, Scorpius was going to transform his abdomen. So far, he hadn't exactly worked on any internal organs, and he had a bad feeling that this was where something could go 'terribly wrong'. He did everything he could think of to best prepare, eating nothing in the morning in order to clear his system, and waking his body up with one hundred hefty push-ups. Still, he couldn't seem to hide his fear. Instead, he'd just have to face it.

Once he had set up a comfortable pile of leaves around his 'transformation spot' underneath the enormous maple tree, Scorpius transfigured his feet and legs, figuring that his abdomen might need something to connect to. When it came time to begin, Scorpius first pictured everything in his head before forcing his body into the actions. He imagined his stomach shrinking and his intestines halving in length. He'd start with that, considering that the bigger stuff, including breaking his ribs, scared him even more.

After closing his eyes, Scorpius told himself all over again, "I'm ready." He then felt a sharp pang in his abdomen, no doubt his stomach shrinking. Then came a terrible, twisting feeling from his intestines, which felt like they were churning away as they tried to find the best place to cement themselves inside of him. When his skin took control, everything intensified. His outer layer was now pushing his organs together, forcing them to make room for one another. Somewhere in the midst of all this, Scorpius puked whatever he had left in his system, but he barely even noticed it happening. He was too concentrated on the stomachache combined with harsh cramps and overwhelming hunger.

His cells were all changing at once, and as they changed, they required energy… energy that Scorpius didn't have. At one point, he felt almost as if the transformation might reverse itself, like he may not be able to maintain focus long enough to get through it. But then he was through it, and just as his feet had kept going even though he hadn't meant them to, this part of his transformation continued until his ribcage was crushed, pushed in at the sides by his tough skin. Still, that wasn't the worst feeling; in fact, it wasn't even close.

Scorpius had had his heart broken before. It had happened on multiple occasions, from the time when he was just a boy and would watch his mother and father fighting through the crack in their bedroom door, to all the chances that he had never taken to tell Rose how he had always felt about her, to the sinking feeling he had had when she'd kissed Lysander in front of him, to the gut-wrenching truth that the Malfoys weren't the only ones who thought that Scorpius wasn't good enough, to just recently, when not only had his mother become a person he couldn't recognize or respect, but also when he had lost Rose and had had to come to terms with the fact that their relationship would never be the same again. He had had his heart broken before, and what Scorpius felt now was exactly the same, only this time it felt like _every_ time it had been broken before, all culminating into one giant burst of pain.

He was screaming, and this time he could hear it. He wouldn't have been surprised if the entire world could hear it, but there was nothing he could do to stop. As his lungs shrunk and were molded around his half-sized heart, his pitch grew higher, up until his yells had turned into songs. These songs though, were not at all like those of the cheerful cardinals that Scorpius associated with Rose, but rather the lonesome, crying calls of a bird searching for its long-lost mate.

And as the transformation reached Scorpius's lungs, once again it continued on. More feathers were sprouting around his swollen chest as his wings reappeared, and then he could feel his neck caving in, followed by an enormous amount of pressure pointing at all possible sides of his head. His face was beginning to change, and so for a long moment, just like in the nightmare he had been experiencing as of late, all of Scorpius's senses disappeared.

With no distractions, Scorpius had nothing to concentrate on but the feeling of what was happening to the upper half of his body. It was similar to how he had felt at the beginning of the summer, the first time he had Apparated. He was being torn and twisted in places and ways that weren't meant to experience such things, and all of it was happening at once. It was the largest possible chill or tingling of the nerves that anybody could ever experience, a combined and exaggerated version of sensitive teeth biting into the coldest ice cream, the highest note on a violin played screechingly out of tune, and overgrown nails scraping down the blackest chalkboard. It was unbearable, and yet Scorpius kept pushing to go further, refusing to worry about what might go wrong, or what may have _already_ gone wrong.

His hearing was the first sense to return, and Scorpius could already tell just how enhanced it was. Almost immediately, his tiny holes of ears were picking up the sound of rushing waters from the nearby creek, though normally it would be much too far away to hear so clearly. Drawn to it, Scorpius's instinct kicked in and he was suddenly walking, though he was still blinded, his eyes feeling as though acid was being poured over them, destroying the outer layers until little of them was left over.

As he made his way to the creek, Scorpius stumbled across numerous unseen knots and branches, his small, four-toed feet having little traction against the ground. His strides were much smaller than usual as well, and he found it difficult to get used to moving so slowly. Normally, growing comes gradually, so much so that the ultimate result is barely noticed. For Scorpius though, he had suddenly shrunk nearly four feet, and so his steps were clumsy and out of place.

Still, somehow Scorpius managed to find his way, for before too long his feathers were submerged in water. At the same time, his mouth had finished transforming, and he could feel his new hardened beak around his longer, narrower tongue. Meanwhile, his eyes were almost complete, and with one final cry of pain, this time a full and complete falcon call, Scorpius had become a bird.

Eyes wide open, allowing an odd range of vision that was highly peripheral, Scorpius blinked hastily in an attempt to moisten his dry eyelids. He then headed straight for the stream, where he bowed his head and opened his beak to let the water in. It was cool but smooth, and Scorpius could feel his stomach accept it gratefully.

Just as Scorpius had finished drinking and was bringing his head back to its upright position, he couldn't help but notice a very odd reflection in the water. Like when he had looked down and seen feathered, bird stumps for legs, Scorpius was forlorn to find the image not of his strapping, blond, sad-eyed self, but rather that of a focused, powerful hunter, with the wingspan to travel for days and the talons to tear any animal apart.

Even so, what surprised Scorpius more than all the big changes were the tiny, almost overlooked things that hadn't changed at all. For instance, his eyes were still the same ice blue that they had always been. His feathers were the palest, silvery white, much like his skin had been before. Curiously, Scorpius also noticed that on his left side, up at the top of his short, stout neck, was a marking engraved in one of his feathers. It looked remarkably like a snowflake, with six sides all delicately connected to each other. It was the exact same shape as the birthmark that normally sat just below his left ear, an imperfection that only Rose had ever seemed to notice. It was oddly comforting, seeing it there in the water, shining back at him. Reminded of what Rose had said to him nearly a year ago now, Scorpius felt as though everything had changed. That was why, just as he had said to Rose, it was nice to be reminded that that wasn't true. Even systems upon systems of variables had to have some sort of constant.

Still staring at his reflection, Scorpius cocked his head to the side, taking in everything about his new body. He was in a state of elation, and only now was he noticing just how weak he had become. Even as a bird, he looked much too thin, with rib bones highly visible and random patches of feathers missing from his chest and wings. The area around his eyes was darker than the rest of him, and almost looked scarred. His time in the woods, combined with the incredible transfiguration process, had taken its toll on Scorpius, even more so than he had realized.

This didn't make Scorpius want to stop. If anything, it made him strive for something more. The pain and adrenaline of the transformation had become signs that he could still feel, and Scorpius had learned to rely on them. That was why he did what he did next. He'd learn to regret it sooner or later, but at the time it seemed like the only thing left to do.

Quickly, Scorpius transformed back into his human state, and into the same clothes he had had on that morning. He was careful not to let himself see his human reflection in the water, for fear that it might convince him to stop. He didn't want to stop. He had come so far that summer, so far in that day alone, and his goal was too close to ignore. He couldn't wait a week; he couldn't even wait until tomorrow. He needed to try this now.

So before he knew it, Scorpius was climbing the nearest tree. As his body stretched around the trunk, he could feel something strange in his stomach, an odd sort of churning feeling that he had assumed was merely extreme hunger, but now it was growing worse. Still, he decided to ignore that too, and continued up the tree until he reached the very top.

Once high enough that it would clearly hurt to fall, Scorpius tried to find a good balancing point on one of the tree's strongest branches. He realized that this would be risky, but he also knew that he'd have to try it eventually anyway. This time resisting the appeal to close his eyes, Scorpius left them open as he transformed. Much less painful than it had been before, but still not particularly quick, it took a moment for Scorpius to fully transform.

Then, just as his legs were transfiguring, Scorpius started to sway, and he knew instantly that he wouldn't be able to stay on the branch. Realizing this, he let himself fall, and completed the rest of the transformation mid-air. He was a good three feet above the ground when his eyes and beak came to, and he immediately told himself to curve his feet just as he had been practicing, then open up his wings to see if he might be able to glide.

Unfortunately, stretching out his wings only seemed to make matters worse. Instead of floating above the air, they pushed against it, bringing Scorpius even _closer_ to the forest floor. As soon as he felt the falling sensation again, Scorpius realized that there was nothing he could do to stop himself from crashing.

All too quickly, Scorpius was tumbling across the ground, his body transforming back to its normal state without him even needing to tell it to do so. Then he was lying across the ground, his jaw clenched from the pain in his stomach, which had escalated into complete agony. His right hand was clutching the area, but it wasn't helping.

Somehow, Scorpius managed to crawl all the way back to his tent, where he'd be able to get some food and water, or at least collapse onto his cot. Once he got there though, he couldn't go any further. As soon as he had come through the flap, he was on his knees and panting. Everything around him was spinning, from the furniture in the tent to his very own thoughts. Nothing made any sense, and for a moment Scorpius wondered if he was going to die. At this point, he didn't think things could get much worse.

Then came the puking. At first, Scorpius thought that it was odd, considering that he hadn't eaten anything all day, and very little all week. His stomach should be empty, and yet after getting rid of the small amount of water that he had consumed earlier, his stomach continued to regurgitate. Just as his eye sight was leaving him though, Scorpius caught a glimpse of what was coming out of his mouth. It was definitely not food, but it wasn't water anymore either. This liquid, of which there were now pints spilled across the floor, was thick, dark, and crimson red. Scorpius was coughing up massive amounts of blood.

Within the next few moments, Scorpius blacked out completely, fainting and falling into a puddle of watery blood. Clearly, he had acted much too rashly, and he now knew exactly what McGonagall's book meant. This was precisely how a transformation could go 'terribly wrong'.

* * *

"I can't sleep anymore," he whispered to her. Rose was here somewhere, and she'd find him. He needed her, and so she'd find him. "Only an hour or two. I hear your voice in my head, or at least I try to.

"But I can no longer hear. My ears are too weak. Say something! Wake me up! Help me to fall asleep.

"I can't breathe anymore; the pain is strangling me. I feel you here; you're holding me.

"But I can no longer feel. My body is too weak. Shake me! Wake me up! Help me to fall asleep.

"I can't find you anymore; the fog is too thick. I see your face, and missing it makes me sick.

"But I can no longer see. My eyes are too weak. Wave your arms! Wake me up! Help me to fall asleep!

"I can't remember it anymore, but I remember you. I smell your hair, and it smells like morning dew.

"But I can no longer smell. My nose is too weak. Come closer! Wake me up! Help me to fall asleep.

"I can't eat anymore; my health is not in check. I taste your lips, as they move onto my neck.

"But I can no longer taste. My tongue is too weak. Kiss me! Wake-"

And then Scorpius's words were interrupted, and he was slowly pulled back into consciousness. A pair of hands was shaking him, one hand pushing on his shoulder and the other combing his hair back from in front of his face. The hands were sticky, but Scorpius knew that was just because of his own sweat. He was feverish, panting, and could feel every drop of liquid in his body being drained out through his skin.

"Scorpius?" a high-pitched, female voice said, though Scorpius couldn't tell whose it was. "SCORPIUS!" It was louder that time, and sounded anxious, nervous, and worried.

Scorpius tried to open his eyes, but everything was blurry; nothing was clear. Still, he caught sight of the person who was sitting beside him, and noticed a few strands of fiery, red hair falling toward the floor.

"R – Ro?" Scorpius tried to ask, but he couldn't quite get her name out. Whatever pain he had had in his stomach before was still there, stronger than ever, and his body kept trying to get him to go to sleep. For the first time in many nights, Scorpius was fighting _against_ that sleep, rather than praying _for_ it.

"Scorpius?" the voice said again. "Scorpius, it's me."

This time, Scorpius opened his eyes wider, for he could tell upon hearing her voice that something was wrong. That voice was huskier and less melodic than Rose's usual tone. Curious, Scorpius waited for his eyes to focus as he stared up at the face looking down at him.

As the fog from his own vision began to clear, Scorpius could finally make out the face. It wasn't Rose's, but it was still one that he did in fact recognize. Long, pointed, and obviously beautiful, with clear, slightly tanned skin and dark brown eyes, this face was recognizable to just about every Hogwarts student.

"Lily," Scorpius stated. He could see her nod slightly, though she still looked petrified, and then his vision began to fade again. Sleep was consuming him, and he couldn't stop it. Still, at least this time he knew that someone would be there when he woke up.

Not realizing that he was saying the words aloud, Scorpius mumbled as he drifted off, "Wake me up. Without you, I cannot sleep."

* * *

**_Note: _**_Thank you for reading! You can probably understand now why I had difficulties with this one, considering how much pain Scorpius was in. Anyway, this was rock bottom for him, but things will get better soon! I should also be uploading more often now that I'm getting used to my workload, and now that the chapters will start to involve more characters again (yay!). As always, please review (I'd love to know what you think about Scorpius's transformation, as well as the surprise ending)! Thank you!  
_

_-Hailey_


	15. Lily's Helping Hand

_**Note:** Here is Chapter 15! I told you I'd get back on track ;) Anyway, I hope you enjoy._

_-Hailey_

* * *

**15 – Lily's Helping Hand**

Everything was peaceful. For the first time in months, Scorpius wasn't tired, scared, or broken. He was whole, and his mind had no questions. He was surrounded by white space, but it wasn't mysterious or intimidating; it was comforting. Unfortunately, Scorpius's purgatory was short-lived.

Within seconds, or at least what felt like seconds, he was back in his tent, gasping for air while at the same time spewing out blood. Thankfully, his stomach had gone numb by now, but the pain was screaming from inside every other part of him. He desperately wanted it all to go away, but he also knew that he was supposed to fight it. He had been running for too long, and this was one thing he couldn't run from. If he tried, he'd never be able to get back, and he couldn't do that to himself.

As sleep begged for him once more, he firmly declined, and instead pulled himself back to reality. Opening his eyes again, Scorpius saw that Lily was still there. She had found a towel from somewhere, and was trying to wipe up the blood that had covered the tent's floor. Her hair, red and perfectly straight, was flying all over the place, but she didn't seem to notice. The ends were falling into the blood, coloring her hair ever so slightly darker than its natural shade. When she turned around quickly, her hair blew in front of her eyes, and so this time she had to notice its unruly behaviour. Frustrated, she exhaled loudly and ran a hand through the static strands to push them back. As Scorpius stared at her, unable to move just yet, he realized that Lily's nervous tic was one that he shared with her.

Before too long, Lily noticed Scorpius's open eyes, and immediately turned her attention to him. "Scorpius, you're awake!" She cried, leaning in and putting a hand on one of his shoulders. Lily had no definition of personal space, but at that moment it was a very good thing to lack.

Scorpius, still too weak to use the amount of brain power needed to reply, just lay there, staring back at Lily while his skin grew infinitely paler.

"Are you okay?" Lily asked. She still sounded slightly panicked, but wasn't stuttering anymore. It seemed as though she worked fairly well under pressure, another thing that she and Scorpius had in common.

Scorpius did what he could to shake his head, but it only made him look worse. Clearly, he wasn't okay, but Lily needed some direction. Summoning all the strength that he could find, and putting his stubborn pride aside, Scorpius managed to croak out, "Help me."

It took all but a millisecond for Lily's eyes to widen, her pupils dilating as if the lights had suddenly turned off. "What can I do?" she asked, the panic having returned to her naturally raspy voice.

Scorpius searched for more strength, and in the meantime Lily had taken out a wand from her back pocket. It was only now that Scorpius noticed that she was wearing a Holyhead Harpies Quidditch jersey. Instinctively, Scorpius searched for her broom, which he found lying on the floor by the tent's entrance. She had been playing Quidditch, most likely with her family, before she'd found him.

Lily was about to do a spell before Scorpius stopped her. "NO!" he said. He couldn't have her be expelled for him. Anyway, she wouldn't know the correct spells that could heal him. Those were even too advanced for Scorpius, and he was two years above Lily.

"Scorpius, I don't care about the Trace!" Lily cried. "You're…" but she paused there. After a huge gulp and a deep breath, she said, "You're dying!" Lily had always been brutally honest, even in the worst possible situations.

Oddly enough, Lily's words didn't sting Scorpius in the way that they should have. After all, he had been thinking the same thing, and hearing it aloud only made it that much easier to stop. When forced into difficult situations, Scorpius was the one who always found a solution, even if he couldn't find one normally.

As Lily noticed the forcefulness in Scorpius's eyes, she started to think of alternatives. "I could go get someone," she offered, adding quickly, "Dad's not home, but Mum might be able to help. Even James could-"

But Scorpius interrupted, again with a firm, "NO!" Having left Lily with virtually no options, he tried to explain, but ended up saying, "No one must know."

Lily was confused, Scorpius could tell. Still, he was in far too much pain to stay awake any longer, let alone keep speaking. Lily would have to figure it out herself.

Luckily, after taking a moment to assess the situation to the best of her ability, Lily nodded, looked Scorpius straight in the eye, and stated, "Don't worry. I have a plan. Whatever you do, don't fall asleep." She then stood up and ran to her broom, only to turn around and give Scorpius one last look at her. "I'll be back." And then she was gone.

Scorpius didn't take Lily's advice lightly. He knew that she was right; he had to stay awake. Still, if he only focused on that, like only focusing on the pain in his stomach or refusing to think about anything other than how much he wished Rose was here right now, it would eat him alive. He needed to set his sights on something else, come up with a goal, so that his mind would turn its attention away from the biting sleep.

Searching around the room from his spot on the floor, and the puddle of blood that had finally stopped growing (since Scorpius had little left to give), Scorpius decided that he would try to move. His sopping clothes couldn't possibly be helping his feverish body, and he needed to make it as easy for Lily to heal him as he possibly could. So he picked up his head, pushed his elbows back, and heaved himself backward. His legs had gone completely numb, so they would be of no help. Instead, he had to crawl on his back using only his arms. The task proved to be incredibly difficult, but it succeeded in providing a distraction. Unbeknownst to Scorpius, it ended up taking a fair amount of time, and he had only reached as far as the kitchen stairs when Lily returned.

She was wearing a different shirt now, one void of all blood stains, but she still looked rather flustered. It took her a moment to register Scorpius's great move, but before too long she was sitting on the floor by his side, telling him to open his mouth. Scorpius didn't know what she was trying to do, but he followed her order anyway. As soon as he did so, Lily unstoppered a tiny, glass jar that was filled with clear liquid and released a few drops down Scorpius's throat.

It didn't taste much like anything, but the medicine was remarkably warm, and soothed his aching throat like a hot cup of tea. Once Scorpius had swallowed it all, neither he nor Lily spoke while they waited for something to happen.

At first, there was nothing. Soon though, Scorpius could feel his stomach mending itself, and almost instantly he felt stronger. The pain was still there, but it was smaller, subtler, and less piercing. Whatever Lily had given him was working, and even if it didn't mend him completely, Scorpius was sure that it had done enough to keep him alive.

Sensing his relief, Lily asked quietly, "Is it working? You look a lot less dreadful already."

Gaining back his senses, and not having to fight as hard to speak, Scorpius replied, "Yeah. It is working."

Lily smiled, and then she helped Scorpius sit up, leaning against the bottom step that led to the tent's above-ground kitchen. She then sat next to him, and for a while the two remained silent, taking the time to gather their thoughts after everything that had just happened.

At some point, Scorpius put a hand to his stomach as if examining it, and applied a light pressure. The improvement was amazing, though he could already tell that it would be a long while before he was fully healthy again. Until then, he'd need to keep his energy up, and Lily could prove to be extremely helpful in that department.

Curious to find out what the liquid was or where Lily had found it, Scorpius asked, "What was that stuff anyway?"

The jar was still in Lily's hand, and she fumbled with it as she answered, "I think it's called Essence of Dittany. At least, that's what Al has it labelled as."

"It's Al's?" Scorpius asked automatically. It was surprisingly comforting to hear his name, but he was also worried that Lily may have told Al where he was. If that was the case, soon everyone would know, and Scorpius's entire plan would be ruined.

"Yeah," Lily nodded, failing to sense Scorpius's anxiety. "He's all got all sorts of potions and ingredients hidden away in his room. I don't think he made this one, though. Dad probably gave it to him."

Scorpius nodded and asked tentatively, "You didn't – you didn't tell him you found me, did you?"

This time, Lily looked directly back at him. "No," she answered. "I didn't tell anyone."

Scorpius breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed his tense some. He had practically grown up with Lily, but anyone who knew her would know that she wasn't entirely trustworthy. Lily had always said that the only point of knowing somebody's secret was to share it.

"I don't understand," Lily said, breaking Scorpius's train of thought. "Why can't anybody know where you are?"

Before Scorpius could reply, Lily added, "Wait, let me guess. It's for some stupid noble reason, isn't it?"

Scorpius needed to think fast. Lily was bound to already know certain things, considering that Harry was supposed to be hunting Astoria. Still, Scorpius didn't want to give any extra information away. Deciding on a story, he responded with, "No. It's not about nobility. In fact, it's more like cowardice. I'm hiding."

When Lily rolled her eyes at him, Scorpius continued. "I assume you know about my mum? About the attack on the Creeveys'?"

"Of course," Lily replied. She didn't say anything else, and Scorpius assumed that she wouldn't until he gave her a full explanation.

"Well," Scorpius went on, "She's looking for me."

"So you're hiding?" Lily asked, and Scorpius nodded. "And you think you'll be able to take care of things yourself? Too bloody proud to ask for any help?"

Scorpius chuckled lightly. He wasn't used to having somebody around who didn't understand everything he said before he even had to say it. Still, two could play at Lily's blaming game. So Scorpius turned back to her, cocked his head to the side, and said, "I asked for yours, didn't I?"

"Touché," Lily surrendered. "Speaking of that though, how did this happen?" she asked, gesturing to Scorpius's wounded stomach and his bloody shirt.

Scorpius couldn't come up with a good excuse this time, and so he merely stated, "It's a long story."

Lily looked genuinely hurt by his response, and was about to get up as she said, "I should probably go. You're okay now, and you want to be alone."

Trying to stop her, Scorpius grabbed hold of her arm, in turn stretching his stomach and reminding himself that he wasn't in the clear just yet. With a gasp of pain from Scorpius, Lily turned back to him and waited. As Scorpius let go of Lily and put his hand to his stomach and grimaced, he looked up at her and said, "No. You're right. I could use a little help right now. Don't go?"

With one last glance, Lily turned around and headed toward the tent's entrance. Instead of leaving though, she knelt down to a bag that Scorpius had failed to notice before, opened it, and pulled out a fresh cloth and a bottle of water. After pouring some of the water onto the cloth, Lily marched back over to where Scorpius was still sitting, leaned over his face, and wiped it clean.

Afterward, she looked at Scorpius carefully, as if scrutinizing his every scar (of which there were many), and whispered, "I thought you'd never ask."

* * *

From then on, the days passed by quickly. Scorpius had forgotten what a luxury a little company could be, and Lily's presence made time go by much faster than it had gone all summer. It didn't take long for August to fly by, and soon it was nearing September.

Scorpius had put Lily to good use over the past few weeks, having her bring food, water, and other essentials to the tent nearly every day. One afternoon, she had even offered to cut his overgrown hair. (It looked worse now than it had before, but luckily Scorpius didn't have a good enough mirror to notice.) It was always a little risky for Lily to keep Scorpius's secret, but her family seemed to be too estranged and oblivious to notice all of the missing items around the house, let alone Lily's mysterious disappearances.

Meanwhile, Scorpius was healing. His internal bleeding had succumbed to a mere cramping sensation whenever harsh pressures were applied to his abdomen, and after spending a few days in bed to regain all the blood he had lost, Scorpius felt well enough to walk around more often. This ability soon escalated into light jogs, and before he knew it, Scorpius was determined to try to fly again. Of course, this had to be kept secret from Lily, which might have been even harder than performing the task itself.

Though the transformations had become second nature to Scorpius, he was still struggling to get himself off the ground. Every time he did so, he'd just topple over, landing either in a prickly bush or on an extremely solid ground. This would result in all sorts of scrapes and bruises, none any worse than those he had received during the first phases of transformation, but enough to get Lily asking questions.

The girl was too nosy for her own good. Somehow, Scorpius had managed to get Lily off his tail regarding the initial state she had found him in, but everything since then he'd had to be extra careful to hide from her. On the one hand, it was nice to have somebody around who was so concerned about his well-being, but on the other hand, Scorpius knew that Lily only wanted to know in order to satisfy her own curiosity.

Still, none of that stopped him from trying. One day toward the end of August, Scorpius woke after another short and consistently interrupted sleep and decided to skip his usual morning jog. Lily was stopping by his tent that afternoon, and Scorpius would need all the time he could get. He wasn't sure why he was in such a hurry to learn to fly, especially considering the fact that Hogwarts would be opening for term soon, which meant that Rose, Al, and company would be going back to school. Still, maybe that was the exact reason. Scorpius needed to have accomplished something substantial so that he'd have a good enough excuse not to go back with everybody else.

Trying not to think about being alone yet again, Scorpius walked outside of his tent and directly into the bright, morning sun. The rays were piercing down on him, and he could almost feel the energy being soaked in through his skin. Today was the day; he could feel it.

Taking off his shirt and setting it aside, Scorpius looked over his chest carefully. He had learned his lesson, and he didn't want to injure himself again. Lily would only be around for a little while longer, and Scorpius needed to be able to take care of himself. Luckily, he felt strong today, and there were no signs of his injury but for a couple of small, recent bruises. Granted, he still looked disgustingly thin, but that would take some time to mend.

Ready to start the process, Scorpius unclasped his family crest necklace that he barely ever took off, and emptied his pant pockets, which contained one small object: Rose's ring. With less than a glimpse at them, Scorpius set them down on his shirt and then folded the material over it to protect the prized processions. _There_, he thought. _I'm ready now._

With the blink of an eye, Scorpius had become a falcon. At this point, he felt extremely comfortable as a bird, having gotten used to the lightness of his body and the hyper senses in his eyes and ears. Sometimes, he even thought that he might prefer it to being a human, since he felt so much freer, and less trapped.

After taking a minute to stretch out his wings, which spanned well over a meter, Scorpius tried to find a firm stance on the ground. He had long since given up on the tree idea, and was instead working on a takeoff from ground level. That way, he wouldn't have such a long way to fall.

With his talons cemented in the soil and his wobbly knees bent low to the forest floor, Scorpius pushed his shoulders back and took one last breath. He then shot out his wings as fast as he could, simultaneously pushing off the ground with all the force he could muster. He was off, but now came the hard part. Maintaining balance was tricky enough, but Scorpius also had to focus on pumping his wings in order to lift himself higher. Meanwhile, he was about to run into the side of his canvas tent.

Steering slightly to the right, but not so much so that he flipped over horizontally, Scorpius reminded himself to keep flapping his wings, no matter what else happened. He did just that, and slowly but steadily he found that he was gaining height. He had traveled a ways away by now, but he had also managed to reach the top of the forest's shortest trees. Telling himself to keep pumping, but this time to pump a little faster, Scorpius gave every bit of energy he had to reach a higher point where he might be able to glide.

As the idea came to him, his body did as told, and so before long, Scorpius was way up in the air, looking down upon all the roofs of Godric's Hollow. He was finally flying, after all this time, and it felt better than he could have ever imagined. Finding a warm pocket of air, Scorpius allowed his wings to rest and started to casually soar atop the western wind. Everything was more peaceful up here, with nothing to be afraid of or worry about, the only thoughts going through Scorpius's head consisting of freedom… pure, tangible freedom.

He could go anywhere. He could do anything. He could be anything. He was sure that he could. Scorpius was, quite literally, on top of the world, and nothing could bring him back down. He had gone from an ultimate low to an ultimate high, and he refused to ever go back. Right now, this instant, was worth everything that he had gone through to get it. This was heaven.

Scorpius continued to fly over the countryside for the next few hours. There were a couple of places where he desperately wanted to go, but he had to stop himself from doing so. If he went too far, he wouldn't get back in time to meet Lily. Plus, he still had two more days to see Rose before she left.

He was still thinking about her constantly. Even with Lily there, Scorpius always wanted Rose. Sometimes, every now and then, he and Lily would share… a moment. She would surprise him by leaning in and catching one of his falling eyelashes, or he wouldn't be able to stop her before she barged in while he was changing clothes. Whatever the situation though, Lily always brushed it aside, like saying she'd seen it all before. Still, at times like those, Scorpius couldn't help but wonder, having been without Rose for so long now, if he could possibly be attracted to someone else. Even so, what happened with Lily were just moments. What Scorpius had had with Rose was something he was sure could have, and _would_ have, lasted a lifetime. Plus, in the long run, it didn't matter either way. They would both be going back to Hogwarts, and he wouldn't be.

This was another secret he had kept from Lily. He knew how attached to him she had become, or at least how attached she'd always been, and so he didn't want to scare her off. He knew that he'd have to tell her eventually, but he was waiting for the right time.

Heading back to the woods now, there was one last thing that Scorpius wanted to try. He had made his Patronus do it when it had attacked the boggart's dementor, and he was excited to try it for himself. Once he was right above the Potters' backyard, he arched his back and pulled in his wings. Then he dove. Falling faster than he was used to thanks to his new, aerodynamic body, Scorpius was surprised that his bones didn't break from the air pressure, or that his eyes didn't water from the wind. Waiting for the last moment, Scorpius let himself fall even further until he was barely a meter from the grassy ground. At this point, he gave all the strength he had to pull his body back to its normal stance, and shot out his wings in one sharp gust. This was probably a riskier move than he should have attempted, but he just couldn't help himself.

It turned out to be worth it. Scorpius made the angle just in time to steer his acceleration forward, and he glided all the way back to his tent, gently bobbing between the trees. Once back, he quickly transfigured into his human form, put his shirt and necklace on, dropped the ring in his pocket, and took a short walk to get his blood moving before he re-entered the tent. A minute after he did so, Lily arrived.

"Hey!" She called as she passed through the tent's opening, not bothering to announce herself beforehand. Luckily, Scorpius was fully clothed and was sifting through a kitchen cupboard when Lily came inside.

"Hey," Scorpius replied. "Did you bring-"

"Bread?" Lily asked. She knew him well by now, and so she knew he'd be starving. Tossing a loaf at him, she added, "It's all yours."

Scorpius caught it with barely a look as to where the loaf was headed. Both he and Lily had strong hand-eye coordination. "Thank you," he said genuinely as he ripped open the bag. He hadn't eaten anything all day, and after flying for so long, he could really use the energy.

"That's what I'm here for," Lily stated as she made her way to the kitchen, where she started unloading a giant bag of food like she had just come back from a day's worth of shopping.

"You must be joking!" Scorpius commented as he noticed just how much Lily had stolen from her own pantry. "They didn't notice you walk out of the house with all that?"

"Please," Lily laughed. "It was easy. Anyway, they're all at-" but she didn't finish her sentence.

Scorpius knew what Lily wanted to say. It was one of those topics, like their initial meeting, that they never talked about. Normally, it could be forgotten by focusing on other things, but Rose was always an underlying question between the two of them, Scorpius desperately wanting to know how she was doing, and Lily wanting to know what happened between them. When Rose was brought up accidentally, like just now, it was difficult to change the subject without one of them caving.

"At the Weasleys'," Scorpius finished for her after swallowing a piece of bread. With an apologetic expression from Lily, he added, "It's okay."

Having the permission to go on, Lily continued, "Right, well Mum, James, and Al left a couple of hours ago to have dinner there. They all think I'm at Roxy's, but Roxy thinks I'm at Hugo's. It's the perfect disguise." Roxanne was one of Lily's best friends, and another Weasley cousin who was also going into her fourth year at Hogwarts.

Scorpius laughed. "So how much time do you have?" He was leaning against the counter where Lily was still unpacking, and had caught a whiff of something flowery coming from her direction. He assumed that it was some sort of perfume, but he couldn't be sure. Rose had never needed to add anything to make her smell better. Her natural scent, which always reminded Scorpius of salty seawater, was all she needed.

"Loads," Lily answered. "I don't have to be back until midnight, because there's no way they will be." She had unpacked all the food now, and was facing Scorpius, her arms crossed casually against her chest.

"Good," Scorpius said, standing back upright and rolling up the sleeves of his collared shirt, which Lily had brought him a few days ago after robbing Al's closet. "Because I was thinking I could make us dinner." He had had the idea a while back as a way to repay Lily for all the help she'd given him, and he was particularly cheerful today, which made him want to do it even more.

"Really?" Lily asked, shocked to have heard such a suggestion. "Well gosh, are there any other hidden talents of yours I don't know about?"

Scorpius blushed slightly at this. Lily was only joking, that he knew, but the question still hit a soft spot. Trying to hide his reaction, Scorpius turned around and began gathering the ingredients he'd need for pasta as he answered shakily, "Oh, don't worry, it's no talent. I'm bloody awful at Potions, and cooking's not much better."

"Mmm," Lily grimaced. "I have heard about your certain proclivity for Potions, now that you mention it. Maybe I should cook instead?"

Now that was an even worse idea. Lily was wild enough; add any sort of flames to the mix, and there'd be a bonfire within seconds. With a look of widened eyes, Scorpius silently let Lily on these thoughts.

Disappointed, she shrugged and said, "All right, I suppose I see your point."

But Scorpius couldn't completely stop Lily. After announcing that it was far too boring to just sit there and watch water boil, she attempted to help by chopping vegetables into unrecognizable, lopsided chunks, none of which were even similar in size to one another. After that got old, she went on to grating cheese, but ate all of it before the pasta was ready. Along the way, she just distracted Scorpius by reminiscing over shared childhood memories.

"Do you remember when we first met?" she asked at one point while Scorpius was setting the table, shortly after the cheese debacle. It was a rhetorical question, since Lily clearly knew the answer, but she wanted to see if Scorpius did too.

Fortunately, Scorpius did remember that moment, but for reasons not having anything to do with Lily. After all, that had also been the day he'd met Rose. "Er, yeah, I think so," he answered. "Wasn't it on Platform 9¾? Al's and my first year?"

"Yeah," Lily agreed. "I was only nine, but you were already heading off. I remember, because my mum had told Al that you'd be there. James had scared him into thinking that he'd be sorted into Slytherin, and earlier that morning, Mum had tried to comfort him by telling him that even if that happened, he wouldn't be alone. Rumour had it a little Malfoy boy was on his way, and of course there was no possibility of him being sorted anywhere else but Slytherin." She laughed and then ended with, "I can't believe it's been a full five years since then."

"Yeah," Scorpius breathed. "That is hard to believe." Giving it some thought, Scorpius added, "I have to say though, I'm glad Al was put into Slytherin. I don't where I'd be right now had we not met."

"Probably not hiding out in a tent behind his house," Lily teased.

"No, probably not," Scorpius laughed.

Now that dinner was finally ready (though it wasn't exactly gourmet, with odd-looking toppings and no sprinkled cheese), Scorpius and Lily sat down at the table and reluctantly shoved down the meal. Neither of them commented on its terrible taste, though; they both ate it anyway.

As they finished eating, the air around them grew more serious. It was dark outside now, and the only lighting in the tent was coming from a small lamp Scorpius had found a few weeks ago. With this sombre tone, the conversation took an interesting turn.

Still on the topic of that day at King's Cross, Lily asked hesitantly, "Your mum was there that day, wasn't she? I think I remember seeing her with you and your dad."

Scorpius lowered his head slightly. He had kept Lily in the dark about his circumstance for so long that he had almost forgotten what she must feel like, helping him every day and getting nothing in return. He may not want to give them to her, but she deserved some answers.

"She was, yeah," Scorpius said. "But I don't think she ever came to the station with me again."

"She must not have," added Lily. "You came with us every year after that."

Smiling, since this was actually a nice memory, Scorpius chuckled lightly at the thought of a different, but still related, one. "Except for that one time…" he reminisced.

"Oh, no!" Lily shouted, her arm shot out with her hand held high in the air to try to stop Scorpius from continuing. "That's not fair! You can't bring that up!"

"Oh, come on! It was hilarious!" Scorpius encouraged her.

"Easy for you to say! You were at least _on _the train. Meanwhile, I was running after it like a chicken with its head cut off!" exclaimed Lily. She had never been afraid to enhance her anecdotes with vulgar expressions, even if they only made it more embarrassing for her.

"Well, it's not like it was your fault. Between James _and_ Hugo, there was no way you could have gotten out of that leg-binding jinx any faster than you did!" Scorpius was full-on chortling now, and it would have felt incredible had it not been for the pressure it put on his still sore stomach.

"Ugh, it was a traumatizing experience," Lily said, shaking her head in remembrance. "But I suppose in the long run, it was for the best. That's how everybody started to know who I was, after all."

"Only second year, and you already ruled the school," Scorpius said admiringly. "You sure know how to make a story sound a lot cooler than it was."

"What can I say?" Lily asked confidently. "It's a talent."

"Yeah, like my cooking," Scorpius said sarcastically.

"Yes," Lily agreed. "That and my skill as a hairdresser," she added, grimacing at Scorpius's untidy 'do.

It seemed as though they had gone back to a humorous mood, but then the atmosphere changed again. Scorpius had tried, but Lily wasn't going to let this one go. "But honestly," she said after a moment of silence, "Why didn't you just spend your summer with us this year as well? I mean, I know your mum's out there, and I know you said that she's looking for you, but there's not exactly anywhere safer to be than under my dad's watch. And he's done nothing but worry about you all summer long."

"I know," Scorpius nodded. "But I was sort of told not to. And anyway, it would've been predictable." He was still being a little shady, but she'd just have to settle for it. This was as much as he could give for now.

"I suppose I understand," Lily nodded. "I mean, my dad went into hiding before the Battle of Hogwarts. At least I think that's what he said. I can't quite remember the whole story."

After another quiet moment, Lily added, "And anyway, at least school's starting soon. Things will go back to normal, and you'll be back home, right?" She ended her question with a chuckle, because she had heard Scorpius refer to Hogwarts as his true home many times before.

Scorpius froze at this. He had been waiting to tell her that he wouldn't be going back after all, but he didn't want to ruin tonight. Tonight had been perfect, from his first flight to this disgustingly delicious dinner, and he couldn't bear the thought of ending this day. And Lily seemed so content in their friendship; he didn't want that to change either. Even so, he needed to tell her, and it appeared that now was when she needed to know.

"Actually," Scorpius said softly. "I'm not going back."

"What?" Lily asked. She didn't sound angry or hurt, just surprised. She hadn't seen it coming, and so she didn't have a reaction prepared.

In order to break the silence, Scorpius repeated, "I'm not going back to Hogwarts. I'm going to stay here. And once I'm strong enough, I'm going to find my mother, and I'm going to make things right again."

For a moment, Scorpius just stared at Lily, waiting for her to say something. Surely, she would be angry with him. Surely, she would feel betrayed. Surely, she would try to convince him to change his mind. He waited for her to do any or all of those things, but she didn't. Instead, she just sat there, still and lifeless in her chair, until a tiny smile appeared on her lips.

It was not a cheerful grin, more like one of comprehension, with a dash of disappointment mixed in. Even so, it was much better than what Scorpius had anticipated. Still smiling, Lily said, "You know, I wish that I could hate you for doing this. But I think it's actually one of the reasons I like you so much." As Scorpius took in her words, he realized why it was that she hadn't told him to be careful, or not to do it. It was because she wouldn't have expected anything less of him. After all, had it still been five years ago on the day they met, he would have done the exact same thing, and Lily knew that.

Scorpius put a hand on Lily's, which was sitting comfortably atop the table, and squeezed it as he said, "Thank you. For not hating me." He was choosing not to mention the last thing she had said, because he wasn't sure what she had meant by it.

Before Lily could misinterpret Scorpius's gesture for more than it was, Scorpius left the table, bringing the dirty dishes to the kitchen sink to clean up. He did so in silence, with Lily still sitting at the table behind him. After he dried the dishes with a fresh towel and as he was putting them away, Scorpius opened one of the cupboards to find a curious item that wouldn't normally be stored in a magical tent, let alone its kitchen, of all places.

At first, Scorpius didn't know what it was, but as he looked more closely at the old, rectangular object with a foam-like exterior, he thought he recognized it. Though they were normally used by Muggles, witches and wizards often bought radios to tune into Quidditch matches when they couldn't attend them in person. Fumbling with the dials on the front side, eventually Scorpius managed to get some noise out of the box. Granted, it was only a horrendous static, but after tuning it some more, an actual song had broken through. The melody was slow but calming, and as Scorpius listened to it, he was struck with an idea.

Leaving the radio on the counter and turning back to Lily, who was looking up at him curiously but still had slightly saddened eyes, Scorpius walked over and held out his hand for her to take. She did just that, and after Scorpius pulled her to a standing position, he led her in a dance.

With their hands entwined, Scorpius and Lily moved across the tent's floor together. They went from one end to the other in just a couple of swings, and Lily laughed as Scorpius twirled her around, an effort to try and cheer her up. Toward the end of the song, they began to move more slowly, and Scorpius pulled Lily closer to him so that she could rest her chin on his shoulder.

"I can't come back tomorrow," Lily mumbled through his shirt. "I have to go to Diagon Alley with my family, and then Dad's coming back tomorrow night. He wants to be there to see us all off." This was her secret, and like Scorpius's previous one, she hadn't wanted to mention it in case it ruined their night together.

Instinctively though, Scorpius had already known it was their last night. Though he had done so subconsciously, that was why he had wanted to fly today, why she had brought so much more food than would have normally been necessary, and why he had tried to cook dinner for her. "I know," Scorpius said, but he wouldn't let Lily go just yet. They continued to dance in the moonlight of Scorpius's tiny, canvas tent in the middle of the woods.

Scorpius wasn't sure exactly what he felt at this moment. He knew that he cared about Lily, but he was fairly certain that his feelings for her were purely platonic. Still, Scorpius was grateful for everything she had done for him. He wouldn't be alive if she hadn't found him, and in just a little while she'd be gone again. The last thing Scorpius wanted to do was lead Lily on, and so he hoped that she would instead take their dance as a form of saying goodbye.

She seemed to understand this, and as the music ended and they broke apart, Lily gave Scorpius one last longing look, and then turned away. Just before she left, though, she said to Scorpius, "I know you may not think so, but this is all for some noble reason."

"'Some stupid noble reason'?" Scorpius asked from the other side of the tent.

Lily laughed and then replied with, "Noble. But not stupid."

Smiling, Scorpius stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged his shoulders. He wasn't good at taking compliments, but it was nice to finally have someone there to support him. "Goodbye, Lily," he finally said.

Laughing again, Lily leaned her head back and then turned around before giving a wave as she exited the tent and said, "See ya, Scorp."

Later that night, Scorpius slept. He didn't toss and turn. His body didn't shake and sweat. His eyes never opened. He slept, fully and completely slept.

* * *

Scorpius woke up to a day slightly less beautiful than the one before, but still a fine one in of itself. He had a brand new schedule for today, and he could already tell how hard it would be to complete. After all, saying goodbye to Lily had been bad enough. Saying goodbye to Rose, once and for all, was sure to be impossible.

After finishing off last night's loaf of bread, Scorpius headed over to his cot and pulled out a small, cardboard box that he had hidden beneath it. Taking the lid off, Scorpius unravelled the string that had been tied around all of Rose's letters. Then, one by one, he read them, soaking in her handwriting, her stories, her promises. When he got to the last one, and was reading the final paragraph, where Rose had told him that she was his, only his, and that she always would be, Scorpius began to cry. As the tears fell rapidly down his cheeks, he brought the letter to his nose and smelled it. That was it: the salty seawater that had captivated him five long years ago. He had been right; it still captivated him today.

Knowing that he was doing the right thing by going to see her, Scorpius put the letters away and walked outside. Just like he had yesterday, he took off his shirt and necklace and set them aside. Today though, he kept the ring, holding it in his teeth while he transformed. Then, with the ring held firmly in his beak, Scorpius took off, flying a steady, southwest heading, on his way to Ottery St. Catchpole.

It took him quite some time to reach his destination, but Scorpius didn't mind. Flying provided him with a good break from the rest of the world, and he was quickly becoming more accustomed to it with each and every flap of his wings. Eventually though, he spotted the familiar driftwood material that lined the Weasley house. The last time he had visited, he had been banished from the property. This time though, there was no chance of that happening, since he wasn't planning on showing his human form.

After circling above the roof a few times, Scorpius settled on the tree that was perched just outside Rose's bedroom window. It could be seen from above her dresser, and he was curious to find out if things were visible from both directions. As he landed on the strongest part of one of the larger branches, he took a moment to balance himself before clawing his way toward the end of the branch. Once there, he let himself take a look through the window.

Rose was inside. She was in the far corner of her room, curled up in a chair, reading a book. She had probably woken up not too long ago, and looked to be having a fairly relaxing morning, wearing nothing but shorts and a t-shirt, her hair pinned messily atop her head. As he watched her, Scorpius felt an instant rush of pain to his heart. He wanted to be sitting there with her, for he knew how perfectly their bodies moulded together. She fit inside his arms like she was a piece of him, one that had accidentally been ripped off when he was born.

Still, he had been the one to let her go. He refused to wish such things when he clearly didn't deserve them anymore. So instead of pitying himself, Scorpius just watched, waiting for Rose to notice him. With every slight movement, whether Rose was shifting in her chair or turning a page of her book, Scorpius felt a pang of excitement. He wanted her to notice him, and he was sure that she would, but he wondered how long it would take her.

Eventually, Rose looked away from her book and stretched her arms up above her head while yawning. As she was did so, her eyes caught onto the window, and Scorpius knew that she had spotted him. For a moment, Rose froze, and Scorpius decided that it was his turn to make a move. Softly, he pushed off the branch and hopped over to the windowsill, where he perched himself and gestured to the closed windowpane.

Following his request, Rose walked over to her window as if hypnotized, never taking her eyes off the incredible bird. Once she got to her dresser, she undid the hatch and slid the window open, giving Scorpius more room on the narrow sill.

Rose still staring at him, Scorpius looked back at her. It had been far too long since he had seen those bright blue eyes, and he could tell that Rose was thinking the same about his, which were one of the only parts of him that stayed the same when in both human and falcon form. Still, there was something different about Rose's. As Scorpius gained a closer look, he noticed that her eyes were slightly puffier than normal, and the patches of skin surrounding them were tainted a shade of crimson red. She looked as if she had been crying for weeks on end, the tears only stopping because she had no more left to be rid of.

At one point, Rose opened her mouth as if to say something, but Scorpius distracted her when he took the time to bow his head, nodding toward Rose's hand, which was hanging by her side. Again, she followed him, and brought her hand up to his beak, her palm open. Then, ever so gently, Scorpius leaned in and released the ring into her hand. He then moved his beak to the tips of her fingers and nudged them, clasping her hand shut.

Mystified, Rose didn't end up saying a single word. Instead, she kept all of her focus on maintaining eye contact with the bird, and Scorpius reciprocated. The two stared at each other for a while longer, and at this point, Scorpius was certain that Rose knew it was him. She had to.

Unfortunately, the moment was lost when a voice was heard calling Rose's name from downstairs. "Rosie!" yelled Ron. "We're leaving in five minutes!"

_Of course_, Scorpius thought. Rose and her family would be meeting the Potters in Diagon Alley today. It was tradition… a tradition that, not too long ago, Scorpius had also been a part of.

Rose sighed, her eyes instantly watering. Once again, Scorpius was struck with the desire to hold her, but he stopped himself from transfiguring right here and now. If he was serious about defeating Astoria, he needed to let Rose go. And since he knew that she wouldn't leave without him, he decided to leave for her.

Backing out from inside the room, Scorpius turned around, spread his wings, and took off. Then he was in the air, quickly flying farther and farther away from Rose, whose eyes he could feel searing into his back. He couldn't explain it, but somehow he was sure that she had found more tears after all.

As if on cue, it started raining soon after Scorpius had left. He couldn't help but think that Rose had conjured it upon him, and a part of him hoped that she had. After all, her love of rain was one of the many parts of Rose that Scorpius treasured. Even so, flying in it was a different story.

Scorpius's journey back was long and not exactly pleasant, pellets of water piercing into his feathers left, right, and center. It took him hours to reach Godric's Hollow, and once he got there, he was met with an unexpected visitor.

Panicked, Scorpius had nearly transfigured himself by the time he caught sight of the person sitting just outside the tent, clearly waiting for him. When he spotted him, he was quick to fly past and land behind a group of trees down the other side of the hill where he could transform. Once he had done so, he quickly marched back up to his tent, praying that the person he'd spotted hadn't just been an apparition.

"Harry," Scorpius stated when the familiar, father-like figure came into view, his scruffy black hair wet from the rain, and for once dressed in fairly casual clothes.

"Scorpius," Harry smiled upon seeing him.

Normally, Scorpius would have waited for Harry to say something more. He would have been reluctant to tell him too much, for he had been working hard all summer to keep both his location and circumstance a secret. Now, though, Scorpius was melancholic after seeing Rose, and exhausted after flying all the way here. He needed someone to take all the weight and responsibility off his shoulders, if only for a moment. That was why, without giving it any thought whatsoever, Scorpius ran up and hugged Harry, letting his arms wrap themselves around him as tightly as they possibly could.

After a short time, Harry let go of Scorpius and the two headed into the dry tent, where a serious conversation was due to ensue. Harry was the first to speak, and asked, "What are you doing out here?" He was already at the kitchen and had a pot of water boiling. It was almost as if he had been here before.

"I might ask you the same question," Scorpius said as he sat down, rubbing his arms frantically to keep his skin from freezing. "But I'll assume Lily told you where I was?"

Harry nodded. "She just wanted to make sure you were safe," he defended, sitting down across from Scorpius and handing him a cup of tea. After letting Scorpius take a sip to help him relax some, Harry pressed further, "Now what are _you_ doing out here? Do you know how dangerous things are right now?"

"Of course I do," Scorpius answered, almost offended by Harry's accusation. "That's why I'm here."

Within seconds, Harry understood, and was rubbing his eyes in frustration. "That's what I was afraid of," he mumbled.

"So I assume you haven't found her, then?" Scorpius asked. He already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it from Harry.

"No," Harry shook his head. "She's disappeared. I've been on her trail ever since the attack on the Creeveys', but she's long gone. I don't think she'll be showing herself again for a while."

"Good," Scorpius said genuinely. "I don't want her tearing any other lives apart. Not while I'm still too young."

Harry looked up at this. "So that's what you're planning on doing. Taking her down as soon as you turn seventeen?"

"What other choice do I have?" Scorpius asked. He was being defensive, but deep down he desperately wanted Harry to have an answer. He wanted Harry to tell him that there was another way, that this wasn't up to him, and that he could go back to school after all. He waited for that answer to come, but it didn't.

"You don't," Harry said. He was being honest in the only way he knew how. "You've been dragged into the middle of something much bigger than just you. You have to stop it. The only way you wouldn't have to is if you didn't care, and what kind of person would you be then?"

Thinking about it, Scorpius answered, "Actually, that might not be so bad." He couldn't help but think of Rose, and how much easier his life would be had he never fallen in love, and had he never have had to say goodbye.

"Would it really?" Harry asked, sensing Scorpius's desire. "I know how much it all hurts, Scorpius, trust me. But what about all the times when it doesn't? What about all the times when it only seems to make you stronger?"

This time, Scorpius thought of Lily, and how she'd helped him heal. He thought of Al, and how he'd been his friend even while feeling disappointed about being sorted into the wrong house. Finally, he thought of Rose once again, but instead of all the pain, he focused on the joy. He remembered their first kiss, after he had caught the snitch and during the year's first snowfall. He thought about their clearing, and the look on Rose's face when he had showed it to her for the first time. He realized just how many times she had been able to take his pain away, from telling him that she loved him, to the nights she had helped him sleep, to the end of the year, when she had proven his innocence in the trial. He changed his mind. Not having fallen in love with Rose would have been the worst possible life Scorpius could imagine.

"That's what I thought," Harry whispered upon seeing Scorpius's expression, one full of sudden realization. When Scorpius looked up at him reproachfully, Harry added, "Don't worry. It took me years to figure that out."

"But if I don't do this alone," Scorpius wondered, "I'm just putting everyone I care about in danger. Does it really make it okay to risk all of their lives just because I need a little help?"

"No," Harry replied firmly. "But that's not your decision to make."

Confused and waiting for an explanation, Scorpius listened intently when Harry continued. "Do you think Lily would have stopped visiting you even if you'd begged her to? Do you think I'd have stopped tracking Astoria if you'd ordered me away? The people you care about usually care about you back. I know it's not something that you're used to, but they're willing to risk their lives to save you, just like you're willing to risk yours to save them."

Scorpius knew that Harry was right. He hadn't even bothered to try to stop Lily, because he knew she'd never oblige. He would have tried to stop Harry if he'd had the chance, but there was no way Harry would have listened either. It had taken every possible lie Scorpius could think of to make Rose stop caring, and from what he'd seen today, it hadn't exactly worked.

Thinking about Rose and about what Harry had said, all of which was clearly coming from personal experience, Scorpius became curious to know something. Looking back at Harry, Scorpius asked, "Rose's mum, Hermione – what did she risk for you?" He'd always resented Ron for wanting to keep Rose from him, but Scorpius remembered the look in Ron's eyes from just a few weeks ago. He had just wanted to protect Rose, and it must have been because he knew how it felt to put someone in danger, and then nearly lose her.

Caught off guard, Harry took a moment to process Scorpius's question before responding, "We were on the run. I was searching for something that would help me defeat Voldemort, and Ron and Hermione had come with me. At one point, we were captured, the three of us, and taken to Malfoy Manor – your house."

Scorpius shivered. He had expected something extreme, but he hadn't realized that it had come from _his_ family. No wonder Ron didn't like him.

"A woman named Bellatrix Lestrange, your great aunt actually, tortured Hermione," Harry continued. "We escaped eventually, but let's just say it left a mark. Ron's never forgotten it. Seeing you reminds him of that night. I've tried to explain that you're not like the rest of your family, that Draco wasn't even like his family, but Ron doesn't forgive easily. Plus, when it comes to Hermione, he'll do anything. He's never cared about anyone more than her, although from what I can tell, Rose stands a close second."

Scorpius nodded, taking it all in. He suddenly had a new-found respect for Ron, and for all that he had done to keep Rose safe. After all, Scorpius felt the same way about Rose as Ron did Hermione… compared to her, nothing else mattered.

Not knowing what else to say, Scorpius laid it all out on the table for Harry. "He wants to protect her. That's all I want as well. Ron told me that the best way of doing that was to stay away. How else can I do that if I don't decide to go at it alone? I'm not about to ask for somebody else's help without asking for hers."

"But that's exactly what I'm talking about," Harry said. "I tried to protect Hermione, but she refused to listen and ended up getting tortured. I tried to protect Ron, and a necklace nearly tore him to pieces. I tried to protect Ginny, but she fought her way through the battle anyway. I said my goodbyes to all of them, but they just kept coming back. It got to a point where I had to accept that it wasn't up to me. The decision belonged to all of them."

Scorpius nodded, and then asked Harry another question. "But I can't just go back to Hogwarts. Astoria will expect that. She could come and attack the whole school!"

"She could," Harry agreed. "But she'd need a lot of time beforehand to raise forces strong enough to even stand a chance against Hogwarts. And in the meantime, it's the safest place you can be."

Sensing the fear in Harry's voice, Scorpius asked, "How bad is it out there?" He had been trapped in his own little world for so long now, Scorpius didn't know much about the goings-on at the Ministry. Lily could have filled him in, but she wasn't as informed as Rose always was.

"It feels like it did the last time," Harry said solemnly. "We need to be prepared that things will get worse. And for that, you have to go back to school, Scorpius."

Understanding that Harry was warning Scorpius that he needed to have more training in order to defeat Astoria, Scorpius nodded. "Okay," he agreed. "I'll go back."

"And don't worry," Harry said. "I'll keep an eye on things out here in the real world. And just so you know, Ron and Hermione haven't stopped for a moment to spread the word. In fact, the one time I've seen Rose since I started tracking Astoria, the only thing she asked me about was if the Ministry's come up with a plan yet."

At this, Scorpius shook his head. Harry had just confirmed his suspicions that Rose hadn't given up on him after all. She was still fighting for him, just like she always had, regardless of how much of her heart he'd broken.

Interrupting Scorpius's thoughts, Harry suggested, "How about you come back with me and spend the night at the house? Trust me, I know how sick of this tent you must be by now."

Laughing, Scorpius said, "That's true, but no thanks. I kind of want to be alone on my last night out here. I'll meet you at the station in the morning." Honestly, as much as he wanted to tell Lily that he'd be going back after all, Scorpius just wanted to take the time to pack up his things and get himself fully ready to go back.

"All right, fair enough," Harry said as he stood up to leave. "I suppose I'll bring your books with me."

"You bought me this year's books, even though I didn't go to Diagon Alley with you?" Scorpius asked.

"I told you already, Scorp," Harry said, putting a hand on Scorpius's shoulder. "You can't just expect people to stop caring."

Scorpius smiled, and then Harry turned toward the opening of the tent and said, "They just keep coming back."

Confused, Scorpius followed Harry's gaze to find Lily peeking through the tent canvas, her head shivering from the rain. When she saw Scorpius, she stepped inside and turned quickly to her father, "I have to talk to him. It won't take long, I promise. Meet you back at home?"

"Sure," Harry nodded. He then looked back at Scorpius and said, "Have a nice night." Then he left, and Scorpius and Lily were alone in the humid tent, the sound of the rain outside growing louder with every drop.

Scorpius looked to Lily with hopeful eyes, but he didn't have a chance to say anything before Lily spat out, "I know. I know how angry you are, but I couldn't help it! I get that you're trying to do the right thing, but I was worried about you. You were nearly dead when I found you out here, and you were planning to just go back to being alone. I couldn't let you do that without telling someone where you are. I had to know that you'd be safe." She was rambling, talking much faster than normal, and she wouldn't take her eyes off Scorpius.

"I know," Scorpius nodded, trying to get her to calm down. It didn't work, though, she was far too rattled up to hear him.

"I was at Diagon Alley all day, and everybody noticed that you weren't there," Lily went on. "They were all asking about you, and I was the only one who could have answered them. It was driving me crazy not to, and then by the time I came home, Dad was there, and he was yelling at James for some petty, _stupid_ reason, and all I could think about was how ridiculous I'd been for not telling anyone about you before. I thought I could handle it, because I can handle everything, but I've heard Hugo's stories. I know how dangerous Astoria is, and when I saw my dad, I realized how worried I'd been about him. And then I realized how worried I'd _be_ about you."

Scorpius didn't say anything this time. He was just going to wait it out, in hopes that Lily would grow too tired to keep speaking, and start listening to what he had to say instead.

"I know you may not care about yourself," she said. "I know you may not care that you nearly died only a few weeks ago. I know you may not care when you keep hurting yourself now. I know you don't care about anything now that you and Rose are over."

Scorpius, who had been staring at the ground in patience, turned to Lily now. It had been the first time that either of them had fully caved, and it felt odd to have it out in the open. Lily knew that Scorpius and Rose were over. Scorpius had suspected such, but it felt different to hear it out loud. He wanted to ask just how much she knew, but again he wasn't given the chance.

"I know that you think that hurting yourself will make it easier to be without her," Lily continued. She seemed to think that all of Scorpius's injuries were self-induced, and that he had been purposely hurting himself to distract him from the pain he was feeling over Rose. Now that Scorpius considered it, Lily's theory wasn't exactly that far off from the truth.

Finally, Lily began to slow down her word speed and kept her eyes locked on Scorpius as she finished. "I know you don't care, Scorpius. But I do care. I always have."

It was the first time that Scorpius had ever seen Lily look genuinely nervous. She had been scared when she'd found him, but she had still been in control. Now, she had handed over that control, and she seemed lost without it.

Scorpius wanted to say something, as he had been waiting to do so ever since Lily had stepped inside, but for some reason he was silent. He had always suspected that Lily had had a crush on him, but he had never considered how he would handle it if she confessed.

Slowly but confidently walking toward him, Lily said quietly, "I know you're not coming back to Hogwarts, and I would never ask you to. But as odd as it may seem, these past few weeks have been the best of my life, and saying goodbye to you last night just wasn't enough. I want to give something to you, something that you can remember me by."

As she came ever closer to Scorpius, he grew all the more still. He knew where this was going by now, and he knew that he should stop it. Even so, his mind cried out for companionship and his body cried out for hers. It wasn't until Lily's face was only a few inches from his that Scorpius backed away, holding up his hands to stop her.

Lily was shocked and looked as if she had just been brutally betrayed as Scorpius said, "I'm sorry Lily, but I can't." He didn't want to hurt her, and so he tried to explain, "I like you, you know that. And I appreciate everything that you've done for me. And I _do_ care. I care about myself, and I care about you. I'm sorry if I ever led you on, but I just don't feel that way about you. I think you know why."

"Say it anyway," Lily ordered. She didn't look sad really, just angry. Having been born with the most famous name in the wizarding world, Lily had had to work hard to be her own person, and she had never accepted second best. "Just please, tell me why it can't be me."

Scorpius didn't want to, but he followed her orders. He had always liked the funny, wild Lily, rather than the intimidating one. The intimidating Lily was difficult to befriend, for it was almost impossible not to feel inferior to her. Falling under that exact spell, Scorpius said, "Because I still love Rose."

It was the first time he had fully said her name since he'd sent Rose his last letter, and an incredible jab to his heart accompanied it. With Lily remaining silent, not crying but rather growing redder with rage, Scorpius had nothing else to feel but all the pain he had built up from missing Rose. He had been so opposed to letting any of it in, but now it was all just bubbling to the surface. What would he say to her when he saw her tomorrow? How would he explain what he did, and why he'd done it? How could he ever earn her forgiveness?

Remembering what he had yet to tell Lily, Scorpius stated numbly, "I've decided to go back to Hogwarts."

At that, Lily's gaze broke and she focused on Scorpius, but before either could speak, a popping noise was heard outside. At first, Scorpius thought it might be thunder, but this was smaller than that, and had come from extremely nearby. Both of them walking to the opening of the tent, Scorpius and Lily were just about to step outside when Rose appeared, sopping wet and practically shaking.

"Scorpius," Rose breathed. She was dressed differently than she had been that morning, with wet pants and a soaking, striped sweater. She didn't seem to notice any of that though, and neither did Scorpius.

"Rose," he breathed, and this time, when he said her name, the pain he had felt from the time before was fully plugged, and all he felt was relief.

Then Lily coughed to gain their attention, letting them know that she was still there. Scorpius ignored the sound, but Rose turned toward her. Then, confused to see that Scorpius wasn't alone, Rose looked back at Scorpius, and continued to glance between the two of them in an attempt to gain some answers.

Unfortunately, Scorpius had gone speechless, and couldn't focus on anything but the red around Rose's eyes. He kept thinking that it was he who had caused that, and he wished that, like she had done for the dirt on his nose, he could just rub it away.

When Scorpius didn't speak, and when Lily put a lying smirk on her face, Rose read things in the entirely wrong way. In less than a moment, she was crying, but the rain disguised it well. Then she was leaving, and running through the woods in any direction she could go. Scorpius was running after her, having left Lily in the tent without so much as a yell of fury, and kept calling out Rose's name.

It wouldn't work. She would never hear him through the downpour, and he would never see her through it. It was like all their senses had been taken from them by some crude joke, just like what always happened in Scorpius's nightmare. He was left in the middle of nowhere, darkness surrounding him and eating him alive. If the open, freeing skies were heaven, then surely this was hell. Scorpius couldn't have explained what had just happened, but of one thing he was certain: this place, this moment, was anything but peaceful.

* * *

_**Note: **__So, what did you think? I apologize if the storyline felt slightly rushed or didn't flow perfectly. It's sort of only a section of this chapter, since I will soon be uploading a one-shot from Lily's point of view (so make sure to 'Author Alert' me if you haven't already). A lot of questions will be answered through that. Still, I hope you liked it, and please review if you can!_

_-Hailey_


	16. The Unforgivable Scorpius

**_Note: _**_If you haven't already noticed, I have written a oneshot following Lily (Luna) Potter, which is meant to be concurrent with the last chapter, Chapter 15 - Lily's Helping Hand. If you haven't read it, I hope that you take the time to now. Afterward (or if you choose not to), feel free to continue on to this chapter, #16. Happy reading!_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**16 – The Unforgivable Scorpius**

Scorpius was panting, and the smoky smell of the train's exhaust was trying desperately to escape from his lungs. He had his back bent and his hands on his knees, catching his breath after nearly missing the train. He had arrived on Platform 9¾, King's Cross Station, purposefully late, hoping to avoid an awkward run-in with the Potters or Weasleys. Of course, he had still needed to swerve his way through the sobbing parents waving their children goodbye, but it had been relatively simple to spot any red-heads ahead of time.

Now that he had made it onto the Hogwarts Express, Scorpius knew that there was no turning back. He couldn't run away from Lily or Rose forever, and the decision regarding his return to Hogwarts had already been made. The hard part was going through with it, and now that was done. As for the rest of the year, well, Scorpius figured he'd take things one step at a time.

Step one: find an empty compartment, or at least find Albus. This could prove to be fairly difficult, so Scorpius picked up his backpack, held on tight to Ally, and set off down the aisle as quickly as he could. Immediately, he felt claustrophobic. Not only were the hallways still full of people, but Scorpius could have sworn that some of the students already in compartments were staring at him as he passed. He should have predicted this might happen, considering that all wizarding families now knew about Astoria. He just hadn't realized that kids at Hogwarts, his peers, would be making the connection back to him.

As Scorpius came closer and closer to the back end of the train, he was too busy trying to hide himself from the glares of incoming first years to notice when he all but ran into a much more familiar upperclassman. In fact, he would have passed right by him had he not heard a sort of groan coming from behind.

"_Malfoy_," said the voice, seething through his teeth.

Scorpius closed his eyes in disappointment, then hesitantly turned around. "Lysander," he greeted the now seventh year Ravenclaw, trying to sound cordial but not over-the-top.

The friendliness didn't seem to do the trick, since Lysander merely took one large step toward Scorpius so that he could gain some ground while he threatened him. "You really thought that you could just come back, after everything you've done?" asked Lysander. "You really think we're going to let you anywhere _near_ her?"

Scorpius didn't respond. He had no excuse for the things he'd done to Rose, except for the explanation that, contrary to what she'd been led to believe, he and Lily were nothing more than friends. That wasn't worth telling Lysander, though. The Scamander twin would never believe him, and why would he need to know, anyway? That was between Scorpius and Rose.

Luckily, Scorpius's silence didn't weigh too heavily on the malicious Lysander, since after only a few seconds, the latter's compartment door opened to the much less intimidating Lucy Weasley, immediately calming the air in the cramped hallway.

"Lysander, let it go," Lucy told him. "He's not of your concern anymore." Lucy, who was quite a beauty, with pale, porcelain skin, light blue eyes, and dark brown hair, had been Rose's best female friend for as long as Scorpius had known her. Now, and for the past year or so, Lucy was involved with Lysander's twin brother, Lorcan.

"Oh, he's _always_ of my concern," Lysander managed to spit out, even with Lucy pushing him back into the compartment where Lorcan was waiting.

As soon as Lysander was gone from the hallway, Scorpius sighed and said to Lucy, "Thanks for that. He doesn't seem to listen to me as well as he does you."

"Spare the grovelling, Scorpius," Lucy replied pointedly. "Just because I'm nicer than he is doesn't mean I'm any less angry with you."

Scorpius frowned. He hadn't anticpated such words to come out of shy Lucy Weasley's mouth, but he should have. He should expect similar reactions to his presence from just about everyone he was bound to run into at Hogwarts. They may not know the whole story, but they knew about Astoria, and they could see the pain etched on Rose's face. All blame linked back to Scorpius, and he should have been more prepared for that.

"Anyway," Lucy interrupted his thoughts. "They announced a few minutes ago that all sixth year prefects are meant to report to the front car for a meeting. I assume you didn't hear, considering you seemed to be headed in the wrong direction?" Lucy was one of the Hufflepuff prefects, and by some miracle, Scorpius had been named Slytherin's at the beginning of last year.

"Oh no, I didn't know. I got here late," Scorpius replied. This particular prefect meeting wasn't one that he was used to, nor was it something he'd heard of before, so it must have been a new addition to the year's schedule. Even with all the mystery, Scorpius had a pretty good idea of what the topic of conversation might be.

"Right, well, we'd better be going then," Lucy said, turning around and leading the way.

They passed all the faces that had stared at Scorpius before, and they were all still staring. This time, because he wasn't rushing, Scorpius had the chance to look through some of the compartment windows to see who the culprits were. Most were young, first and second years, as he had expected. Still, he recognized some older ones: Abby Chang-Turner, an annoying fifth year Ravenclaw who'd dated Al last year; Roddy Matheson, a fourth year Hufflepuff who was also a Chaser on the Quidditch team; even Mercy Golding, Slytherin's most popular student, a seventh year with long legs and blonde hair. Scorpius didn't know any of them that well, but it still stung to know that they thought they had him all figured out.

But all those faces weren't the ones that Scorpius was dreading to see. As he and Lucy neared the front of the train, they passed by a compartment with the school's best-known fourth years, the 'Gryff Group', as all the other houses called them. Lily Potter, Hugo and Roxanne Weasley, and Nigel Creevey all looked at Scorpius with different expressions as he walked by their window. Nigel looked terrified, reminding Scorpius of the run-in Nigel had had with Astoria earlier that summer. Roxanne looked furious, having known about both Rose and Lily's feelings for Scorpius, and the way he'd seemingly trashed them aside. Hugo looked thoroughly disappointed, as if he had expected more from Scorpius, but didn't have the energy to get up and kill him right then and there. Lily's face, which was one of the ones Scorpius had been dreading to see, was blank. Scorpius had expected extreme anger from her, after the way things had left off between them, but Lily didn't show any of that. In fact, she showed little to no emotion toward him.

After Scorpius had left the tent last night, running after Rose to try to get her to listen to him, Lily had merely stood at the opening in waiting. When it was clear that Rose was nowhere to be found, and once Scorpius was completely soaked from the storm, he had returned to the tent to find that Lily had already vanished. A part of him had been mad at her for leading Rose to thinking that they were somehow together, but then Scorpius had realized that it couldn't be her fault. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, he had let Lily into his life that summer, even though he had pushed Rose out of it. That fault was on him. And Lily, well, she had finally told Scorpius that she had feelings for him, and then he had gone running after someone else. Knowing Lily, Scorpius hadn't thought she'd be too happy about that.

Fortunately, Scorpius didn't get the chance to dwell on any of it. He and Lucy passed Lily's room before anyone could make an accusation or ask any questions. Then, after only a few more cars, they reached the faculty compartment.

Scorpius stopped dead in his tracks a few steps away from the open door. Standing there in the entryway, her hair flowing naturally across her back, wearing loose jeans and a baggy Chudley Cannons T-shirt that was sure to have come from her father's closet, was Rose. She was one of Gryffindor's prefects, of course, so Scorpius knew she'd be there. Still, he didn't know how to act around her. If they'd been alone, he would have tried to explain, or at least get her to listen first, but with all these people around, things were bound to be as awkward as they possibly could be.

"Hey, Rose," Lucy said to her friend, walking up to her and then glancing back at Scorpius. As Rose followed Lucy's eyes to find him behind her, Lucy dropped out from the hallway and slipped inside the compartment quietly.

With Rose facing him now, Scorpius thought he saw an even redder face than he'd seen yesterday through Rose's bedroom window, if that was at all possible. He wondered if she'd ever stop crying, or if any of the tears she had shed weren't in fact for him.

Knowing that she was waiting for him to say something, Scorpius struggled to find the words. Deciding to skip over any sort of tedious greeting, he whispered, "I-" but stopped when he heard footsteps from behind him.

Though Rose didn't dare take her eyes off him, Scorpius turned around to see who was there. Al was walking toward him, not at all surprised to see him there. Scorpius's best friend looked oddly confident as he approached the other two, and as much as Scorpius wanted to reach out and give him a friendly hug, something told him not to. Sure enough, Al walked right by Scorpius with a deadly glare, and Scorpius knew all too soon that Al, the one person he had been planning to lean on, the one person he'd expected would hear him out, was the angriest and most disappointed of anybody Scorpius had passed by on the train.

"Come on, Rose," Al said as he came to the doorway. He ignored Scorpius, though Rose clearly couldn't do the same. She held her gaze for as long as she could, until she was pulled into the compartment by Al, where they sat together on one of the benches, Al silently rubbing Rose's arm.

Scorpius followed them inside, not understanding why Al was even there. Last year, though Al had been the expected male Slytherin to be chosen as prefect, McGonagall had called Scorpius's name for the spot. Now they were supposedly in a prefect meeting, so what was Al there for?

The compartment, though larger than the others, felt even more confined than the hallway had felt before. On one side sat Lucy and her fellow prefect, next to Rose and Al. Bobby Dormer, the second Gryffindor prefect, Patty Parkinson, the other Slytherin, and two Ravenclaws sat on the other side. They were all staring up at Scorpius, or sending questionable looks at Al. Without anywhere to sit, Scorpius just stood there with his hands in his pockets.

When he looked up, Scorpius found the designated teacher standing across from him, also in the middle of the compartment. "Professor Smethley?" he asked. The old Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and Head of Slytherin had taken a leave of absence last year due to her pregnancy.

"Mr. Malfoy," she returned pleasantly, but with a slightly timid connotation. Smethley, a rather short woman with perfectly cut, dark brown, shoulder-length hair, had always liked Scorpius, even though he'd never been the best DADA student.

"It's so good to see you again," Scorpius said as Smethley took a step toward him. She would surely make for a better class than Professor Shunpike, who had replaced her last year and had been the subject of a tremendous amount of drama with Rose, Al, and Scorpius.

However, Scorpius's relief to see her again was squandered when Smethley put a hand on his shoulder and led him back into the hallway. "What's going on?" Scorpius asked her once they were outside, angling his head slightly to meet Rose's eyes for a second.

"I'm afraid that, as of this year, you are no longer a Slytherin prefect," Smethley told him in the nicest possible manner. She still had her hand on his shoulder, as if that might help cushion the blow.

Scorpius didn't know what to think. Was this because of Astoria? If so, that was hardly fair. Granted, being prefect had never been Scorpius's favorite role within the school, but it had always made him feel important and recognized. Having that taken away wasn't painless, he had to admit.

"Er, I'm not sure I understand," Scorpius said. "Why? I mean, did I do something?"

"No, I'm sure that's not it," Smethley replied. "I'm sorry, Scorpius, but I don't know the real reason. I'm just relaying information from Professor McGonagall."

Scorpius nodded. McGonagall had always had his back, so he'd be able to get an explanation from her once they got to Hogwarts. Of course, if Scorpius was no longer prefect, then somebody else would have had to take his place. Everything finally making sense, Scorpius asked Smethley, "So, Al's replacing me, then?"

"Yes," confirmed Smethley. "He was next on last year's list of potential prefects. Again, I'm very sorry, but I'm sure the Headmistress has a good reason for it." She then turned around to open the compartment door, saying, "I'll see you at school," on her way inside.

"Yeah," Scorpius said. "I'm glad you're back." Now he was alone, left to wander all the way back through the train once more.

This time, he ignored the stares, and kept walking through the hallway without looking back. At the far end of the train, Scorpius finally found a nearly empty compartment, with only one student inside, and she wasn't staring back at him like all the others.

"Excuse me," Scorpius said, gently sliding open the door. "Do you mind?" he motioned to the empty seat across from the girl.

"Um, no, go ahead," the girl responded. She had thick, wavy black hair, and was wearing a tank top and a flowing skirt, with ten or so bangles locked around her left wrist. On her lap sat an old scroll, and she had her quill out, next to a jar of ink that had been magically locked in its place.

Scorpius sat down quietly, hoping to spend the rest of the ride gazing out the window in silence. When he looked back at the girl, though, he realized he recognized her, if only from Rose's highly accurate description.

Leaning forward, Scorpius asked, "Are – Are you Ilana? Ilana Higgs?"

Looking back up from her scroll, the girl nodded. "I was wondering if you'd figure it out. You must be Scorpius?"

"Yeah," Scorpius replied. After a moment, he said sincerely, "Thank you. For what you did last spring, helping Rose and Al. They told me everything you did for them; everything you did for me."

"Oh," Ilana shrugged him off. "It was nothing, really. They looked like they could use the help was all."

Scorpius chuckled lightly. Still, he knew how much it would have taken for such a stubborn pair to ask for help, and they both claimed that Ilana had been worth it. Al most definitely did, anyway.

Noticing Ilana's sarcasm though, along with her apparent lack of friends (she was, after all, sitting here completely alone), Scorpius became curious to learn more. "If you don't mind my asking, why'd you help them in the first place? They didn't even know you."

"True," Ilana agreed. "But your girlfriend, Rose... she said something to me, about you. I'm not a sap or anything, but I could tell how much she loved you, and I just knew that if I didn't help her, she'd have me killed or something."

Scorpius laughed, because it sounded so like Rose. "Yeah, or worse, expelled," he mumbled to himself. Rose used to say that all the time.

Figuring that he'd need to accept the reality sooner or later, Scorpius said to Ilana, "We're not together anymore, Rose and I."

"I know," Ilana replied. When Scorpius looked back at her, confused, she added, "I mean, I could sort of tell, since you're not sitting with her now. All I can say is, you must have done something that really hurt her to get her to stay away from you."

"Why would you say that?" Scorpius asked with a pained expression.

"Because last time I checked, that girl was not about to give up on you. In fact, I don't think giving up on people was at all in her nature," Ilana said.

With a nod, Scorpius said, "Well, I suppose I did hurt her." He didn't say anything after that. He sat there quietly, gazing out the window in silence, just as he had planned.

* * *

After a quiet ride with Ilana in the final self-led carriage from the train station to the Hogwarts castle, Scorpius found himself sitting in the Great Hall, already wishing for the night to end. If at all possible, being in the hall, waiting for McGonagall to lead in the first years, was even the worse than the train ride had been.

People were eyeing him from every corner. The Ravenclaws, who were closest to the Slytherin table, were all whispering to each other, while most of the Hufflepuffs were just trying to understand what was going on, and the Gryffindors didn't need to whisper. All the way across the hall, the lions were making their roars heard.

The one exception to this trend, however, came from the far end of the Gryffindor table, over by the seventh years. Rose was there, next to James, and she kept turning around to the others, yelling something that seemed to silence them. Peering atop hundreds of small heads, Scorpius tried to keep his eyes on Rose, but a noise brought him back to the Slytherins.

"Please," Al muttered, almost incomprehensibly, from across the table. Scorpius turned to him, ready to try to get his friend talking, but he wasn't given the chance when the front door opened.

The whispering stopped then, and Scorpius was thankful for it. Now, he'd be able to enjoy some peace, though ever since Professor Smethley had informed him that it was McGonagall's idea to replace him as prefect, Scorpius couldn't exactly view his favorite teacher in the same manner he had before.

It didn't matter much though, since McGonagall wouldn't give her welcome speech before the sorting was done. With a swish of her wand, a stool appeared in front of the first years, and on it she propped the old, much worn Sorting Hat. Ignoring the questions and subsequent gasps from the little ones, Scorpius waited for the hat's latest song:

"_Well, well, it's another year,_

_Here at Hogwarts School._

_We're all back again: you on your benches,_

_And me, on my three-legged stool._

_As most of you are aware,_

_It's time to tell a story._

_Those who haven't heard before,_

_Prepare to bask in all the glory._

_There is a tale behind these walls_

_That everyone must learn._

_Once you hear it, you'll never forget,_

_For I'll remind you when you return._

_Long ago, there were two wizards_

_Who teamed up with two witches._

_Regardless of what you may assume,_

_They were not just seeking riches._

_Godric garnered warriors._

_Salazar sought ambition. _

_Rowena required intellectuals._

_Helga held no audition._

_Each created their own house:_

_Two up high, and two below._

_But as separation ensued,_

_The four friends turned into foes._

_The common row became a war,_

_And love was outrun by hate._

_Soon all four were gone,_

_Leaving the school in a terrible state._

_Somehow, Hogwarts lived on,_

_But it suffered quite the ordeal._

_Danger has always lurked here,_

_As I am about to reveal._

_I am certain you sense the presence_

_Of a dark and fearsome force._

_Though I cannot always save you,_

_I can help to keep you on course._

_The world's been down this road before;_

_I recognize the signs._

_So you'd all better be careful_

_Not to cross enemy lines._

_But more importantly (so listen up!),_

_Keep away from the persuasion._

_The villain's looking for a spy,_

_So start preparing your evasion._

_And don't discount your friends,_

_For even the strongest birds can fall._

_And after seeing the golden hawk,_

_It's more than tempting to return her call._

_Alas, now that you all know,_

_I can get to the task at hand,_

_As I wouldn't want to ruin_

_The jolly meal that's been planned._

_So come up, take a seat,_

_And please, don't be shy._

_Let me see inside your mind,_

_For I have the keenest eye!"_

The eyes were back on him. This time, Scorpius could feel every single pair, as if needles had been thrown straight into his back, onto his forehead, all over his body, penetrating him. None were as sharp as the needles the hat had planted, though. _A dark and fearsome force_, Scorpius heard in his head once more. _The villain's looking for a spy; start preparing your evasion. _Everyone in the room knew that it was Scorpius the hat had referred to, and Scorpius himself almost believed the same.

The sorting ceremony began at once, but nobody paid attention. His head down in shame, Scorpius tried to hide himself from all the glares. He didn't understand why the hat had said such things... things that could only have been about Scorpius, and yet none of them were true. If Astoria was the villain, and surely she was, Scorpius was _not_ her spy. And what of the persuasion? Scorpius knew better than anyone just how much of a way with words Astoria had, as it was one of her many talents, but Scorpius had refused to listen to any of them. Still, none of that mattered. From the perspectives of everyone else in the wizarding world, Astoria had only ever been close to two people: Draco and Scorpius. After Draco revealed all he knew to the _Daily Prophet_ that summer, and with no news of Scorpius's whereabouts, the latter was the obvious choice.

After the first years were sorted, McGonagall gave her annual speech, in which she welcomed back Professor Smethley and announced Ravenclaw's Molly Weasley and Hufflepuff's Lorcan Scamander as Head Girl and Boy. Scorpius barely registered any of it, but when the feast magically appeared atop each of the tables, he knew it was time to leave. His appetite was long gone by now, anyway.

Scorpius was just outside the open double doors when he heard calm, steady footsteps coming from behind him. He was about to turn around and yell at the person out of pure anger and annoyance when McGonagall's strict, perfectly clear voice sounded, "Could I have a word with you, Mr. Malfoy?"

Adjusting his face from a scowl into a reluctant obeying, Scorpius faced the Headmistress and answered with as little emotion as possible, "Of course."

McGonagall took a few steps closer to Scorpius, and he was dumbfounded by how much less intimidating she seemed now in comparison to his first year at Hogwarts. They were finally around the same height, both extremely tall, and the wrinkles around her face and beneath her silvery hair seemed more prominent than Scorpius remembered. Thinking this, Scorpius had the sudden urge to speak first, even though McGonagall had addressed him.

"Why did you replace me as prefect?" he asked. It was a simple question, but seemed to place an incredible weight on the air around them.

McGonagall didn't even need to think before she replied with a knowing smile, "Because I didn't want to overwhelm you. You already have Quidditch, and this year you'll be taking a much harder coarse load than you're used to."

_That's no excuse_, Scorpius thought, and they both knew it. Waiting for more of an explanation, Scorpius listened carefully when McGonagall lowered her voice and practically whispered, "I also happen to have other plans for you."

"Plans?" Scorpius asked, still confused. "What plans?"

"I'd like you to have private lessons with me, once a month at the minimum, for the rest of the year," McGonagall stated.

Private lessons? Scorpius had never heard of such a thing ever occurring at Hogwarts. There had always been rumors that Harry and Headmaster Dumbledore had been abnormally close during Harry's years at school, but had any private meetings been going on, they'd been kept completely secret. Teachers at Hogwarts, especially Headmasters, were not meant to show favorites.

"Lessons for Transfiguration, outside of the class?" Scorpius asked her. "Why?" It's not as if he needed any help in the subject, but of course his extraordinary talent for it was exactly what this was about.

"Because you're the best student Hogwarts has seen since Dumbledore. Better than even me." That was high praise coming from anyone, but especially McGonagall, who was one of the toughest of all Hogwarts professors. Scorpius was taken aback by the compliment, so much so that he barely heard when McGonagall added, "And you're going to need to perfect your skills quickly if you stand a chance at leading the Order."

Scorpius froze. What on earth was she talking about? Hadn't she heard the Sorting Hat like the others had? He was on the _wrong _side, and most definitely wasn't suited to lead the right one. Had she gone mental?

"The Order of the Phoenix?" Scorpius said when he came to once more. The Order was an old defensive group that had been formed in the Dark Days, and had fought against Lord Voldemort and his rebellion. The Order only lived when it needed to, and even if it did now, there were plenty of people more suited to be than Scorpius to be its leader. "Professor, please don't take this the wrong way, but who do you think I am?" He had never spoken this way to a teacher, but right now Scorpius was desperate.

McGonagall merely laughed at him, as if he had asked the silliest question in the world. "Scorpius, I know exactly who you are. I may be one of the few who does, but I do. You are the last person who could ever be fazed by Astoria or that _Forbidden Flock_ of hers, and you know that as well as I do. Soon, others will see it, too."

She was right. Scorpius would never listen to anything Astoria had to say at this point, nor would Astoria even bother to get him to listen. Sure, she was looking for him, but she would never use him once she found him. Scorpius had been suspecting it for quite some time, but the thought had never been so incredibly clear: the reason Astoria wanted him wasn't to protect _him_; it was to protect herself, from the imminent force that Scorpius was bound to send her way.

"You really think people will follow me? People who seem to be under the impression that I'm some sort of spy?" Scorpius asked, fearful to hear an unwanted answer.

"Eventually," McGonagall consoled him. "And in the meantime, you're going to gain every advantage you can against her."

Scorpius nodded. "All right," he agreed. The day had taken quite the turn, but it almost felt even more painful to know what everyone else thought of him at the moment, especially with such a responsibility to change their minds.

"I'll give you a time for our meeting in class on Tuesday," McGonagall said before she turned around to walk back into the Great Hall. Before she passed the threshold, however, she turned back to face Scorpius, and said genuinely, "Oh, and Malfoy? It's good to see you."

With a smile, Scorpius reciprocated, "It's good to see you too, Professor." A heavy load had been lifted onto his shoulders, but it was nice to know he wasn't completely alone after all. Even if McGonagall was his sole ally, having her by his side was a thousand times better than having no one at all.

For the next hour or so, while most students ate their weight in chicken and pudding, Scorpius flew around the Quidditch pitch in his falcon form, hoping to clear his mind. It worked to a certain extent, but he knew that he needed to talk to someone. Filling Harry in on all that had happened that summer had eased Scorpius's mind a great deal, but so much more had already happened since then.

By the time night fell, Scorpius headed slowly down to the Slytherin common room, trapped deep in the dungeons of the Hogwarts castle. Since it was late, he didn't pass any students on his way, and once there, he whispered the password, 'power,' quietly to the wall that hid the house from sight.

The common room reminded Scorpius of a prison. With low ceilings and stark, uncomfortable pillars and statues all carved with serpents or skulls, and couches clad in dark green fabric, it always made Scorpius feel like he was trapped. When he looked through the thick, stained-glass windows, the feeling only intensified. Harsh, dark waters shone little light into the room, let alone any air. The Slytherin common room had been built beneath the Black Lake, and students tended to claim that the swishing waters made for a soothing sleep, but Scorpius just thought the water made it harder for him to breathe.

There were only a few upperclassmen who hadn't retired to their dormitories, and they were too preoccupied with hearing about each other's summers to notice Scorpius slip past them. He coyly opened the door to his dormitory, which was the twelfth of fourteen doors that lined a narrow hallway off the common room. Once inside, Scorpius instinctively looked over at Al's four-poster bed, which was the one furthest from the door. He was disappointed to find that Al was already asleep, and figured that if he were to try to wake him, their other roommates would overhear. So instead, Scorpius found his backpack next to his own bed beside Al's, put on his pajama bottoms, and lay down. Of course, he'd be lucky to get any sleep, but he'd at least have some quiet time to mull things over.

* * *

The next morning, classes were already starting. After dozing off lightly for a while, Scorpius woke to find that Al and his other roommates had disappeared, off for an early breakfast in the Great Hall. Following their lead, Scorpius quickly dressed into his Slytherin robes and rushed upstairs, eager to try to speak with Al.

Though Scorpius knew what to expect walking into the hall, his mind immediately traveled back to this same day of last year, when he and Al had been playing a game of chess while waiting for their schedules, and for Rose to join them before class. This year, the hall looked the same: all the students chattering away to each other, most of the Gryffindors scattered across their designated table in small groups. It all looked the same as it had the year before, and yet Scorpius couldn't get past all of the minute differences.

At the Gryffindor table, James Potter was talking with Lysander, but rather than having the former's ex-flame, Caitlin Finnigan, by his side, James was wishing on an eyelash from none other than Mercy Golding, the blonde bimbo from Slytherin who had scowled at Scorpius on the train. Further down the hall from the trio was the Gryff Group, but unlike last year, Hugo looked anything but frazzled. In fact, he seemed to be in a rather intense conversation with his friends, Lily and Roxanne leaning toward him in interest and Nigel looking petrified by all three of them. On the other side of James, closer to where Scorpius still stood in the doorway, were Albus and Rose.

They weren't playing chess, but were instead sitting silently across from each other, making quiet slurping noises as they ate their oatmeal. Upon seeing them, Scorpius wondered if he should have prepared something to say. Rose would be furious, or at least hurt, and though Al wasn't the protective type, he seemed to stand firmly on her side. Still, Scorpius decided that his explanation would be better unplanned. So with a deep breath, and ignoring the glares he had nearly grown accustomed to by now, he headed toward them.

"Stop," James ordered. Scorpius hadn't even seen James get up from his seat, nor had he heard him coming this way. He appeared out of thin air, but was just as tall and built as ever. Out of all the Potters, Scorpius had always been the least close with James, mainly because they shared such an intense rivalry on the Quidditch pitch.

James was blocking Scorpius from getting within a meter from Rose, and at this point, Al was on his feet too. Luckily, Lysander hadn't joined in, but Scorpius could see that he'd wanted to, as his fists were clenched tightly on his section of the table, and he was only held back by Mercy's strong hold on his sweater. Behind the others, now completely blocked from Scorpius's sight, was Rose, unwilling to say a word.

Scorpius didn't want to fight James, nor did he have any interest in getting back on his good side. Instead, he looked to Al for some understanding as he asked, "Will you at least hear me out?" He didn't want to admit it, but Scorpius hadn't expected Al to be so silent. On the contrary, he had expected everybody _but_ him to be.

When Al failed to respond, Scorpius sighed and pushed past him and James. Realizing that he had no chance of communicating with Rose at the moment, he decided to try to speak with Lily. When neither James nor Al tried to stop him on his way over to her seat, Scorpius assumed that they didn't know that Lily had found him that summer, or how much time they'd spent together.

As it turned out, Lily's conversation with Hugo was so intense that, unlike every other person in the hall, they hadn't noticed Scorpius's presence. Even when Scorpius stood right behind Hugo and was about to announce himself, the Gryff Group kept talking, making for an easy eavesdrop.

"Hugh, stop worrying so much. I'm the one who's going to have competition," Roxanne said. Her eyes were twitching with anxiety, and Scorpius knew the feeling well. For prospective Quidditch players, tryouts were all anyone ever talked about. From what Scorpius knew from old conversations with Rose, Roxanne was vying for the available Chaser position on the Gryffindor team. The only other available slot was Beater, and Hugo had tried out for it every year.

"Yeah, but have you seen McLaggen?" Hugo asked pointedly. "He must have gained _twenty pounds_ over the summer, and that's _all_ muscle." He had a point here. Though Scorpius had no idea who this McLaggen person was, he did know how scrawny Hugo was. Sure, he was growing like Fiendfyre, but in the wrong direction for the perfect Beater build.

Lily rolled her eyes at this, exclaiming, "You both just need to relax. There are worse things that could happen to a person than being cut from Quidditch try-outs, which, by the way, aren't starting until _next_ week." That was easy for her to say. Lily was already on the house team, having made Chaser last year.

"What's your problem, Princess?" Hugo spat back at her. He and Lily were best friends, so naturally, they fought like mortal enemies. "My apologies, but some of us aren't third-generation legacies of Gryffindor captains. At least _I_'m not about to buy my way in."

"Well, you sure won't be getting in on pure talent," Lily muttered under her breath. Scorpius had seen her temper flare before, to levels much worse than this, but never with her stings directed at Hugo. He may not have been the most gifted Quidditch player, but Lily knew how badly he wanted to be.

Before Hugo, who had jumped up from his seat and was about to lunge across the table, could start yelling at Lily, Nigel nudged him and motioned his head backward, toward Scorpius. When Hugo turned around, he grunted at Scorpius, but stood up and left without protest, Nigel and Roxanne in his wake.

Lily just sat there, her arms crossed and jaw clenched. Scorpius wasn't sure that now was the best time to approach her, as she seemed to be in a foul mood, but he didn't want to pass up the chance either.

Deciding to go for it, Scorpius took Hugo's seat across from Lily, and said in a soft, non-threatening voice, "Do you mind if I join you?"

Lily shrugged, but kept her eyes averted from Scorpius. With a glance in Rose's direction, and after finding that she and Al had left the hall, Scorpius said to Lily, "I just wanted to apologize, for the other night. I had no idea Rose was going to show up, and when I saw her there, I could tell she'd gotten the wrong impression. She deserved an explanation, so I had to run after her. I'm just sorry that that meant leaving you there, especially after the things I said to you."

Waiting for a response, Scorpius sat quietly for Lily to show some sign of life. She seemed to be in a deep train of thought, and when she finally stepped out of it, her reply came as quite the shock. "I'm sorry, too," she said, and Scorpius could tell from her tone, which reminded him so much of their time in the tent, that she meant every word. Lily never apologized for anything, unless she expected to gain something from it, and surely she must have known that no matter what she did, Scorpius would never develop any feelings for her. And yet, there must be some reason for her appeal.

When Scorpius failed to say anything else, Lily looked up at him, un-crossed her arms and laid her hands on the table, ignoring the uneaten piece of toast by her side. Then she explained, "It's my fault that Rose was there."

"What are you talking about?" Scorpius asked. Rose had shown up out of the blue, with no warning at all. Now that Scorpius thought about it, he wasn't sure how she had found him out in the middle of the woods, and with impeccable timing. But how could Lily have controlled such a thing, and perhaps more importantly, why would she have wanted to?

Continuing, Lily said, "Rose had this thing – that little switch she always uses to turn on lights –"

"The deluminator?" Scorpius asked. Rose had had the magical remote that stored light for as long as he'd known her; it had been a gift from her father for her eleventh birthday.

Lily nodded, and then went on, "Only, when I overheard her talking to Al, she claimed that it could do something else... that it could help her Apparate to you."

"What? How?"

"She said that if you said her name, she'd be able to hear it through the deluminator, and then it could take her to you."

All the pieces were starting to fit together now. Scorpius remembered how closely Rose had always kept her deluminator, as if it did something more powerful than just turn on lights. And there was something else, too. "I hadn't said her name all summer," Scorpius said aloud, "Until that night." He hadn't been able to say Rose's name without feeling a gigantic jolt of pain. In fact, he hadn't wanted to say her name on that last night, either.

"Until you asked me to," Scorpius added, this time rather pointedly. "You wanted me to say it. You wanted her to find me." After seeing Lily's guilty expression staring back at him, Scorpius asked, "Why?"

"Because," Lily said, sounding quite agitated now. Realizing that they weren't alone, she continued in a whisper, "Because I finally told my secret. I finally let it out, but you didn't even hesitate before crushing it."

"Lily, I-" Scorpius started. She was dramatizing the situation much more than was necessary. It was true that he had rejected her when she'd sprung herself on him, but he hadn't been cruel about it. "I never meant to hurt you. I just didn't want to lie to you."

"I know," Lily said, frustrated once again. "But when it happened, I was so angry with you. I wanted Rose to know how it felt to lose you, so I had you say her name. I thought that doing it would make me feel better, and at the time, I didn't know that you'd be back at Hogwarts. I thought it would just be me and Rose, and for once, _I_ wanted to be the happy one. _I_ wanted to be the one you chose."

Scorpius was shocked. Lily had never had much of a problem with hurting people, or at least bullying them, but Rose was her family. This time, Lily had taken things too far. Turning defensive, Scorpius responded with, "So what, you just figured hurting Rose was worth re-gaining your own self-confidence?"

"It wasn't like that," Lily fought back. "It was only temporary. I knew she'd get over it eventually."

"Get over it?" Scorpius was full-on yelling at Lily now, and had stood up from his bench. The entire student body had returned to the hall, for the professors had come to hand out the schedules, but Scorpius didn't care if they all overheard. "Lily, you have no idea what Rose has been through! And she and I, we weren't just a pair of high school sweethearts; we were in love. I mean, didn't Rose make that clear when she announced it to your whole family at Christmas?"

Lily didn't reply, and Scorpius knew why all too soon. Lily had been the one to reveal Scorpius's then-secret relationship with Rose to the Weasleys and Potters, after having seen them holding hands at the train station. Looking at Lily, Scorpius could tell that she had been hoping he wouldn't make the connection.

Deciding to make it clear that he had, Scorpius said, "Oh, wait. You tried to tear us apart then as well, didn't you?" He had always respected Lily, but when he looked at her now, all he felt was disgust.

Lily was holding her ground, but Scorpius wasn't finished. "You want to know what else?" he asked her. "You didn't just hurt Rose. At Christmas, and again the other night, you hurt me. You took the one person who'd ever cared about me away; the one person who ever loved me, and you made sure that she'd never love me again."

This time, Lily knew how to refute. When Scorpius turned around to walk away, Lily called, "She wasn't the only one who loved you! I've been here this whole time too."

Scorpius sighed. She didn't understand, and maybe she never would. Still, if she was going to get over him, it would take a wake-up call, and he knew that he was the only one who could give it to her.

Turning back around to face Lily, Scorpius said, "You didn't love me, Lil'. If you had loved me, you wouldn't have hurt me like that. You would have let me go. Because that's what you do when you love someone; you do everything you can to make them safe and happy, even if it means that you don't get to be with them."

This time, Scorpius didn't look back. He walked straight out of the hall, Professor Smethley handing him his schedule on his way out. The only time he hesitated was when he spotted Rose standing at the other side of the entryway, talking to Professor Longbottom. He hadn't noticed her return, but surely she had overheard some of his conversation with Lily.

The two locked eyes for a moment, but once again, Al came between them, turning Rose around to discuss their schedules. At that, Scorpius continued on his way, glancing down at his own sheet of paper to see where he should be headed. He had Potions first period, followed by Charms and then a double DADA. All three of the classes would be with Rose and Al, as they too had received the required OWL's for their new NEWT courses.

Dreading the day ahead of him, but ready to get it over with, Scorpius walked back downstairs to the dungeons, where the Potions classroom was located. When he arrived, only Madison Bulstrode and Patty Parkinson, two annoying Slytherin girls, were there. They eyed Scorpius as he walked in, but he was used to it from these two. Though Maddi was a brilliant and terrifying Beater on the Quidditch pitch, she was just as timid off it, while Patty barely realized that anyone could ever see her staring at them.

The staring didn't stop, though. As students started piling into the class, every bit of their attention seemed to be centered on Scorpius, and no one dared to sit near him. Even once everyone was there, Scorpius was still sitting alone at his four-person table, while Rose and Al had decided to sit at the far end of the room with Lucy Weasley and Bobby Dormer.

Things continued this way for the rest of the day. At lunch, in Charms, and later at dinner, nobody spoke to Scorpius. In fact, nobody spoke much at all. Even in Charms, which was Rose's favorite class, she remained as silent as she had been since Scorpius had seen her on the Hogwarts Express. Secretly, he wondered if she was still in shock after everything that had happened recently, and during the course of the summer. Things couldn't be very clear to her, but it wasn't like Scorpius could explain even if he wanted to. Al was making sure of that.

He was her bodyguard, from what Scorpius had gathered. Al never left Rose's side (especially if Scorpius was anywhere in the vicinity), unless Rose had to use her time-turner to get to another class. With the way things were going, the Hogwarts ghosts seemed to have more friends than Scorpius did. Granted, he hadn't ever had many to begin with, but Rose and Al had always been enough for him. He was finally realizing this, now that they were gone. If Al would just listen for a minute, maybe Scorpius could convince them that it wasn't too late.

So Scorpius kept trying, at every break between classes and while walking through the halls. But Al wouldn't listen, and Rose didn't have a choice. By the time Defense Against the Dark Arts rolled around, Scorpius was shocked to hear an abundance of participation coming from the front of the room.

From his seat in the back, Scorpius had always been able to get away with paying very little attention in DADA, but the sound of Al's voice woke him from his slumber. It was a while after class had started, just after Professor Smethley had finished her discussion of the topics this year's course would cover, when Al raised his hand and said, "Professor, I realize you may have a lesson planned for the rest of this period, but since it's a double, do you think we could maybe talk about something not on the syllabus?"

"What do you have in mind, Mr. Potter?" responded Smethley in a tone of annoyance. Scorpius snorted in the background. Professor Smethley, though she didn't explicitly dislike any of her students, had never taken a great liking to Al, and after the chummy relationship he'd had with Shunpike the year before, Al was due for a dose of humility.

"The Forbidden Flock," Al stated. All the sixth years immediately turned their attention to him, including Rose, who was sitting beside him. Albus tended not to beat around the bush, but this was about as blunt as one could get.

When Smethley failed to come up with a response, speechless with shock, Al explained further, "Well, it's not like I'm the only one who wants to know what's going on. All any of us know is what the _Daily Prophet_'s been telling us, and there hasn't been any news on that front in weeks. I mean, if there was ever a time where we'd need to be prepared to defend ourselves, this would be it, but we have to understand what's going on in order to do that."

Scorpius was incredibly thankful that he was at his own desk, far off in the back row. Everyone in front of him was nodding at Al's suggestion, for they all wanted some answers, but they seemed to have forgotten that Scorpius was there, because no one was watching him with suspicion at that moment.

"All right, I suppose you may have a point," Professor Smethley agreed, much to the students' delight, and their curious whispers stopped immediately when Smethley began to reveal all that she knew.

"First of all, I'm no expert on the subject," Smethley said, "and it's true that the Ministry has been less than generous in revealing their information, but one thing's for certain: Astoria, which seems to be the sole name she's going by now, is attempting to carry on the dying wish of the late Lord Voldemort."

The whispers returned with this revelation. Scorpius hunched deeper into his seat, practicing his Vanishing spell right then and there, praying that he could disappear before somebody remembered he was there, and who he was. Unfortunately, Scorpius's best attempt didn't keep _everyone_ from looking in his direction. Rose had turned her head to find him, for she clearly hadn't forgotten about his presence, nor the incredible connection he had to the subject matter.

When Scorpius met her eyes, he expected to see the same distance he had noticed before, and maybe he would have had he not been so far away. Still, this time, he could have sworn that Rose was looking at him with concern rather than angst.

"Now, before you all take this way out of context," Smethley spoke again. The others silenced, but Rose didn't turn back to face her teacher. She was focused on Scorpius, and she wasn't budging, even as Smethley continued, "You must understand that the Ministry is much more prepared for such a rebellion than it was the last time. Astoria and her Forbidden Flock will never manage to gain any sort of control, or at least nothing substantial enough to be at all threatening to the wizarding world."

"Yeah, except that nobody knows anything about Astoria," Albus cut in. "What if she's more dangerous than the Ministry gives her credit for? I mean, she nearly took down the two best Aurors this summer, and she managed to escape them without a single scratch."

At this, Rose turned away from Scorpius to face Al. She gave him a look that clearly asked why he would say such a thing while in a certain person's company, but Al didn't seem to understand. Scorpius could always tell what Rose was thinking with a single glance, but Al sometimes needed an explanation.

Ignoring Rose, Al continued, "Plus, wasn't she insane just a few months ago? For all we know, she could have a whole host of mental followers by now, ready to attack at a moment's notice!"

"_AL!"_ Rose yelled. Smethley had been about to interrupt Al herself, but Rose had beaten her to it. She managed to catch Al's attention, though, as he turned to her with his mouth wide open.

While the two pursued a silent conversation amongst themselves, no doubt about Scorpius (who was the giant elephant in the room), Pranav Patil, a Ravenclaw from the right-hand corner of the classroom, announced, "I think Al's right. We shouldn't just trust the Ministry to handle everything. Astoria's unpredictable, which means that we'll all need to be ready for her."

"Yeah, and what about us Muggle-borns?" Bobby Dormer asked from across the room. "If we're the ones she's after, what are we supposed to do, just sit and wait?"

"Well, I don't think it will come to that," Smethley tried to reassure everyone, but it was too late. Al had catalyzed a sort of chaos amongst the students that could no longer be stopped.

Meanwhile, Rose was turning from side to side, trying to follow the traveling conversation so that she could end it. It didn't matter, though. Al was the only one people were willing to listen to, because he had started the discussion, and because he was Harry Potter's son. So when Al spoke, they all listened, but it wasn't what Rose or Scorpius were hoping to hear.

"You know, all this wondering is pointless," Al said after standing from his seat. "I'm sure we could get all the answers we need from Astoria's son himself! After all, he just so happens to be in this very classroom."

And then the eyes were back on him. It was just like last night at the Welcome Feast, the needles piercing into every cell in Scorpius's skin. He wanted to run, go back to his tent in the woods. He wanted to be alone again, because surely that had been better than this. This was far lonelier than he had ever felt when he'd been living in his own solitary confinement.

As Al walked toward him, Scorpius had to convince his muscles not to move. He told them all to hold their ground and not to act on instinct, while his mind raced with frustration. Why was Al, his one and only friend, doing this to him? Scorpius was supposed to be a leader now; he was supposed to rally people to join the Order like McGonagall had told him to, but how could he be a leader if nobody was willing to follow him? Clearly, Al would have been the better man for such a task. McGonagall should have given the job to him, just like she had done for the prefect position.

"So, Scorpius, tell us," Al ordered when was only a few feet away from Scorpius's desk. "How dangerous is Mummy dearest?"

Scorpius could see Smethley's lips moving, but he didn't hear her give Al his detention. He could see the tears on Rose's face from a few desks away, but he didn't register that they might be for him. He didn't register much of anything, except the anger that he felt for Al at that particular moment, combined with the anger he had felt for Lily that morning, and every bit of pent up frustration that his mother had caused him throughout his life. Scorpius registered that much, but it was enough to get him on his feet, where he could be the one to stare down upon Al and release his fury in a series of yells and accusations.

"What, so _now_ you want to talk?" Scorpius asked. "Now it's suddenly a good time for you to be filled in on my _joyful_ summer? Now you choose to be concerned? Oh no, my bad, you're not asking about me. All you want to know is what I think about my mental mother, or how I could _possibly_ be allowed to come back to Hogwarts after being so influenced by a '_dark and fearsome force'_!"

Scorpius would have continued, but Al managed to pipe in. "Oh, please," he said with a roll of his green eyes. "I don't need to be filled in on your summer. I read every letter you sent to Rose, since apparently you forgot to make a copy for your _best mate._ I know that you ran away from home and hid out in the woods, too much of a coward to show your face at _my_ doorstep, which happens to be where you've spent every summer for the past four years!"

"I couldn't risk putting you in that kind of danger!" Scorpius refuted. "Astoria's after _me_! Did you think I wanted everybody to get killed in the process? Is that what _you _would have done?"

"No, Scorpius, I would have just assumed that I could handle it all on my own," Al said sarcastically. "I would have let my two best friends sit at home all summer, wondering if I was okay, and spending every waking minute searching for me! That's _exactly _what I would have done!"

"I couldn't tell _anyone_ where I was! I didn't _want_ to be alone out there. I had no choice!"

"Oh, really? So, you didn't choose to let Lily in on your great secret? She just happened to find you out there, the fourteen year-old girl who won't listen to anyone, and yet will do anything _you _say? You didn't choose to lead my little sister on for weeks on end?" Al was fuming crazily now, and he looked as if he was ready to physically pounce on Scorpius.

"Lily _did_ just happen to find me, and I was lucky she did," Scorpius responded. "If it wasn't for her, I'd be dead right now, so I think she deserved to know what I was doing. And I didn't 'lead her on'! I told her from the beginning that I never felt anything for her, that I had only ever loved _Rose_, but _she_ kept pushing for something more!"

"You only ever loved Rose, huh? What about when you broke her heart in that ridiculous letter? If you loved her, why'd you lie?"

Scorpius was about to respond the same way he had to Lily that morning, saying that he broke up with Rose to try to protect her, but Al didn't give him the chance.

"No, don't tell me it was for _her_ sake," Al continued. "If you were doing it for _her_, why'd you let her cry herself to sleep every night for a month? Why'd you make her worry about one more person, when she already had an injured father and a traumatized brother? Why'd you make her question, for even a _second_, that you might not love her as much as she thought you did? And then, why'd you give her the ring back, letting her have a sliver of hope that you were actually alive, and that you may even care about her after all, and then lead her into the forest, only to make her think that you'd moved on to her _cousin_?"

Like everything else that had happened since he got back, Scorpius should have seen this coming. He knew that Rose would confide everything in Al, because the two had always worked that way together. He should have realized that Al would have read every letter, and that he would have been the one to hold Rose every time she burst into tears over the things Scorpius had wrote her. Scorpius should have expected that upon returning to Hogwarts, Al wouldn't console him for his wrongdoings, but would rather remind him of every one.

"I _know!" _Scorpius yelled, his eyes shut tight and his hands in the air, surrendering. Everything that Al was saying was true, and Scorpius had heard it all already. The same claims had been rattling through his mind all summer long, but hearing them aloud was different. Seeing himself the way Al saw him made Scorpius wonder how he could have ever been convinced to come back to Hogwarts. He had managed to drive away the only two people who had ever mattered to him, so what could he possibly have left?

Opening his eyes and focusing on a blank spot on the marble floor, Scorpius continued, "I know what I did. I know that I hurt you and Lily. Believe me, I know that I hurt Rose. I know that I made a lot of mistakes this summer, but I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was taking responsibility for my family. I thought I was protecting the people I loved... the people I still love." At his last few words, Scorpius's body begged to find Rose, but he didn't let himself turn to her. She needed to hear this, but she also needed to make her own decision regarding her future with Scorpius. He refused to have her pity him, so he wasn't about to beg for her forgiveness.

"It doesn't matter what excuses you may have. Your _intentions_ don't make up for your actions. What you did this summer, and what your family has caused and will continue to cause, is _unforgivable_." Then Al was gone. He walked out of the room at the exact moment that the bell rang to signal the end of class.

When nobody else moved to leave, though, Professor Smethley tried to get the crowd surrounding Scorpius to dissipate. "Class!" she called. "There's nothing more to see here. You'd all best be off for supper now."

Scorpius didn't need to be told twice. He was out of there with the rest of the class, running through hallways while trying to catch his breath. Somehow, he ended up on the seventh floor, after narrowly catching a few moving staircases and spinning past even more wide eyes. Once there, he instinctively paced thrice in front of a hideous tapestry and walked inside the Room of Requirement.

The smell of rain intoxicated his nose and mouth, and as the pellets crashed down on him, Scorpius knelt forward with his hands on his knees, his panting quickly turning into sobs. Then he was on the ground, the green grass magically dry despite the perpetual rain, and he was pulling at every piece of earth that his fists could find. He tore them all away, but like the rain, the grass just regenerated, thanks to the brilliant Charms spell he'd cast on it last year.

Once he gained some control over himself, Scorpius managed to crawl over to the willow tree that he and Rose used to sit beneath, and knelt his back against it, his head lifted toward the air in exasperation. He still felt like he couldn't breathe, but being here was better than being in the dungeons. He would have gone outside, but the courtyard would have been filled with people, since most students didn't have much homework yet, and he didn't think he'd be able to transfigure himself without somebody noticing.

By the time Rose showed up, Scorpius had reduced his sobs to small whimpers, though his shirt was soaked with tears. When she came in, neither of them said anything. Rose sat down by Scorpius's side, but not a word was spoken, and they didn't even look at each other. They didn't need to.

It was incredible what her presence could do to him. As soon as Scorpius thought he had things under control, he was sobbing all over again, his tears apologizing for all the things he couldn't seem to say. Rose stayed with him throughout the blubbering, their fingers just a hair's length away from touching.

After what felt like forever, but what still wasn't long enough, Scorpius finally ran out of energy to keep crying. At this point, he let himself fully look at Rose for the first time since last spring. Her sandy, scattered freckles were in the same spot he remembered, all over her nose and across her cheekbones. Her lips were the same raspberry color, but they were slightly chapped now. Her hair, fire red as it had always been, was pulled into a knot at the back of her head, but perfect, wavy strands of it had fallen out and were now framing her heart-shaped face.

"I'm so sorry, Rose," Scorpius whispered, and he hoped it would be enough. Rose was so tolerant, so forgiving, so willing to accept people and all of their flaws, and he hoped that she could learn to accept him again. He didn't want her pity, but was it possible that she still loved him, despite of all that he'd done?

As soon as he said the words, Rose was looking back at him. Her eyes were by far the best part about her. Just like they had been the other night when Scorpius had returned the ring, Rose's eyes were bloodshot and bordered by a permanent pink paint. He would never forgive himself for causing such pain on those peaceful waves. At least now, after crying for so long, their eyes must match.

"I know," Rose whispered back. She kept her eyes locked on his as she stood up, and then, after a deep breath, she turned around to leave.

Scorpius watched her closely, waiting for Rose to turn around. When she turned, he waited for her to speak. When she spoke, he waited for her to say all the things he so desperately needed to hear.

"You're right, you know," she started. "If you love something, you _should_ let it go." She paused here, and walked back to Scorpius, kneeling down in front of him so that she could reach out her hand and touch his cheek. When Rose's fingertips reached the swollen skin underneath his eyes, Scorpius closed them, letting her fire melt away his ice.

"But you forgot one thing," she continued, Scorpius's eyes still shut. "If it comes back to you, it's yours forever."

Her fingers disappeared, and Scorpius opened his eyes once more to see Rose back in an upright position. He stayed still in his spot under the willow tree, waiting for her to finish.

"So, when you're ready to tell me what happened, I'll listen," she promised. "I won't give up on you, Scorpius. You know I won't."

And with that, Rose was gone, and Scorpius was once again alone. Curiously, he felt much less lonely now than he had in quite some time.

* * *

_**Note: **So, what did you think of Scorpius's return, and all the conflict that came with it? Surprising? Not-so-surprising? Let me know in a review! Thank you!  
_

_-Hailey_


	17. Mercy Underfoot

**_Note:_** _Hi everyone! Hope you're all having a great holiday! I promised a reader that I would upload before the end of the month, so here is Chapter 17, right in time for the New Year. I'm secretly crazy excited for the next chapter I have planned, so hopefully I can write it quickly. Anyway, hope you enjoy this one!_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**17 – Mercy Underfoot**

"Slytherin can have the first tryouts," James complied. "It's only fair, since they won the Cup last year."

Scorpius wasn't fooled. He was well aware that the only reason James wasn't fighting him for the Quidditch pitch was because he was planning on watching Scorpius's tryouts from atop the Astronomy tower. James and Lysander had been using the hideout for years, and it hadn't gone unnoticed.

"All right, then let's just go in the order of last year's points," agreed Madame Katie Bell, Hogwarts flying instructor and Quidditch referee. She was leading the first team captains meeting of the year, with Scorpius, James, Lysander, and Lorcan all gathered around a desk in Bell's office, discussing upcoming practice and game schedules. "So, Slytherin's first, then Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff."

"And I still get two days, yes?" Lysander asked. The Ravenclaw team had lost a lot of players, since it had been comprised of mostly seventh years, so it had the most positions to fill.

"That's fine," Bell said. "It'll round out to a full week that way." After scribbling down a note on her long piece of parchment, she looked up at Scorpius and stated questionably, "You haven't listed a sub-captain."

"Oh, I must have forgotten," Scorpius responded. Sub-captains didn't do much, but it was necessary to list one in case a captain got injured at some point. Scorpius hadn't actually forgotten to name one; he just didn't want to. "Er, just put Al, I guess. Albus Potter."

James glanced in Scorpius's direction upon hearing Al's name. The entire school had quickly been made aware of Al and Scorpius's row that had ensued in DADA recently, and like all things regarding Scorpius, it was now the number one topic of conversation all across Hogwarts.

"Sorry, but I have to get going," Lorcan suddenly said, already standing from his chair. After being named Head Boy, and with a special Care of Magical Creatures project he was working on for his NEWT's, this particular Scamander twin could barely manage his role as Hufflepuff Quidditch captain anymore.

Lorcan's schedule seemed to be the complete opposite of his brother's. Scorpius couldn't help but notice that Lysander didn't seem to have a girlfriend this year. In fact, the only girl he was ever seen around was Mercy Golding, and that was just because she happened to be dating James. Normally, such restraint would be a sign of good character on Lysander's part, but Scorpius worried that, since its captain had so much free time now, the Ravenclaw team may prove to be a legitimate threat to win the Cup. Plus, he had a feeling that Lysander was only alone because he still had feelings for Rose.

Rose. Scorpius had been trying not to think about her, but of course, his mind always ended up on the subject. They hadn't spoken since Scorpius's breakdown in the Room of Requirement, which had happened over a week ago now. It wasn't an awkward silence, though, as if they didn't know what to say. Scorpius knew exactly what to say, and Rose had promised to listen, but he hadn't built up the courage to start the conversation just yet. He wasn't ready, just like Rose had said. As much as he missed her, Scorpius needed to figure things out for himself. In the meantime, he'd have Quidditch tryouts to focus on.

"Well, you might as well all leave, then. We'll meet again once you've got your rosters ready," Bell said.

At that, all four boys walked out of the tiny office, Lorcan already running off to his next appointment. "You need to get a life, you know!" Lysander, his twin brother, called after him, to which Lorcan merely responded with a wave.

When Lysander turned back around to face James, the latter was already busy snogging Mercy, who seemed to have appeared out of thin air. "Now, that's more like it," Lysander chuckled at them.

With a roll of his eyes, Scorpius left the trio and headed to the dungeons. When he entered the Slytherin common room, it was fairly full of students, everyone happy to be inside by a fire on this rainy day. Even Ilana Higgs, who was rarely seen in crowded areas, was there, standing in a corner talking with Al.

Scorpius tried to walk by them on his way to the bulletin board, the sign-up sheet for tryouts in his hand, but Al caught his attention. "You should add a Chaser to that list," he said, looking in Scorpius's direction. Ilana was standing between the two, and already looked incredibly uncomfortable.

"I should, should I?" Scorpius asked. The sheet in his hands only had one section on it, since Slytherin had only lost one player last year: Vincent Goyle, who had been a Beater. Until now, a Beater had been all he would need.

"Don't look so surprised," Al said with a raise of his eyebrows. "You didn't honestly think I'd stay on the team, did you?"

_Yes_, Scorpius thought. Why would Al want to quit? Sure, he wasn't as good a Quidditch player as James, but Scorpius still thought Al enjoyed being on the team. Apparently, his enjoyment wasn't enough to make up for the endless awkward practices he'd have to endure with Scorpius, though.

"Good luck finding somebody," Al said as he walked past Scorpius. "I'm sure everyone really wants to follow the orders of a murderer's son."

Scorpius wanted to lunge at him, but Al was already a ways down the hall, and was soon slamming the door to their dormitory. Letting him go without retaliation, Scorpius sighed and mumbled to himself, "Terrific."

After posting the sheet on the board with a sticking charm, Scorpius added a section labeled 'Chaser', then backed away and waited, hoping that people might show an ounce of interest. A couple of kids came up to sign their names for Beaters, but no Chasers just yet. They hadn't expected the position to be open, and so it was unlikely that anybody felt prepared to take it on.

Feeling desperate, Scorpius asked Ilana, who was still standing right beside him, "I don't suppose you'd like to join the team? Tryouts may not be necessary at this point; I'd give it to you."

Ilana looked at him like he was insane, her eyes raised so high that they were completely hidden by her dark bangs. "That has got to be the worst idea anybody's ever had," she laughed at him.

"Well, I don't hear you coming up with a better one," Scorpius suggested. He was desperate at this point, and too frustrated with Al to keep his tone in check.

"Actually," Ilana replied, "I might know of somebody, but I'm not sure you'll go for it."

"Try me."

Ilana looked straight at Scorpius now, right in the eye, and said, "Mercy Golding."

Scorpius couldn't help it. His eyes rolled all the way around before he could send a conscious message for them to stop.

"I knew you wouldn't go for it," Ilana chuckled at him. "But really, I'm sure she'd be happy to do it."

"Yeah, but she couldn't possibly be able to fly," Scorpius spat back. Mercy, who was a seventh year like Ilana, didn't seem like the type that would ever be willing to get on a broom. After all, the wind might ruin her hair.

"A second ago, you said that didn't matter!" Ilana responded. She was smiling, for she knew just as well as Scorpius how embarrassing it would be to put Mercy Golding on the house team. "Look, she likes James, and she wants to impress him. This would be the perfect opportunity for her. I'll even suggest it to her if you want me to. No grovelling necessary."

With a sigh, Scorpius complied. "Thanks," he said. At least this would make tryouts slightly more interesting.

Wanting to change the subject now, Scorpius asked Ilana, "So, you and Al are still friends?"

Crossing her arms, Ilana shot back at him, "You and Rose are still separated?" Scorpius took this as her way of saying that Al wasn't any of his business. He understood, and so he didn't press any further.

He wouldn't have had the chance to anyway, since at that moment, two seventh year boys ran into the common room in hysterics, and their screaming quickly gathered all the Slytherins around the couches, anxious to hear what was going on.

"The Flock's growing," said Salem Keyes, the larger, burlier of the two, with dark hair and olive skin.

"And the _Daily Prophet_ is all over it," added Aaron Goodall, who had lighter and longer hair than Salem, and was usually less outspoken. Both he and Salem were Chasers on the Quidditch team, so Scorpius knew them well. They had yet to talk to him this year, though, as had most of Scorpius's classmates and teammates alike.

Aaron, who had a copy of the newspaper in his hand, started to read from the front page as the crowd silenced, "'_The Flock has officially spread its wings. While leader Astoria continues to lie low in hiding, her followers have taken control of the mission to form a Pureblood world. Last night, two Muggles were murdered in the town of Little Whinging, Surrey. Knox Rookwood, grandson of Death Eater, Augustus Rookwood, was spotted fleeing the site by a Mr. Dudley Dursley, neighbor to the murdered Muggles and cousin of none other than Harry Potter, Head of the Auror Department at the Ministry of Magic. When asked if Astoria may be trying to send a message to Mr. Potter, the latter refused to comment. Though the Auror Department is clearly taking the matter very seriously, with both Astoria and Rookwood now on the run, it seems to be just a matter of time until the next tragedy strikes.'"_

After Aaron had finished reading, it took a moment for the students to take in the news. Once they did, questions were being asked left, right, and center, half of which seemed to be directed at Scorpius. Most of these were just rhetorical, more like pointed accusations than questions, so Scorpius tried to ignore them as he thought about what this meant for Harry.

Astoria was most definitely trying to send him a message. Harry had been tracking her for the past month or so, and this was her way of telling him that she wasn't afraid, and that she could find means to mess with him before he could even figure out where she was. But what was her secret? How was she hiding from Harry, from the entire Ministry, with such ease? Scorpius felt like he, more than anyone, should have the answer to this question, but he didn't. The entire student body had been expecting him to come up with some answers too, but he never had any.

"What town did he say they were from? The Muggles?" Ilana asked from beside Scorpius. He had practically forgotten she was still there, which was an effect she seemed to have on most people.

"Er, Little Whinging," Scorpius replied. "Why?"  
Ilana didn't appear to have heard Scorpius's question, for as soon as he gave her the name of the town, she had disappeared. Still, her voice had brought Scorpius's ears back into focus, and he was now hearing the questions from everybody else.

"Augustus Rookwood," Salem muttered then, peering over the paper in Aaron's hand. "That name sounds familiar."

Aaron responded, "Wasn't he the one who murdered-" but was interrupted.

"Fred Weasley... Senior," Al finished for him, walking toward the crowd from where he had been standing in the corner, silently looking in on everyone.

"Oh, sorry, mate," Salem sighed as Al came closer and took the newspaper from Aaron. Al was of course relatively friendly with both boys, since before today, he had been their fellow Chaser.

"No worries," Al replied. With a shrug, he added, "It's not like I ever knew him." He then looked at the paper quickly before tossing it into the fire and walking away. This was not the usual Albus. Al was the one who was always overly concerned about news in the _Prophet_. He was the one who always analyzed it, having the mind of natural Auror. He never just tossed important articles aside.

As if on cue, the crowd dissipated then. Everyone went back to what they had been doing before, most of them eyeing Scorpius on their way. It didn't matter, though. Scorpius didn't care about any of them. He only cared about his best friend, and he couldn't help but wonder if that person even existed anymore.

* * *

She was good. In fact, she was _really _good. Mercy was a natural flier, and had sharp hand-eye coordination to boot. As Scorpius watched her score six goals in a row at tryouts, getting past Keeper Lindsay Doyle with ease and working well with the smitten Salem and Aaron, he tried to remind himself that this was a good thing. All the other teams would be stepping up their games this year following Slytherin's win, so Scorpius needed to step it up as well. Last year, he had practiced like a fiend, and he had performed exceptionally well at each and every one of his games, but his team had lacked unity. With Mercy's skills, Scorpius may be able to pull everybody together this year. Unfortunately, he still found himself wishing he had Al instead.

Once Mercy and the only other prospective Chaser (a first year who hadn't scored at all), were finished, Scorpius called up the Beaters. There were four contenders this time, as young Slytherins, all of whom possessed more than enough aggression necessary for the position, had been preparing to take the spot for years. First up, flying alongside current Beater, Madison Bulstrode, was a well-built fifth year boy. He used the bat well, nearly knocking Scorpius off his broom a number of times, but he had no idea that he was meant to pass the bludgers as well. After him came two slightly smaller third year boys, both of whom were spry and wicked fast, but lacked the strength required to hit the bludgers with great power. Scorpius rolled his eyes at the last prospective, who was a scrawny, dark-haired fourth year named Arnia Samuels.

As was expected, Arnia was at first very hesitant of the screaming bludgers, instinctively swerving away from them whenever one came her way. Scorpius was about to call it a day, accepting the fact that he'd have to take the burly show-off, when Arnia's bat finally made contact with a ball. The bludger came straight from center field, so it hadn't been a very difficult shot. What amazed Scorpius is how much force the tiny girl put behind it, exhibiting more energy than the two third years had displayed combined.

"That's enough!" Scorpius yelled with a smile after seeing the hit. Granted, Arnia would need some training to become comfortable with the sport, but Scorpius couldn't resist the little ball-buster.

The team and the rookies assembled on the ground within moments, all anxious to hear Scorpius's decision. "Okay," he started, his voice unexpectedly filled with a bit of excitement. "First off, thanks for trying out. You were all really great, and I think I can speak for the whole team when I say that we appreciate the enthusiasm, and as always, will appreciate any continued support.

"Now, down to business. I am happy to announce that Mercy Golding will be joining the Chasers for the season, alongside Arnia Samuels, who'll play Beater." The girls gratefully shook Scorpius's hand and took their new jerseys, Mercy looking unaffected as she let down her hair and shook it with confidence, Arnia shocked but ecstatic. "Congratulations," added Scorpius, not failing to notice that the would-be glares from all the other rookies had been replaced with dumbfoundedness as they stared at Mercy with their jaws dropped to the ground. _The girl may induce some unity after all_, Scorpius thought to himself.

At that, the team left the field, but Scorpius stayed to pack up the equipment. This was normally a sub-captain's job, but of course Scorpius didn't have one at the moment. He had a few minutes of peace to himself, thinking about a potential training schedule for Arnia, before Rose arrived, ready to set up for Gryffindor's tryouts.

"Hi," Scorpius said to her just as soon as he had forced the bludgers back into the chest. He didn't know what exactly had prompted him to speak as he stood up to face her, his hands stuffed in his pockets, but in the back of his mind, he was glad that it did.

"Hi," Rose reciprocated, placing her own chest and Keeper pads on the ground. "Did tryouts go well?"

"Yeah, really well, actually." The conversation was already awkward, since once again, Scorpius couldn't say what he needed to.

"Good," Rose nodded. She averted her eyes from his, looking around the field, and then commented, "It's a beautiful day."

She was right. The sky was bright blue, the exact shade of Rose's eyes. Noticing how open and still it was, Scorpius had the sudden urge to be his falcon self so that he might fly around the entirety of Hogwarts, something he'd always wanted to do. Realizing that that was exactly what he should do at this very moment, Scorpius asked Rose, "Do you have some time? Before everybody else shows up?"

"Sure," Rose answered. "Why?"

"I want to show you something," Scorpius said, slowly backing away from her. Now, her eyes were transfixed on him, though her feet remained glued to the grass. "This is a part of what I did this summer; the first of many things I have to tell you."

Rose didn't say anything as Scorpius turned around and started running. As the adrenaline kicked in and instinct took control, Scorpius transformed smoothly and spread his wings as far as they dared to go. As he gained altitude, he directed himself around the tower stands in the pitch, gliding from one to the next with the energy provided by the trailing wind.

Then he went further, flying past the Astronomy tower to discover that, luckily, James and Lysander weren't there. He then swerved atop the courtyard, overlooking all the students walking in and out of the castle gates. Finally, he came to the Black Lake, which he proceeded to fly over, his talons not far from the water's surface so that he could feel the mist soak through his feathers. Then he turned around, heading back to the pitch where Rose was waiting for him.

She was spinning in circles when he got back, trying to catch a glimpse of his return. When she spotted him, Scorpius set his aim and dove, dropping straight downward only to angle forward at the precise moment that allowed him enough room to transfigure back into his human form and land steadily on the ground, mere inches away from Rose.

As Scorpius panted to catch his breath, Rose seemed just as exhausted. She hadn't budged, even when Scorpius had looked as though he might fly straight into her, but she still looked rather shocked. Of course, she had known that Scorpius was an Animagus, for he had returned her ring as a falcon, but the confirmation, along with seeing the transformation in person, was surely a bit surreal.

Scorpius waited for Rose to say something this time, desperately wanting to know what she thought about his uncanny ulterior self, but she didn't speak. Instead, she put her hands on his face, just as she had a few nights ago, and traced her fingers over it. She started with his eyebrows, then his cheekbones, and then his ears and his neck, familiarizing herself with the boy she had just seen disappear.

When her fingers touched his lips, Scorpius leaned toward her, hoping they might embrace, but jerked his head back when he heard chattering from behind him. The moment now ruined, Scorpius looked angrily at James, who was leading his team up the field, his arm locked around Mercy, clad in her new jersey with James's same number: 7.

Fortunately, the two were much too preoccupied with each other to notice Scorpius and Rose, and instead headed over to the locker room, which they proceeded to enter whilst snogging their faces off.

The rest of the team approached Rose, but Scorpius was far enough away from her now so that it didn't look as though they had just shared a potentially intimate moment. As soon as Scorpius spotted Lily amongst the crowd, he decided it was time to leave, and so he walked off the field, overhearing an energetic Hugo announcing his excitement for the tryouts to his sister. Just hearing Rose's name made Scorpius want to turn around and kiss her before he had to leave, but he refrained from doing so. In the meantime, he decided that he'd try to take things slow with Rose, maybe start out with something just short of a kiss. And if and when they did kiss again, Scorpius promised himself that he would make sure the moment was as magical as Rose deserved it to be.

* * *

"PASS!" Scorpius yelled. "PASS!" He repeated a few moments later. When Aaron finally listened, Salem scored, and Arnia knocked Lindsay off her broom seconds later. Watching the Keeper clutch her stomach and start to turn green, Scorpius announced, "All right, done for the day!"

The players graciously flew to the ground and headed to their lockers to change. It had been an admittedly exhausting first practice on an extremely early morning, and hadn't been all that successful due to a certain missing player.

"Hey, Aaron, are you sure you haven't heard anything from Mercy?" Scorpius asked Mercy's fellow seventh year before he ran off. (Nobody stayed behind with Scorpius this year, not that he expected them to.)

"No, sorry," Aaron replied. "I'll see her in class, though, and I can tell her you want to talk to her."

"Thanks." Then Aaron was gone too, and Scorpius was left alone, already regretting his decision to give Mercy a spot on the team. He hadn't had much of a choice, and she was bound to know that. The girl wasn't particularly bright, but she was manipulative. If she decided not to come to any of the practices this season, it wasn't as if Scorpius could kick her off the team in punishment, since he didn't have anybody else.

At that, Scorpius quickly packed up the equipment and headed off the pitch. On his way back to the castle, he passed by Hagrid's Hut and considered knocking on the giant's door, but decided not to. It didn't feel right to visit Hagrid without Al and Rose, especially since they were the ones who usually had to convince Scorpius to make the short trip to the hut in the first place.

Lost in the thought, Scorpius almost didn't notice Ilana standing beside one of the stones that made up the sundial at the top of the hill. Since she didn't make a sound, Scorpius walked right past her, but then spotted her dark hair in his peripheral vision just as he was stepping onto the wooden bridge.

Walking back toward her, Scorpius followed her gaze to face Hagrid's Hut once more, where a door was now opening to reveal Hagrid and Albus, locked in a tight hug.

"One second, he's encouraging the entire school to blame you for everything that's happening, and the next, he's holding Rose to comfort her or having tea with a professor," Ilana whispered, her eyes still locked on Al. "I just can't figure him out."

"Funny," Scorpius laughed. "He and Rose used to say the same thing about you."

Ilana looked at Scorpius now, her green eyes the exact same shade as the ones Scorpius had found a friend in so long ago. Ilana wasn't wrong; Al was acting strangely, but Scorpius didn't want that to give Ilana a bad impression of Al. Scorpius would never want to hurt Al by ruining his chances like that.

With a serious, pleading tone in her voice, Ilana asked, "Is he a good guy, Scorpius? Or is he just playing me like he is you?"

Glancing down at Al, who was now slowly walking up the stone path, Scorpius said sincerely, "He's the best guy I know." Then, looking back at Ilana, he added, "You like him, don't you?"

Almost imperceptibly, but still enough for Scorpius to see, she nodded.

"Well, he likes you too, you know," Scorpius informed her. He wasn't great at playing matchmaker, but Ilana looked like she could use some encouragement.

"I know," responded Ilana. "That's the problem." And in a flash, she had turned around and was already half way across the bridge.

Scorpius didn't bother to run after her, and instead took his time in getting to the Transfiguration classroom. Even with the lagging, Scorpius was still one of the first to arrive, with the exception of Rose, who was standing in the doorway, trying to decide where to sit.

So far this year, Rose had sat with Lucy in Transfiguration, one row behind the front, where Scorpius had his own desk (one he used to share with Rose). Walking up from behind her and trying to remain unseen, Scorpius watched Rose tentatively walk up to his desk and take her old seat.

Smiling, Scorpius followed Rose's path and sat down beside her, where they stayed completely still until the rest of the students had filed in, followed by Professor McGonagall in her Animagus form: a brown tabby cat.

McGonagall quickly transformed and instructed the class to work on a set of two new spells, the first being to conjure a flock of birds with the _Avis _spell, and then to duplicate the birds with the _Geminio_ spell. The professor then began to walk around the classroom to observe the students at work.

Scorpius performed both spells silently and soon had ten yellow birds circling his head, while failed attempts around the room were accompanied by incredible bangs and bursts from people's wands. Rose, who had always loved this spell, had some birds pretty quickly, but then couldn't manage to duplicate them.

Noticing Rose's frustration, Scorpius decided that now might be a good time to speak, and so he turned to her and said, "Rose, you're concentrating too hard. Just look at the bird and imagine it cloning itself. It's all in your head."

Rose did as she was told, but it didn't work. Still wanting to help, Scorpius suggested, "Here, I'll do it with you. This time, don't even look at the bird. Just look at me." He didn't know how this could possibly work, but he knew that Rose could see through him. So, he figured she might be able to do exactly what he did if she just looked at him.

Looking at Rose, who was now staring back at him, Scorpius gripped his wand and pointed it above his head at the birds, then said, "On the count of three. One, two, three, _Geminio._" And with two simultaneous pops, the birds multiplied.

Rose smiled and laughed, and Scorpius felt as if his heart had suddenly warmed a few degrees inside his chest. She was constantly teaching _him_, fixing _him_, and so it was new to be the one teaching _her_. It felt incredible, but the feeling didn't last forever.

"Well done, Ms. Weasley, Mr. Malfoy," McGonagall said, approaching Rose and Scorpius from behind.

Blushing, Rose replied cordially, "Thank you, Professor."

McGonagall then addressed Scorpius and said, "Remember, I'd like to meet with you tonight. Come to my office first thing after dinner," and walked off again.

Scorpius sighed. Somehow, he had managed to forget that McGonagall had scheduled his first private lesson for tonight. He had secretly been hoping to spend the evening with Rose, if not to tell her everything, than at least to be around her. Glancing at her now, he could tell from the shrunken eyes that she had been hoping for the same thing. Unfortunately, that would no longer be possible, so Scorpius would have to make up for it during the day instead.

Following Transfiguration, and after Rose came back from Muggle Studies, Scorpius had lunch with her in the Great Hall. Luckily, Al wasn't there to give them any grief, though Rose had no idea where he had gone. She seemed to be just as confused by Al's recent behavior as Scorpius was.

"He was like this all summer, though," Rose mentioned at some point. Scorpius had been avoiding the topic of this summer, but Al seemed to qualify as neutral territory.

"What d'you mean?" Scorpius asked in response. He knew from Rose's letters that Al had been secretive, but he and Rose had stopped writing after less than a month, and Lily hadn't ever mentioned anything out of the ordinary.

"Well, it was like what he said to you the other day," Rose explained. "We were searching everywhere for you. The thing is, he took it really far. There were a few times where he was gone all day, but he wouldn't tell me where he was going until he'd already come back, and this one time, he told me he'd gone all the way to the Leaky Cauldron, only he'd already claimed to have checked there just a few days before."

"So what, you think he was lying?" Scorpius asked. "You don't think he was looking for me at all?"

For a while, Rose didn't answer, and Scorpius could tell that she didn't want to. She didn't like talking about her best friend behind his back, and neither did Scorpius, but they were both worried about him. After a while, Rose took a deep breath and went back to the conversation by asking, "You don't reckon he's been going off with Ilana, do you? I mean, she wasn't at his birthday party, but that might not mean anything."

Scorpius didn't want to disappoint Rose, for he knew that she was hoping Al had lied for Ilana rather than for something worse, but Scorpius didn't want to add another lie to Rose's already heavy load. "No, I don't think so," he said. "I don't think much of anything's happened between them, at least not yet."

"Yeah, I figured as much," Rose said, her head down in defeat. "I mean, even if that was the case, it wouldn't explain the way he's been treating you lately." She was out of ideas, and Scorpius had never had any to begin with.

Still, Scorpius wondered if Al really needed an excuse for his anger toward him. Scorpius would be angry too, if their roles were reversed. "He's mad at me, Rose. I can understand that. I didn't expect it, but I can accept it."

"No, Scorpius, it's more than that," Rose argued. She seemed adamant about this, so Scorpius listened as intently as he could, even if Rose's words hurt to hear. "He doesn't want anything to do with you. He says he can't look at you anymore, and he doesn't want me anywhere near you. It took a lot of convincing for me to make sure he didn't snap at you in Transfiguration today, when I sat with you. I think, in the end, the only reason he agreed was so that he wouldn't have to face you again. It's like he thinks you're his enemy."

Her words stung, making it difficult for Scorpius to consider what was going on with Al in a rational way. Not being able to help himself, Scorpius dropped his head into his hand and rubbed his eyes. When he faced Rose yet again, he realized that he may just have to bring up this summer after all, so he said slowly, "I left him, Rose. I never sent him a single letter, and then I hid right behind his house without bothering to make any contact with him. He's my best friend, and I just left him."

His eyes were tearing at this point, but Scorpius didn't care. Rose had seen worse, so he continued, "I left both of you. I'm just always leaving people." He meant it in more ways than one, which he knew Rose would understand.

Just like the other night, Rose's fingers were so close to touching Scorpius, and he knew that she wanted to reach out to him. Rose was a natural at comforting people, but Scorpius hadn't given her permission yet. No matter how much he wanted to, he still wasn't ready.

But Rose did manage to console him with words, as she replied sternly, "No. People are always leaving _you_." She didn't get the chance to say more, since the bell rang to signal the next class, and everyone still in the Great Hall began the frantic rush out.

Scorpius and Rose gathered their things calmly before heading up to the Astronomy Tower for their night class. Al had dropped Astronomy (as N.E.W.T. level wasn't required to become an Auror), so Scorpius and Rose took two adjacent telescopes for themselves without protest.

For this class, Professor Patil instructed the students in their first independent constellation study, walking them through the set-up before letting them find, name, and classify a given constellation on their own. To make things more interesting, the first student to complete the task was to be named for one of the stars within the mystery constellation.

Though Astronomy wasn't her favorite subject, Rose went right to work, leaving Scorpius to watch her with pure enjoyment. At first, he tried to copy what she was doing, focusing the telescope gradually and drawing what he saw, but Rose went much too quickly for him to follow.

Once she was happy with her focus, Rose stuck to drawing, mapped out her entire view of the night sky, and began separating all the stars into their respective groups, looking for the one full constellation that would earn her a star. By the time that Rose circled the constellation on her map and wrote its name at the top of the paper, Scorpius had just started drawing.

Curiously, instead of calling Professor Patil over to give the answer, Rose finished the task and just stood there, silently staring at her scroll. When Scorpius noticed that she was finished but wasn't doing anything about it, he turned away from his own work and asked Rose, "Don't you want to tell her? Vane could get it any minute now." Myriam Vane was a Hufflepuff, also in sixth year, and she tended to do well in Astronomy.

Rose looked back at Scorpius, but didn't do as he suggested. Instead, she said, "What I said before, about people leaving you... I'm not going to be one of those people. All you have to do is believe me."

"Rose, wh-" Scorpius was confused, but he didn't get to finish his question.

"Professor, I think I've got it," Rose announced then, holding up her paper and handing it over to Patil when the teacher came near.

"Let me see here, Ms. Weasley," mumbled Patil. "Ah, yes, you have circled the correct constellation. You named it as Scorpius, which is also correct. Congratulations, and I'll be contacting the Ministry to name your star shortly!"

When Scorpius heard the name of the constellation, which was the one he had been named after long ago, he understood. With Rose's star, she would now have a permanent place within the Scorpius constellation; she'd never leave.

As Patil announced Rose's win to the rest of the class, Scorpius reached out his arm and took Rose's hand in his, which proved to be the perfect first step he'd been hoping for. Touching her again gave him the familiar sense of companionship and even safety. For the first time since last spring, Scorpius actually felt like he and Rose stood a chance of ending up together after all. They had been through so much over the past year, and Scorpius knew some of the biggest struggles were yet to come, but he also understood now that everything would be easier if they had each other's hands to hold onto.

After the other students rolled their eyes at Rose's win and then went back to their own work (they wouldn't be dismissed until they named the constellation themselves), Patil turned back to Rose and added, "You may go now, Ms. Weasley. It's good you finished so quickly, as I was asked to inform you that your father has arrived, and is waiting for you in Professor Longbottom's office. He said he came early in order to wish you a happy birthday. Did you really turn seventeen today?"

"No," Rose responded with a glance at Scorpius. They had both spent the day together because they knew it was a special one, though neither had mentioned the reason behind it. "I'm only sixteen, actually."

"Well," Patil said, quite shocked at how young Rose was in comparison to the rest of her class, "All the more impressive, I suppose. Anyway, I hope you have a good night, and make sure to say hello to your father for me. We seem to have lost touch over the years, but I'll always remember him as my very first dance partner, regardless of the fact that I'm not sure what he was doing qualifies as dancing."

Rose raised her eyebrows in surprise at this. She and Scorpius were used to Professor Patil speaking more than was necessary, but tonight she had reached a whole new level. "Er," Rose responded hesitantly, "Sure, I'll let him know."

And with a smile, Patil was off to check on Vane, who had recently finished. Rose was just about to leave to meet Ron when Scorpius grabbed her arm and said, "I didn't forget, you know. I'm just not ready yet. Soon, but not yet."

"Okay," Rose nodded, not at all disappointed in Scorpius's explanation. She was patient, but Scorpius could tell that she too knew they would reunite before long, and that it was just a matter of time. "I'll see you tomorrow, then."

"See you tomorrow," Scorpius agreed. And as he watched her go, he prayed that he'd be ready to tell her everything soon.

"Malfoy, get back to work!" Patil yelled at him. It took him the rest of the hour to finish his own map, and he was one of the last to leave the tower and head downstairs to the Great Hall for supper.

As soon as Scorpius took his spot at the Slytherin table beside a quiet Ilana, he could hear the fish-mouth sound of snogging coming from his left. He didn't even need to turn his head to know that it was Mercy and James, but decided to address them nonetheless.

During the split second that their mouths weren't plastered together like double-sided tape, Scorpius cleared his throat to gain their attention. Mercy, who was closest to Scorpius, turned toward him, though James continued to whisper nonsense in her ear.

Choosing to ignore Mercy's distraction, Scorpius asked defiantly, "Where were you this morning? I posted the practice on the bulletin board in the common room, and I know for a fact that Aaron reminded you of it, so don't tell me you didn't know."

"I didn't," Mercy argued, pausing to laugh at James before she explained, "Goodall's a twat, and he always has been. I've never listened to a word he's said."

"And you don't check the board?" Asked Scorpius, ready to roll his eyes. He knew that she could get away with anything because he desperately needed her on the team, but he hoped that she wasn't smart enough to realize it.

"Pff, check the board," James mumbled from somewhere beneath Mercy's hair.

Laughing at him once again, Mercy said in the most innocent of tones, "I haven't exactly been to the common room in a while. You know, _otherwise occupied_."

This time, Scorpius did roll his eyes. Under his breath, he commented sarcastically, "Oh, that's just lovely." Strictly speaking, students weren't allowed to sleep outside their dormitories, but plenty of sixth and seventh years made it their life goal to break that rule. James and Mercy were probably the only students who managed to break it almost every night.

Turning his attention back to Mercy's attendance, Scorpius suggested, "All right, well how about I tell you personally about all of the practices from now on? That way, you'll be sure to know about them."

"Sure thing, Rose Petal, go ahead," Mercy replied, but she clearly wasn't listening, too busy receiving a hickey on her neck from James.

Refraining from commenting on the nickname, Scorpius swerved his head to try to make eye contact with Mercy and said, "Look, Quidditch is a big commitment. We practice every other day in the fall, and if one player doesn't show up, the whole team suffers. I'd appreciate it if you could understand that, or at the very least, respect it!"

James, who had resurfaced now, decided to interject with, "Lay off her, Scorp. If she can make a practice, she'll go; if she can't, get a sub. Just stop blaming all your team's problems on her."

"My team's problems?" Scorpius fired back. James had no right to belittle him about Quidditch, even if he was on a professional team now. "What do you know about _my_ team? You're the one who's too busy shagging people to pay attention to your own team's weaknesses, let alone Slytherin's!"

James didn't budge at the accusation, but merely leaned forward and said smoothly, "Oh, my team is very much under control, and I think you'll be in for a real surprise come November."

Scorpius didn't exactly thing Hugo and Roxanne Weasley, who were surely the new Beater and Chaser for Gryffindor, would prove to have any exceptional hidden skills, but Scorpius continued to listen anyway.

"And as for you guys," James continued, "It's common knowledge that Doyle's got nothing on Rose, and don't even get me started on what losing Al will do to you. As for your new members, I approve of Mercy of course, but what's with your Beater? Confidence is key, Scorpius, and let me tell you, she's got none. You'd have been way better off with the fifth-year, even if he was dumb as a doorknob."

Scorpius was about to spit back to defend his team, but his jaw dropped when he realized that James seemed to know all about Slytherin's tryouts, including Arnia Samuels, who had been the one player Scorpius had been trying to keep secret until the first match. He normally expected James to know all these things with his regular spying, but Scorpius had flown past the Astronomy Tower just after the tryouts, and James hadn't been there.

Wondering where James could have possibly gotten all this information from, Scorpius turned back to Mercy, who had a very prominent smirk stained on her porcelain face. "Did you tell him everything, or just what was most important to hide from him?" Scorpius asked angrily. He wasn't the type to get mad easily, but Mercy was really pushing his buttons at this point. After losing Al along with his prefect position, not to mention his life-long relationships with the other two Potter children, Scorpius wasn't about to watch his Quidditch team be pummelled on by a girl who might pass as a world-class veela.

"Relax, Story Boy," Mercy shrugged at him, using an even cruder nickname this time. Scorpius didn't ever appreciate being linked to his mother, especially in such a nonchalant manner. "And stop pretending like you can control me. You need me way more than I need you, so I wouldn't be complaining about me missing practices. The less I go to, the less James knows about them, so really, it's a win-win."

_Oh yeah, she's smarter than she looks_, Scorpius thought to himself. And as terrible as it was, she made a good point. Acting as a full-on spy for Gryffindor meant that the less she knew about her own team, the better. That hardly qualified as a 'win-win', but at this point, Scorpius didn't have any other choice but to accept Mercy's ultimatum.

"Right," Scorpius swallowed his pride. "A win-win."

"Brilliant," Mercy smiled. She and James then stood up and left the hall, Mercy whispering to Scorpius on her way out, "I'll see you at the match. Anything more than that, I can't promise, but hey? At least I'm more loyal than your so-called _best mate_."

Scorpius was well aware that it was Mercy's intention to leave him seething over someone other than her, but he still let it take hold of him. Al was the first person he wanted to blame for his sad excuse for a Quidditch team, and he had to remind himself that _he_ had been the one to drive Al away. But was deserting him this summer really reason enough for Al to, as Rose claimed, to see Scorpius as his enemy, even after five full years of friendship? Maybe Rose was right... maybe there was something worse going on with Al than she and Scorpius knew. And as his best friends, they should probably try to figure out what it was before it was too late.

Turning back to his food but having lost his appetite, Scorpius mumbled to Ilana, "You're right. I can't figure him out either."

Ilana chuckled slightly, and then Scorpius bid her goodnight and left the hall, on his way to McGonagall's office for their first meeting. He wasn't quite sure what to expect from the evening, so he found himself rather anxious about it as he stood on the moving steps that spiraled their way to the office.

Once he made it to the top, memories began to flood the back of his mind, each frame shooting toward him from various points in the entryway. He hadn't expected to feel so uncomfortable here, but seeing the griffin-shaped knockers made Scorpius think of Shunpike's slimy hands banging them with excitement, and the two large doors reminded him of the disappointed faces he had once met behind it. Last year, when he had been accused for the murder of Argus Filch (though clearly, he had been completely innocent), everything that happened from the time he was pulled out of his History of Magic exam to when Shunpike locked him up in a tower cell had been a blur, but now it was strikingly clear. He remembered every second of it, though he desperately wanted to forget.

"Scorpius," greeted McGonagall at one point, though Scorpius hadn't noticed her open the doors. "I thought you might be hesitant to knock. Please, come in."

Scorpius followed the Headmistress inside, where he tried to focus on the cages of animals that were so like the ones in the Transfiguration classroom, along with the cupboard in the corner that enclosed the pensieve Harry had told Scorpius about once before. He wished he could use it now, to free his mind of that painful day last spring when he himself had questioned whether or not he had murdered someone, and just hadn't been aware of it.

"I apologize for the memories," McGonagall told him sincerely, now standing with Scorpius in the middle of the circular room. "I hope you know that you're here now for much more respectable reasons, and I promise you that you're completely safe this time."

Scorpius nodded, unable to speak just yet. Instead of conversing, McGonagall led him to the chair in front of her desk and gave him a moment to sit and gather his thoughts. Eventually, Scorpius managed to separate the past from the present, and looked at McGonagall (still standing beside him) to let her know that he was fine now.

Understanding, she walked around the desk and sat on the other side to face Scorpius. "All right," she said, her tone growing more serious and less personal now. "Let's start by talking about the rebirth of the Order of the Phoenix, and what that means for you."

"Okay," Scorpius blurted out. He was more than happy to learn more about this, since as of now, he had no idea what his actual position would be within the defensive organization, let alone who else was involved.

"Ron and Hermione Weasley were the first to send out word about the Creevey attack this summer, and they have since been making plans to reform the Order with survivors from the Battle of Hogwarts, hoping to meet with as many as they can on a regular basis," explained McGonagall.

"And what are the meetings about?" Scorpius asked.

"Assigning tasks, mainly. Right now, the goal is to simply raise awareness of the Forbidden Flock and hopefully gather more people than Astoria can, but very soon, people will be given specific roles to play that will help to defend the magical world against un uprising." McGonagall was very methodical in relaying all this information to Scorpius, and didn't seem to have any fear regarding this potential uprising, which was obviously more than just potential.

"Right," Scorpius said, his nerves tingling slightly. He wasn't nearly as relaxed as McGonagall, but hopefully he could learn to be. After all, he had come back to Hogwarts so that he wouldn't have to fight this war alone, and McGonagall was already being a huge help in that department. Scorpius just hoped that he could be what the people needed him to be. Curious, he asked, "So, who exactly have they already contacted? How big is the Order right now?"

Well prepared, McGonagall took a sheet of paper off the top of a pile on her desk and handed it to Scorpius. It was a list of people in the present Order, and was quite extensive, ranging from the expected Weasleys and Potters, to other family names that Scorpius recognized from fellow Hogwarts students, to every single Hogwarts professor, to names he didn't recognize but that had been written with Ministry titles. There were even a few current Hogwarts students, all of whom were over seventeen now, including James, Lysander, Lorcan, Aaron, Salem, and even Mercy. Interestingly, Ilana was one of the few current seventh years _not_ on the list.

"And, does everyone have an equal position, or is there a leading group of some sort?" Scorpius asked. He hadn't forgotten that McGonagall had recently informed him that _he_ was to be the overall leader, but he was hoping that he'd have a bit of adult support to back him up.

"Yes, there is," McGonagall said, ready for this question as well. "At the moment, the core members are Ron and Hermione Weasley, Harry, Ginny, and James Potter, Ted Lupin, Luna Lovegood, Dennis and Natalie Creevey, Professor Longbottom, and myself."

Scorpius nodded. It was a pretty good group of people, most of whom he'd met before. Granted, Harry wouldn't be around much so long as he was hunting Astoria. Ron and James would be no fun to work with, and Scorpius was somewhat surprised to hear James's name at all, considering how much time he'd have to devote regardless of whatever job he earned with the Magpies. The Creeveys and Luna Lovegood were the only people he hadn't met yet, but he had heard about Luna, and figured that the Creeveys must be good, brave people if they had signed up to be Order leaders after they had seen first-hand how powerful Astoria was.

"Also," McGonagall added, "Your father has requested to join. I told him that I wanted to speak with you about it first. If you are all right with it, I'll have an Auror make sure he isn't hoping to spy for the Flock."

This was the biggest surprise yet. Scorpius hadn't spoken to Draco since he had kicked him out that summer and had subsequently lost hold of Astoria. He knew that his father was still in love with his mother too, but he had also gained quite a bit of faith in him after Draco knocked Astoria out all on his own.

"Yeah, I'm all right with it, as long as Harry is," Scorpius complied. He knew that he was supposed to be the sole leader, but he wanted everyone to get along too, and Draco and Harry were known to have been childhood enemies. Thinking this, Scorpius nearly laughed aloud at the way generations seemed to repeat themselves.

"Oh, don't worry, Potter's not the one you'll have any problems with," McGonagall warned him.

_Of course, _Scorpius thought... _Ron_.

Deciding to change the subject, Scorpius asked, "So, you're sure I'm to be the leader of all this?" He was being self-deprecating, but that was the only way he could be honest.

"I'm positive," McGonagall replied, looking Scorpius straight in the eye. "As is Harry."

"But I'm not even of age," Scorpius argued. There were usually strict rules about this sort of thing, but he had a feeling he may be an exception.

"You will be soon enough, and the Order's meant to be undercover anyway."

"Okay." He was running out of excuses at this point, so he decided to comply. "Well then, what do I do?"

"Good question," McGonagall smiled. It was a small gesture, but it managed to make Scorpius feel a little better about the whole situation. "I've organized an inner-Hogwarts meeting that will take place a few weeks from now, for the entire faculty at the school. You'll need to inform them of any sort of inside information, and then assign them all tasks, either to help secure the school or aid in the rest of the Order."

"Right," Scorpius mumbled, trying to take it all in. He just kept reminding himself that he'd captained a Quidditch team for the last year, and really, how much more difficult could the Order be? Then he lied to himself by pretending that it wouldn't be any different at all.

"Until then," McGonagall continued, "I'm going to train you in both Transfiguration as well as Defense Against the Dark Arts."

"Okay." He wasn't afraid of the Transfiguration training, and actually felt quite honored to be McGonagall's protégé, but the DADA was sure to be an embarrassment.

"I know this is a lot of responsibility, Scorpius," McGonagall told him upon seeing his wide eyes. "Being expected to both lead and fight, but you have to know, we are not relying on you. We're supporting you. We understand after the last war that sometimes one designated person must lead the rest, even if that person is significantly inexperienced. We've all accepted that _you_ are the next chosen one, and we want to help you succeed. All right?"

"All right," Scorpius agreed, and he wasn't lying this time. After a lonely summer, all he wanted was some much-needed support, and now he was being given exactly that. It was bound to do him wonders, and he found himself questioning how he could have ever thought that he could do this on his own.

"And I know you're worried about the other students, but they'll come around before too long," McGonagall assured him. "Pardon my harshness, but they don't have much of a choice."

Scorpius laughed at this, a whole-hearted, nerve-tickling laugh. It had never felt so good.

"Let's get to work, shall we?" McGonagall brought him back to the task at hand, having returned to her normal, stoic self. "Now, did you read that book I gave you last spring?"

"Oh, yeah, I did actually." Scorpius had almost forgotten that McGonagall had been the one to give him the idea of becoming an Animagus, if slightly indirectly. "I read it pretty thoroughly, in fact."

With another genuine smile, the professor replied, "I had a feeling you might." She then motioned to the center of the room, which felt very open with its high ceiling, and added, "Go on then, show me your better half."

Scorpius stood from his chair reluctantly, not completely sure that he'd be able to transform on command in front of his greatest mentor. He was already a little shaky, but had done an impressive transfiguration with Rose just the other day, so it might work after all. Walking over to the door, where he'd have the most room to take off, Scorpius closed his eyes and turned into his falcon once more.

He took a few wide turns of the room to get to the top of the domed ceiling, where he folded in his wings, took a small hop in the air, and then made his signature dive down to the floor, where he transformed mid-flight to land steadily on his feet in the exact same spot he'd taken off from.

He quickly turned to McGonagall to see her expression. She had a knowing smirk on her face, but Scorpius could tell she was impressed when she said, "I see you can fly. That is quite the bonus."

Scorpius shrugged and said, "It's not bad. I've got to keep it a secret, though, since I didn't exactly register. Plus, I wouldn't want to give my biggest weapon away, would I?"

"Ah, now you're thinking like an Auror." That was high praise coming from McGonagall. "In fact, I don't think you should tell or show anyone else, just in case."

"Well," Scorpius said guiltily. He didn't exactly count Rose in this matter, since he was completely certain she wouldn't tell a soul, but he thought it might be best to inform McGonagall of Rose's knowledge anyway. "I already told somebody. Well, I told Rose. Rose Weasley."

McGonagall sighed, and it was the first sign of disappointment she'd displayed yet, but Scorpius was okay with that. He understood that McGonagall was skeptical, but he knew showing Rose had been the right thing to do if he wanted their relationship to survive. "I suppose we'll have to trust her, then," said McGonagall. "And as for the 'secret weapon', I think it could use some improvements... accessories, if you will."

"_Accessories?_" Scorpius had no idea what she was talking about.

"I seem to recall that you did well with the Vanishing spell last year?" McGonagall asked, to which Scorpius gave a nod. "The invigilator at your OWL exam mentioned that you were even able to use it on yourself."

"Well, half of myself," Scorpius corrected. "And I haven't exactly practiced much since."

"That's all right," McGonagall said. She was pacing now, and eventually turned back to Scorpius, crossed her arms, and said, "You don't need to be invisible yourself, but I don't want you revealing your Animagus form until the precise moment, assuming a war arises, of course."

She paused then, so Scorpius took the opportunity to ask, "Wait, do you mean to say that I'm going to learn to vanish myself _as_ an Animagus?"

"That's correct."

"How? My wand disappears when I transform." Like his clothes, his wand was not a part of his falcon, but returned just as soon as he became a human again.

"It does not disappear, Scorpius, it merely becomes part of you, much like the magic already is," McGonagall explained. "Of course, I don't know of any Animagi that are able to channel that magic, but as I said to you once before, you're the most talented Transfiguration student this school has seen in over a century."

Trying not to let the compliment get to his head, Scorpius asked, "So, if I do end up being able to vanish myself, my Animagus self that is, does that mean that I would be able to do other magic as well? As in, I could duel Astoria entirely as a falcon, so that I could dodge all her attacks more easily?" When Scorpius had decided to become an Animagus, he had done it to give himself an edge against Astoria, but he had expected it to be more of a defensive escape plan rather than an offensive strategy. Now, it could be both.

"That's exactly what it means," confirmed McGonagall. "Which is why we're going to have to start with the simplest spells. In other words, back to the basics."

"You mean, match into a needle?" Scorpius asked, remembering his very first Transfiguration lesson from six years ago.

"Precisely." At that, McGonagall opened a drawer in her desk, took out a small, narrow match, and set it on the table in front of Scorpius. "I think we'll just try this for today. Transform into your falcon, you can perch yourself on the desk if you like, and then think about the spell just as if you were performing it silently. As I'm sure you remember, it doesn't require any wand movement, so you shouldn't have to do much more than think about it."

Scorpius did exactly as he was told. As a white falcon, he placed himself atop the desk and looked down at the tiny match. He pictured the object turning into a sharp needle, much like the feathers that had once pierced through his skin, and transferred all his focus onto it. Nothing happened; the match was still a match.

When McGonagall looked up to find a white falcon staring at her in desperation, she realized Scorpius had tried and failed, and said to him, "Don't worry, it was only your first try. Neither of us has ever seen this done before. If it helps, I tried it myself this morning and couldn't manage it."

_That doesn't help!_, Scorpius thought. That only worried him more. He had gotten excited about this possibility, and now it seemed as though it might be out of reach.

"Let's just think about this for a moment," suggested McGonagall. "When you're performing a spell, or any type of magic for that matter, where does it come from? You hold your wand in your hand, but where does its spark take root?"

It took a second for Scorpius to realize the question wasn't rhetorical, but when he did, he gave it some serious thought. For him at least, any successful attempt at a spell came from deep inside his abdomen, like a gut instinct. He hadn't understood that until he had injured his stomach this summer, for he remembered feeling very vulnerable then. He couldn't have done any magic anyway, since he was outside of school at the time, but it felt almost like he had lost all the power he'd ever had.

Since he couldn't answer verbally, Scorpius slowly wobbled toward McGonagall and knelt his head at her stomach. Understanding his implication, she said, "I think you're right. So this time, try to emulate that feeling."

Scorpius gave a nod and then backed up to his previous position. He imagined the transformation of the match all over again, but this time he forced himself to act on it, making his stomach respond to the thoughts in his head. Almost instantly, the match formed a beautiful silver coating, and its once rounded head sharpened like a nail.

"Well done, Scorpius," McGonagall said as Scorpius became human again. "Well done."

Scorpius was exhilarated. He wanted to keep going, he wanted to do more, but he knew that he needed to learn his limits (his summer experience had taught him that as well). Still, he had to ask, "When can we meet again? We'll have to do animals into goblets next."

"That we will," McGonagall said with a hint of a chuckle. "We can meet as soon as next week, but I don't want to interfere with your Quidditch schedule."

"Oh, well, we usually practice in the morning before the sun gets too hot, so any evening is fine," Scorpius replied. He was happy to have a new goal, a new destination.

"All right then, same time next week?"

"Brilliant."

Scorpius had just turned to leave when McGonagall added, "Oh, and Scorpius? You have a visitor."

And at that moment, a knock was heard on the door, and it magically opened to reveal Harry Potter standing in the entryway. "Sorry I missed the meeting," he said, winking to Scorpius as he stepped inside the office.

"That's perfectly fine," said McGonagall as she stepped forward to greet Harry, giving him a kiss on the cheek. "I filled our boy in on everything he need know for now. I must say, though, I'm glad to you have back, Potter."

"I'm glad to be back, Professor," Harry reciprocated, "If only for a day." Scorpius had completely forgotten that Ron was here, and that that meant that he and Harry had come to the school to teach the fifth years the Patronus charm. Last year, they had arrived early the morning of the lesson, but it seemed they had decided to spend the night this time.

"Ah, it is Minerva now, Potter," McGonagall scolded Harry. "I haven't been your teacher for twenty-five years."

"Well then, I'm glad to be back, _Minerva_," Harry repeated.

"Much better. Well, I'd better be off to remind Professor Smethley about tomorrow, but please, take your time here. I know Scorpius would very much like to speak with you." And then McGonagall was gone, leaving Harry and Scorpius to talk alone with one another.

Immediately, Harry reached out to Scorpius and gave him a hug. Scorpius had been longing to talk with him ever since he had gotten back to Hogwarts, for he always understood things more clearly when he spoke to Harry about them.

The first thing that came to Scorpius's mind as they broke apart, though, was actually something he had been concerned for Harry about, rather than himself. "Hey, are you doing okay after those murders in Little Whinging? I know you grew up there."

"Oh, I'm fine," Harry said, leaning against the desk to face Scorpius, who had sat back down in the chair. "The whole thing gave my cousin Dudley quite the scare, and I'm definitely not happy about it, but there's not much else I can do at this point."

"Yeah, but don't you think she was trying to send you a message? I mean, it would be too much of a coincidence otherwise."

"I'm sure she was trying to send me a message," Harry agreed, "But that doesn't mean it worked. At least, I'm not going to back of her trail, if that's what she was hoping for."

"But maybe you should," argued Scorpius. He didn't like that Harry was chasing Astoria. It wasn't just about the danger of it, but also the fact that it meant Harry wasn't around to protect everybody else, and that included his own family.

"No, I can't," Harry said surely. "I'm not going to send Ron out again, and none of the other Aurors have enough experience."

"But you can't follow her forever!" Scorpius insisted. Somebody would have to take over at the Ministry if he was gone much longer.

"Sure I can," Harry said with a shrug, as if it was the easiest decision he'd ever made. "Look, I told you before, I can't protect everyone I love. Dudley and his family are the only Muggles I know, and I put plenty of protective spells on them a long time ago, so Astoria won't be able to touch them. Ginny can hold her own if Astoria's daring enough to actually go to Godric's Hollow, and we've got plenty of capable neighbors. The best thing for me to do is capture Astoria and the rest of her Flock before they hurt anyone else. All I have to do is step down at the Ministry and I can take all the time I need."

"Step down?" Scorpius asked. "And hand Head over to someone else?"

Harry nodded. "Ron's ready for it."

Scorpius didn't agree, but he didn't argue back. Harry was more informed of Ron's skills as a wizard than Scorpius was, and he knew their friendship spanned a lifetime. Still, he couldn't exactly imagine Ron as Head of anything.

Sensing Scorpius's weariness, Harry explained further, "Look, I'm not scared of her, not even after what she did. If anything, I'm just furious. I'm going to find her, Scorpius, one way or the other, and the more time I have to look, the faster I'll be. And if I manage it, you won't have to confront her at all."

The idea of having no war was quite intriguing to Scorpius, so he definitely saw Harry's point. Even so, the selfish side of Scorpius really just wanted to have Harry around, for the next few months were sure to be excruciating. Thinking this, he asked Harry, "But, who's going to be here raising all the awareness?" Harry was the original Chosen One, and the most respected of any wizard in the world. People listened to him, and they always would. Scorpius didn't have that same kind of loyalty from his peers.

"You are," Harry answered. "You're the leader now, Scorpius. You get to raise your own army."

"Yeah, but nobody's going to listen to me!" Scorpius was growing frustrated now. "They all think I'm a fraud."

"Not everyone does."

This was true. Scorpius had just had a terrific lesson with McGonagall, and he had her support, but that was only one person. He wasn't asking for the world, but having his best friend back might help. "Sure they do," he said. "Even Al does."

Harry didn't respond to Scorpius's question immediately. He had most likely just come from visiting his son, and Scorpius didn't want to fuel a fire between them, but it might be worthwhile to warn Harry about Al's mysterious behavior. "He hasn't forgiven me, for abandoning him this summer," Scorpius explained. "In fact, he's not speaking to me at all, except when he has to. At first, I thought it was just because he felt left out, but it seems like something more now, like there might be something going on."

Harry thought about this for a moment, but eventually said, "Honestly, I don't think there's anything else going on. Al always feels like he's under a tremendous amount of pressure, sort of like he's perpetually stressed. He doesn't know why he feels that way, so he looks for excuses for it. You see, to him, forgiving you would just get in the way of that. He wouldn't have anyone to blame anymore, for not being chosen prefect when it actually counted, for not excelling at Quidditch like the rest of his family…" Harry paused here, looking away from Scorpius and squinting his eyes. "For feeling like he's lost his own father to somebody else."

Scorpius immediately felt an immense amount of guilt pile atop his shoulders. He understood now that failing to contact Al this summer had just been the tip of the iceberg. Al had been jealous of him for years, even though Scorpius hadn't purposefully created the situation. He had never expected to be picked as Slytherin's prefect last year, or to ever excel at Quidditch. More importantly, Scorpius had never tried to steal Harry away from Albus. He had just needed a father, and Harry had been there.

"Look, I'll try to talk to him about it tomorrow," Harry offered. "It's probably a good idea to remind him that I love him anyway, and with our family so dismantled at the moment, he sure could use his friend, just like you could."

Scorpius nodded in thanks. Trying to put himself in Al's shoes, he thought aloud, "I suppose forgiveness isn't exactly easy to conjure, especially for a wrongdoing that's been growing for five years." Rose always forgave people easily, but that was in her nature, and Al's nature was completely different.

"Actually, Scorpius," Harry responded, "I don't think forgiveness is ever easy to conjure, even if the wrongdoing only lasted a second. The thing that makes someone easier to forgive is whether or not they ever meant to hurt you in the first place. Albus will realize that eventually."

"You think so?" Scorpius asked hopefully.

"Oh, I'm sure of it," said Harry. And just like the end of every conversation Scorpius had with Harry, he felt a whole lot better than he had before.

* * *

_**Note: **What did you think of the chapter? Let me know in a review!  
_

_-Hailey  
_


	18. The Only One He Ever Deared

_**Note:** This chapter is one I have been planning since I first came up with ideas for 'BotB'. I'll warn you right now, it is _**very**_ fluffy/cheesy. It's all about the romance, but I promise that there's some action too (for those of you who aren't into 'shipping), so I hope everybody will enjoy it!_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**18 – The Only One He Ever Deared**

He couldn't breathe. Scorpius didn't know what was wrong, or what it was that was crushing his lungs, making them collapse onto his heart like a deflated raft being consumed by the ocean's roaring waves. Each breath he attempted to take took so much energy out of him that he had to close his eyes and rest before trying again. This cycle repeated what felt like a thousand times and for a while it was the only thing Scorpius could focus on.

When the breaths started to come more freely, Scorpius managed to keep his eyes open, but everything around him was blurry. He could see the outlines of other beds and people, but not much else. Through his left ear, he could only hear a high-pitched ringing, but when he turned his head on his pillow, he was able to pick up some conversation with his right ear.

"I still don't understand what happened," someone was mumbling from beside him. Scorpius had heard the female voice before, but he couldn't place it without seeing the girl.

"I do," another voice croaked, this one male and louder, but coming from further away. Scorpius lifted his head slightly to find its source, which he assumed was the blurry person across the room from him, who seemed to have lifted his arm in the air as if he was trying to show it off.

_Why would he want to show off his arm? _Scorpius wondered. And then he remembered. He had been playing Quidditch, the last conscious player remaining on the Slytherin team. He must have blacked out soon after, and the knock that came with it would explain his cracked ribs. Now, he was in the hospital wing with the rest of his team, some of whom he remembered seeing pretty banged up. Salem Keyes had been the worst, with a body that had gone completely limp on his broom before falling and crashing to the ground. He had been the first out, and Scorpius figured it must have been him who had raised his arm a minute ago, since he probably had multiple fractures.

Then Scorpius thought more about the match, realizing that they must have lost. But how long ago had it ended? He had somewhere to be now, something he had been planning for weeks. It was important. He had to get out of this bed; he had things to do, to set up, to get everything ready. He had to get to the Great Hall.

"Yeah, me too," said yet another voice, waking Scorpius from his own thoughts. His vision was returning to him now, and he repositioned his head to the corner of the room just in time to see Aaron Goodall add, "That kid is a _BEAST_."

_Twenty-four hours earlier..._

"And you're sure it's okay? We don't have to bow or anything?" asked Scorpius. He wasn't scared about this part of the plan, but still wanted to make sure it was safe. The last thing he wanted was a fall or injury to take place, as that would ruin the whole night.

"Oh don't worry, yeh'll be fine," Hagrid assured him. Scorpius wasn't completely convinced by the friendly giant, but he didn't exactly have a choice but to take Hagrid's word for it.

"I think what yer doin' fer Rose is right nice, yeh know," he added. "And it's good ter see yeh, of course. I haven' seen much of yeh three this year, you especially."

Scorpius gave a guilty smile. It was true that he hadn't visited Hagrid very much this year, and it was already November. "Yeah, sorry about that," Scorpius replied. "I thought about taking Care of Magical Creatures, but I had too many other classes, and I'm still not sure what I want to go into after Hogwarts."

"Oh, I understand," said Hagrid as he took Scorpius's empty tea mug and dropped it in an already crowded sink. "Al came over and told me ever'thing, 'bout why all of yeh dropped it."

"He did?" Scorpius asked, his interest suddenly piqued. He had seen Al at Hagrid's a few weeks ago, and had been slightly suspicious since Al was alone at the time.

Hagrid laughed at this, a huge, hearty croak that sounded through the whole hut. "Not like _he_ needed ter tell me. Al might be the worst student I've ever had!" He said this in the nicest of tones, clearly feeling admiration for the boy, though it was true that Al's skills with animals and beasts were non-existent.

With a small chuckle, Scorpius said, "Well, I'm glad he explained it all to you. I know all three of us felt bad about it." This was a lie, as Scorpius hadn't talked to Al in over a month, but he didn't want to worry Hagrid into thinking that the trio had been split up. The knowledge that Scorpius and Rose were going through a rough patch after this summer had been enough to put Hagrid on edge, and the last thing Scorpius wanted to do was drive him overboard.

"Once yeh get Rose back again, I expect the three of yeh ter visit together!" Hagrid said as Scorpius pulled a sweater over his head, getting ready to leave.

"Sure thing, Hagrid," Scorpius promised, but he had to look away from those big brown eyes as he said it. "And thanks for the help."

"Yer welcome. I'll see yer at the match!"

"Yeah, it should be a good one," Scorpius yelled as he skipped down the steps from the hut. He had been training Arnia pretty roughly ever since James had commented that Scorpius may be in for a surprise at the match against Gryffindor. Now, it was only a day away, and Slytherin had no practices left, so Scorpius would just have to hope for the best.

Before he headed back to the castle, Scorpius walked over to Hagrid's pumpkin patch, where Colin Creevey had just brought in a hippogriff from the Forbidden Forest and Holly Longbottom was busy carving a pumpkin. Scorpius was going to ask why she was doing so since Halloween had come and gone, but he told himself not to bother.

"How's she looking?" Scorpius asked Colin, who had been helping Scorpius along with Hagrid. Initially, Scorpius had been worried that talking with Colin might be awkward, considering the attack Astoria had planted on him that summer, but Colin seemed to understand that Scorpius didn't share the same beliefs as his family.

"Oh, she's great," Colin said with a huge smile on his face. He clearly loved being at Hogwarts and working with all of Hagrid's game, even though he couldn't be a real student at the school. "Sh-She's the gentlest one I've seen y-yet."

"Perfect," Scorpius said, bowing at the half-bird, half-horse. When the hippogriff bowed back, Scorpius pet her beak and asked Colin, "And you think you can get the timing right? It's not too much to ask?"

"No, I d-don't think so," Colin replied. "I-in fact, Holly's offered to help with that. She's convinced some of the g-ghosts, Nearly Headless Nick and the Fat F-friar, to watch out for you, and they'll give me a signal to let me know when I should set her loose."

Scorpius turned to Holly, impressed by the idea. "Good thinking," he said to her, though she seemed to be fairly engrossed with her carving.

"Oh no, I'm not much of a thinker, actually," she said back, not looking up from the pumpkin. "Otherwise, I'd be in Ravenclaw. I think I just like talking to dead people. Or at least, they seem to enjoy talking to me."

"Huh," Scorpius nodded, completely failing to follow any of Holly's explanation. When he turned back to Colin, who looked just as lost, he whispered, "What's with the pumpkins?"

"No id-dea," Colin said, and as he and Scorpius glanced over at Holly, she smiled back at Colin with wide, admiring eyes. "She's been hanging around m-me a lot l-lately."

"Lucky you," Scorpius joked, though Holly's stalking seemed relatively innocent. "Well, I'd best be off, but I'll check in with you after the match tomorrow?" he asked Colin while giving the hippogriff one last pet.

"S-sure thing," said Colin. "Good luck!"

"Thanks." And then Scorpius was off, jogging up the hill to the castle. Today was Friday, and classes had been cancelled to allow the entire student body to get riled up for the season's first Quidditch match, but Scorpius still had a full schedule. He was trying to check base with all his helpers before supper came round, and he still had to see how Lucy, Hugo, and Ilana were doing.

After climbing up to the seventh floor, Scorpius checked the hallway and then slipped into the Room of Requirement, which had taken the shape of an amateur factory, with two separate assembly lines in the middle of a long hallway. Hugo was stationed at the far side of one of them, busy cutting snowflakes out of pieces of paper, which were being folded on the near side of the line by Nigel Creevey. At the other line was Lucy, who was carefully pruning an enormous bouquet of roses.

"Oh, it's about bloody time!" Hugo said loudly as soon as Scorpius stepped inside, leaving his station and running up to the front of the room. "Does this mean you're going to take over from here on out?"

"Er, I wasn't planning on it," Scorpius said, much to Hugo's dismay.

"I can't believe this," Hugo threw his hands in the air. "I am a _volunteer_, and I do not appreciate being treated like an employee!"

Laughing, Scorpius said, "It's just a few more hours, Hugo. And believe me, I appreciate what you're doing. What all of you are doing, in fact." He then looked up to see Nigel giving him a courteous smile and Lucy waving her hand to say it was nothing. It had taken some serious pleading from Scorpius to get all of them to help him out, but they had eventually agreed, knowing that they weren't really doing it for him. They all cared about Rose, so they knew this was for a good cause.

"Hugo, it won't take much longer," Nigel said quietly to his friend. "And it's for Rose. She deserves it."

Hugo scoffed at this, then rolled his eyes and walked back to his station quietly, picking up the next paper and cutting away. He hadn't been speaking to Nigel as of late, which had made things difficult for Scorpius. Originally, he had only asked for Hugo's help, but then Nigel had heard word of what Scorpius was doing and wanted to offer a hand too. Since then, Hugo had been in a terrible mood about the whole thing, though Scorpius didn't know why he was so opposed to working with Nigel, whom he was usually quite close with.

Trying not to get in the middle of a row, Scorpius approached Lucy and asked, "You got all the flowers? No problems?"

"No problems," Lucy said. "Professor Longbottom's been in a great mood lately, so he was more than happy to provide them for me. I shouldn't be much longer, but I don't know if you'll have enough."

"That's okay," said Scorpius. "I can duplicate them if I need to. I just needed a good amount to start from, that's all."

Lucy nodded. "Oh, and I managed to track down Peeves. Told him someone was after his stash and he ran off before I finished my sentence. I'm guessing he moved it all to Filch's office straight away, so Fred shouldn't have had any problems finding it."

"Brilliant," Scorpius said. This was a part of his plan he hadn't been so sure would work out, but he'd had a feeling that Peeves would be itching to take over the old caretaker's office, and it was the perfect opportunity to get his hands on all the things Peeves had collected over his years at the school. Turning back to Hugo and Nigel, Scorpius asked, "Could one of you check with Fred before tomorrow?" Fred was another one of Rose's cousins, and like most of them, was in Gryffindor.

"I can," Nigel offered. He had finished folding by now, and said to Scorpius, "Um, do you think I could go now? I would stay and help Hugo cut, but I sort of have a meeting to get to."

"Oh, yeah, go ahead," Scorpius said. "Hugo can manage on his own." And with a guilty look back at Hugo, Nigel left the room.

"Sure, sure, _Hugo_ can manage," Hugo muttered under his breath once Nigel was gone. "No problem. Because of course, I couldn't _possibly_ have anything better to do."

When Scorpius was skeptical to leave Hugo behind with no supervision, Lucy assured him, "Don't worry, I'll look after the little scoundrel."

Next stop was Ilana, and she was all the way down in the dungeons, locked away in the Potions classroom. When Scorpius opened the door, though, he was surprised to see that Al was inside, standing just in front of Scorpius in the entryway, while Ilana was on the other side of the classroom with a pot of boiling liquid on a desk beside her. The two were staring at each other, their mouths ajar but silent.

Scorpius thought about turning around and coming back later, but Ilana had already seen him, so he said, "Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt."

As soon as Al heard Scorpius's voice, he turned around and walked out of the room, bumping Scorpius's shoulder on his way. Ilana yelled after him to wait, but he was gone quickly and didn't come back.

"My bad," said Scorpius as he came closer to Ilana. When he was a few feet away from her potion, he was suddenly overcome with three painfully familiar scents. Not being able to help himself, he turned his head in nearly every direction, expecting Rose to be there. Then Ilana cleared her throat for him, and he realized that the smell wasn't coming from Rose; it was coming from the potion.

"Wow, that really works," Scorpius said, more to himself than to Ilana.

"It sure does," Ilana agreed, sounding slightly annoyed. Though Scorpius didn't want to read too much into the situation, he assumed that either she or Al had smelled something rather surprising from the love potion, which was meant to give off a different scent for every person according to what they were attracted to.

"So, does that mean it's finished? Scorpius asked. He had learned not to ask Ilana about her personal life, especially when it had to do with Al. She liked to keep to herself, which was something Scorpius could understand.

"Nearly," she responded. "Don't worry, though. I'll have it done by tomorrow night. How's it going with Rose, anyway? Is she still in the dark about everything?"

"As far as I know," Scorpius answered, taking a seat on one of the desks opposite Ilana. She had been more than willing to help, and hadn't asked what he needed the potion for, but he'd told her anyway. Rose had made it clear last year that she and Ilana didn't get along well, but Ilana still seemed to support Scorpius in his pursuit to get Rose back. To explain, he added, "Everyone's been sworn to secrecy, anyway. I considered using the tongue-tying curse, but it seemed a little extreme."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Ilana argued. "Secrets are pretty hard to keep when a lot of people are involved." She sounded as if she spoke from experience, but again, Scorpius didn't question her about it.

Instead, he spoke from his own and most recent experience. "Yeah, well that I know. You forget that Mercy's still on the team."

"That doesn't sound like it's going too well," Ilana commented with a grunt.

"As well as can be expected, really," Scorpius replied. "I mean, we'll be fine tomorrow. I think our new Beater's as ready as she can be, and Mercy will find her place once she starts. It's the Gryffindor team I'm worried about, to be honest."

"Why?" Ilana asked, surprised to hear of Scorpius's anxiety. "You know all of their players, don't you?"

Scorpius nodded hesitantly. "I should," he said, telling himself once again that Hugo and Roxanne must be the two new players; there was nobody else as qualified. But as he thought about the lack of Quidditch talk he'd heard from the Gryff Group lately, Scorpius couldn't help but add, "I just have a weird feeling about it."

And as he said the words, Scorpius's nose sensed a sudden rush of Rose's scent once more. This time, it was extremely strong, and he felt compelled to get closer to its source, the potion. As he stood up and walked over to it, he noticed that although Ilana didn't seem to be as attracted to the liquid, she was tightly clutching onto a crumpled envelope in her right hand. It looked exactly like the ones she always had piled behind her scroll when she wrote her mysterious letters, though it hadn't been until now that Scorpius wondered whom she was always writing to.

When Ilana spotted Scorpius's eyes on the paper, she quickly stuffed it in her pant pocket, took one last look at the potion, and said, "It's done," before covering it with a heavy lid.

The smell immediately dissipated from the room, causing Scorpius to slouch in disappointment as he regained his composure. Now thinking about what he was going to use the potion for, as well as tomorrow's Quidditch match, he said, "Well, until tomorrow, then."

Nodding, Ilana placed the cauldron on a shelf and walked out of the room. In the doorway, she turned to Scorpius one last time and repeated, "Don't worry. By tomorrow night, you'll have everything you want. As long as you have her in the end, whatever happens beforehand is meaningless."

Scorpius had no idea where she was coming from, but he desperately hoped that what Ilana said would turn out to be true.

* * *

Tomorrow came much too quickly, and before Scorpius could possibly worry about the Quidditch match, he and his team were about to walk onto the pitch. During their final moments in the locker room, Scorpius filled Mercy in on all the plays she had yet to learn while also making sure that everybody else knew the game plan.

"Arnia's been working well with Salem, so I've put him under her guard." Scorpius explained to Mercy, who seemed to be focusing well, which Scorpius was thankful for. "Maddi's with Aaron on the other side, as usual, but that means that they're the wings and you'll be in the middle. You'll most likely be flying against Lily on the Gryffindor side, and she's wicked fast, so make sure to watch out for her." Scorpius was skeptical of putting Mercy mid-field, since it was the most difficult Chaser position, but she was a better flier than Salem and Aaron and she hadn't worked with either of the Beaters yet, so it seemed like the best place for her.

On the other hand, Scorpius was daring to put Salem and Arnia on the left-side wing, which was where Caitlin Finnigan would be with Gryffindor's new Beater, whom Scorpius assumed was Hugo. The problem was, he had no way of knowing how good of a Beater Hugo would be, which put Arnia in rather precarious position. Still, he wanted Aaron and Maddi, who were both experienced players, to be covering Fred and Roxanne, since the two siblings were bound to have good chemistry in the air. As for himself, Scorpius would be going head to head with James once again and it was sure to be quite the showdown. Scorpius wasn't worrying about that, though, since he knew that whoever ended up catching the snitch would be less than a second ahead of the other.

At this, a strikingly loud whistle was heard from the Headmistress's box, so Scorpius huddled his team together for one last speech. "Okay, everyone," he started, one arm around Salem and the other around Arnia, Mercy standing opposite him, "We know our plays, we know our plan, so let's get out there and give it our all. There's no telling what kind of team Gryffindor's become this year, but we know that they will be playing as a _team_. Our only chance of winning today is if we do the same."

And as the other players nodded with Scorpius, the final whistle blew, signaling the team to line up in order (Aaron, Salem, and Mercy first, followed by Maddi and Arnia, then Lindsay, and finally Scorpius) and walk onto the pitch.

The crowd was already going wild by the time Scorpius mounted his broom and flew above his team's circle, where he shook hands with James and then waited for Madam Bell's call. Looking around as he stretched out his neck, Scorpius was hard-pressed to see much of anything. The stands were completely submerged with the morning's fog, only the top boxes visible, as they were high enough to reach above the mist as if floating on clouds. Though Scorpius could see James, he only caught a glimpse of the snitch for a second after its release, and he could tell that it would be hard to find for quite some time.

When he looked behind him, Scorpius could barely make out the Keeper rings, Lindsay Doyle's head slowly bobbing beside them. Rose was on the opposite end of the field, and Scorpius was secretly thankful that he couldn't see much of her either, since she'd be much less distracting this way.

Finally, Scorpius turned his gaze to the circle of Chasers and Beaters floating below him, though he could only see their numbers. On the Gryffindor side, he was able to spot Fred next to a similarly dark-skinned Chaser, so he knew right away that Roxanne had in fact made the team. Caitlin was beside Roxanne, her long, brown hair tied up and flying with the wind. Next to her was the new Beater, and Scorpius squinted to make him out. He thought he saw a bit of red hair, but the boy was covered with a uniform that was much too big for him, his shoulder pads extending outward from his chest as if he had wings. Though Hugo was relatively scrawny, he was also growing taller every day, so Scorpius had a sneaking suspicion that the new player, who was quite possibly the smallest Beater in Quidditch history, may not be a Weasley after all.

But Scorpius didn't have time to question it, as in that moment, the quaffle was released, signaling the start of the match. Before he knew it, everyone had flown off, so Scorpius quickly took his spot above the Slytherin goal hoops. He had a better view of things from up here, though some of the players would disappear into the fog every now and then. Since Scorpius knew it would be pointless to go after the snitch before the weather cleared up, he decided to devote most of his energy to watching Arnia and her match-up with the Gryffindor Beater.

Initially, Arnia did very well, and made a good job of keeping the bludgers out of Gryffindor's hands, passing it back and forth to Maddi, who'd then take a swing at Roxanne or Lily. They were following the plan perfectly, giving Mercy a chance to make the first goal. Rose probably hadn't seen her coming, and she wasn't yet used to her style as she had been with Al, so she swayed to the wrong side and didn't manage to impede the quaffle's path in time.

Scorpius smiled at Slytherin's early lead. Having a team that actually worked well together was a new experience for him, as last season he had relied mostly on himself to win all the matches. He felt proud of the people he'd assembled this year, and even found himself cheering when Arnia hit a bludger at the quaffle and sent the red ball straight into Salem's arms. Everyone was playing beautifully and soon Scorpius found himself letting go of all of yesterday's inhibitions. How could he have possibly been so worried?

Then an enormous bang sounded, and the entire crowd held their breaths. Scorpius searched for the source of the sound in panic, only to find Salem keeled over on his broom, holding tightly onto his arm, which had just gone limp and had caused him to lose hold of the quaffle. Caitlin managed to catch it next, but Scorpius wasn't so worried about that. Trying to back-track, he realized that Gryffindor's miniature Beater must have gotten the bludger after Arnia had hit it the nearby quaffle. Though Scorpius hadn't seen the hit, he could tell it had come from the Beater, who was now circling around to Salem's other side, where the bludger had bounced off. He caught it easily, and a second, louder bang was heard soon afterward.

This time, Salem collapsed completely, but his broom was still supporting his body. Scorpius could see him writhing with pain, but it was clear that he was still conscious. Arnia managed to catch the rebound bludger this time and went for revenge, hitting her bat straight at the Beater, who avoided a hit and instead took one steady swing at the ball and blasted Salem a third time. This hit knocked Keyes in the gut and then broke his broom in half, so he fell to the ground in defeat.

There wasn't a sound to be heard from the stands, and it even took a long silence before the commentator announced Gryffindor's first goal by Caitlin Finnigan. Nobody seemed to care, as they were all shocked by the sheer butchery that had just occurred. People, including Scorpius, barely had time to wrap their heads around the unknown Beater before the kid named Lindsay as his next victim. She was down after just one hit, which had gone straight at her knee and quickly thrown her balance off kilter.

Without a Slytherin Keeper, the hoops were wide open for Gryffindor to score, and that they did. Caitlin, Lily, and Roxanne all managed to make a goal within the next five minutes or so, while Slytherin struggled to keep up. It was torture for Scorpius, just sitting there and watching Arnia fluster, trying to stay away from her fellow Beater. Meanwhile, Roxanne had found her footing and was zipping past Aaron with ease, Mercy was constantly on Lily's tail but never seemed to get close enough to catch her, and the Gryffindor Beaters were working together like two peas in a pod, flying all across the field in an attempt to wear out their Slytherin counterparts.

That worked too, as Maddi was the next to fall. She had grown tired of chasing Fred for a bludger and had taken the bold move of being the monkey in the middle, hoping to get a ball in between Fred and the other Beater's passing. Unfortunately, her idea backfired, and the new Beater took her out on his first try with a blow straight to her chest.

"And Slytherin Beater, Madison Bulstrode is off her broom as _GRYFFINDOR_ scores again! That's fifty points to ten for Gryffindor, and Slytherin's now three players out, thanks to Gryffindor's newest Beater!" announced Lila Jordan from the stands. She hadn't mentioned the boy's name, but at this point, Scorpius was watching him closely.

By the time Aaron was knocked out, Scorpius had begun to notice something odd about the baneful Beater. Though he seemed to have an uncanny amount of strength and force behind each of his hits, he wasn't a particularly fast flier, and his hand was shaking around his bat. At first, Scorpius thought he was just shivering, but that couldn't be possible with the amount of clothes he was wearing. He was nervous, possibly even petrified, as if he was intimidated by his own wrath.

Now, the fog had cleared some, so Scorpius reverted his attention to finding the snitch. Though his team had been well prepared, nothing could have prepared them for this Beater, and the only person who could help the team win now was Scorpius. Still, there was no sign of the golden ball for quite a while, and James hadn't appeared to have moved an inch yet either. It wasn't until Arnia was hit that Scorpius decided it was time to step in.

The Beater, who seemed to have perfect aim and an immeasurable amount of skill, got her just in front of Rose's goal posts. Arnia had been watching out for Mercy as the latter made a desperate attempt to score when a bludger hit her from behind in her upper back, so close to her neck that Scorpius could practically feel her spinal cord snapping. As she slowly slid off her broom, Scorpius dove down to her, flying fast enough to turn underneath her falling body and catch her on his back. He lowered her gently to the ground, where a nurse was ready and waiting to take her to the hospital wing.

Enraged with fury and having realized that Slytherin didn't stand a chance with only two players left, Scorpius raced back to the center of the action and trailed the Gryffindor Beater the way a werewolf would go after its prey. He knew that he was putting himself in danger by being near the kid, but he had had enough; he just wanted to see his face, to find out who this boy really was.

As Scorpius was growing nearer to the boy, however, Fred Weasley hit a bludger his way and the new Beater took his time in taking out the last remaining Slytherin Chaser. Mercy was hit in the shoulder, and though it was most likely only dislocated, she flew herself down to the ground anyway. Scorpius didn't blame her; there was nothing more she could do for the team, and it was better that she took herself out. Of course, this meant that Scorpius was the last man standing.

He was about to turn himself around and make a run for it when the snitch flew just past his ear. Seeing that there may be a glimmer of hope after all, Scorpius flew after it, swerving through the Gryffindor Chasers and around the Slytherin rings in hopes that he could catch a snitch and end this ridiculous match, once and for all. He could hear the crowds cheering him on as he flew, but he knew that James wasn't far behind.

In fact, the Gryffindor Seeker had for some reason decided to fly right underneath Scorpius. James's tactic made it incredibly difficult for Scorpius to follow the snitch in the exact way he wanted to without knocking himself into James's back, whose bigger build was sure to knock him back if Scorpius touched him. Still, the two kept on the snitch's trail, and Scorpius could tell that he was close to catching it when he rounded the corner of a tower stand, his fingers an inch away from the winged ball.

He was touching snitch when he'd fully circled the tower and was back in the pitch boundary, and Scorpius was just about to clasp his hand over it when the ball shot straight down to the ground. It went right past James's nose, though James didn't immediately go after it. Instead, he stayed put in the way of Scorpius's path, causing Scorpius to keep flying forward, right into the awaiting Beater.

Scorpius was staring into the boy's eyes when James turned his attention back to the snitch and went after it at full speed. Scorpius didn't have to turn around to know that Fred was behind him, ready to pass a bludger to his fellow Beater and watch the final Slytherin player tumble to the ground. In the short moment before the bludger hit him, though, Scorpius finally caught a glimpse of the Beater's face.

His eyes were a light blue, like Hugo's, but they were less alert and much more sunken. He had very few freckles on his cheeks, unlike Hugo's bountiful amount, and though his hair did bare a tint of red, but it was a mere strawberry blonde in comparison to his ears, which had turned a shade of crimson, the same as his trembling lips. He looked terrified as his bat made contact with a bludger and as he whispered, "I'm sorry, Scorpius."

And just as the pain from Scorpius's stomach had caused him to black out this summer, the pain from his upper abdomen drew his body backward and pulled him from reality. The last thing Scorpius saw before he fainted was a full, pure tear traveling down the freckle-free face of a beast known as Nigel Creevey.

* * *

"That kid is a _BEAST_." As soon as Aaron said the words, Scorpius could see nods coming from five other beds in the hospital wing.

"Agreed," mumbled Maddi as she tried to sit up on her bed. Then Aaron, Salem, Lindsay, and Maddi all said in unison, "Nigel Creevey is officially a _BEAST._"

"All I have to say is good luck to Ravenclaw!" Lindsay laughed, the others quickly joining in. They didn't seem to be too upset that they lost, as the shock of Nigel had given them all a rather humbling experience on the pitch.

Scorpius was fully awake now, though his left ear was still ringing and he was having a hard time trying to move. He now remembered that he'd fallen on his left side, his head banging on the ground before he felt nothing at all. Now, he was slowly trying to lift his head so he could talk with the rest of his teammates.

"Scorp, you're awake!" said Maddi as Scorpius finally sat upright. She was in the bed beside him, and was cringing from her own broken ribs. Across from Scorpius was Salem, his entire body bandaged and his face pale with sweat, and next to him was Lindsay, whose leg was propped up and bandaged as well. Aaron was in the far corner and he looked okay, with the exception of an incredible black eye. Searching for Arnia, Scorpius found an occupied bed on Maddi's other side, but the person on it was still lying down, unconscious.

Noticing Scorpius's worry, Maddi explained, "She hasn't woken up yet. One of the nurses said it might be awhile."

"And what about Mercy?" Scorpius asked, his voice cracking at the pain of moving his face so much. The Chaser didn't seem to be in the room, though it was true that she hadn't sustained much of an injury.

"Left," moaned Aaron. "The nurse popped her shoulder back in and she was good to go. She didn't even bother waiting to see who else woke up, since Lindsay and I were the only ones awake at the time."

Scorpius nodded, not surprised to hear of Mercy's lack of empathy for the rest of the team. Still, he wasn't like her. He had somewhere to be too, but he'd wait as long as he needed to in order to make sure that the rest of his team was okay. Glancing over at Arnia, though, he wondered if that moment would ever come.

Just then, the double doors at the front of the room opened wide to reveal one of the Hogwarts nurses alongside none other than Nigel Creevey. He was the last person Scorpius wanted to see right now, but couldn't help but pity the boy when he saw that his face was swollen from crying.

"What are _you_ doing in here?" Maddi asked upon seeing her opponent. She'd worked with Vincent Goyle last year, so she was used to violent Beaters, but she didn't seem to like the violence when it came from a different team.

Nigel looked to Maddi with eyes wide and mouth ajar, his expression full of fear. "I wanted to apologize," he said, trying to keep his back straight as he walked over to Maddi's bed. He glanced back at the nurse on his way over, who seemed to be watching everyone to make sure none of them attempted to take a swing at Nigel.

"I never meant to hurt you," he continued, "But I was told that that's what Beaters are supposed to do, you see. Anyway, the name's Nigel Creevey." He extended his hand out then to shake Maddi's. When she refused to take it and instead crossed her arms in defiance, Nigel gulped and begged of her, "Please don't kill me."

The other Slytherins were silent, all watching Nigel with hawk-like eyes, waiting to see who he'd go to next. The Creevey boy seemed to decide that he'd make his apologies to the players in the order that their beds were arranged. This meant that Arnia was next, and Nigel turned to her just as she was opening her eyes.

Scorpius sat up to catch a glimpse of the girl he'd been worried about, but Nigel barely had a chance to apologize before the nurse closed Arnia's curtains to examine her. Still, Scorpius was glad to see that she was okay after all.

From there, Nigel moved on to Aaron and then Lindsay, both of whom were as cold toward him as Maddi had been, unwilling to shake his hand. The poor boy looked heartbroken when he came to Salem, who was undoubtedly the most broken of everyone on the team. Curiously, though, he also ended up being the most accepting.

This time, when Nigel extended his hand, Salem took it willingly, and was laughing as Nigel stood in front of him, shocked as could be. He even leaned toward Nigel (though admittedly, he couldn't move much in his bandaged state) to whisper, "Buck up, mate! This is Quidditch; getting hurt is a part of the game. The rest of these blokes are just intimidated by you because you played so brilliantly!"

Though Nigel still looked fearful, Scorpius was laughing now, nodding at Salem's comment. As the team captain, he hated to lose, but Slytherin had still gone out fighting, especially Salem. And he was right... Nigel had been a beast out on the field, plain and simple. For that reason, Scorpius would just have to accept that Gryffindor played a better game, and so they deserved the win.

For the others, coming to terms with this wasn't so easy. Still, with a couple of glares from Salem and Scorpius, Maddi, Aaron, and Lindsay all cut their defensive act and forgave Nigel. At this point, the only person he had yet to apologize to was Scorpius.

"You're a real badass, Creevey, you know that?" Scorpius joked after he shook Nigel's hand. Scorpius had never expected such impressive displays of force from a self-proclaimed pacifist like Nigel, and though he had the wounds to pay for it, he couldn't help but appreciate the element of surprise. After all, if tonight worked out the way he'd planned it to, Rose too would be in for a shock.

Thinking of such, Scorpius took the moment to ask Nigel, "Oh, do you know if everything's ready? For tonight, I mean." As soon as he'd asked the question, Scorpius was sitting up and slowly getting out of bed. He didn't care if any nurses tried to stop him; he was supposed to have been at the Great Hall ages ago.

When Nigel failed to respond, however, Scorpius took his eyes away from the pain reliever he'd been rubbing on his chest and looked down at Nigel. The tiny fourth year seemed to be weeping yet again, worrying Scorpius that tonight's plans might have been foiled. "Nigel, what's wrong?" he asked, a hand on Nigel's shoulder. "What happened?"

"Nothing, nothing," Nigel assured him between sniffles. "Ilana got everybody together and made sure we'd be ready. It's just that Hugo... we don't know where he is."

"What do you mean?" asked Scorpius. Hugo was to play an essential part in Scorpius's plan, and he didn't think that it would be possible to go on without him.

"I mean that we can't find him," Nigel said, still blubbering. "He's been pretty upset with me lately, I suppose."

_Of course, _Scorpius thought. Though he hadn't had the time to let it cross his mind before, he realized now that Hugo must be fuming over his cut from the Quidditch try-outs. That would explain why he'd been so sulky this past week, not to mention how smarmy he'd acted toward Nigel. They'd been the best of friends since their first year at Hogwarts, but Scorpius knew how sensitive Hugo could be. That kid liked to get what he wanted, and what he'd wanted for the past four years was to play Beater on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Scorpius didn't know how it had happened, but somehow Nigel had won the spot instead, which couldn't possibly be good for their friendship.

To try to distract Nigel from his wallowing, Scorpius said to him, "Hey, don't think about him. For now, let's just make sure everything's in place for Rose. The best thing you can do for Hugo is give him some space, anyway. He'll show up; he always does." Though Scorpius was saying the words to Nigel, they were meant more to convince himself.

"Yeah, he'll show up for his sister, but that doesn't mean he'll ever show up for me," Nigel mumbled, and like Scorpius, it was more for himself than for a listener.

Even so, Scorpius heard the pain in Nigel's voice, and he couldn't help but be reminded of the same pain he felt when he thought about Al. Just considering, even for a moment, that he'd never get his best mate back, was unbearable. Sensing that Nigel was going through something similar with Hugo, Scorpius consoled him in the only way he knew how.

"That's not true," Scorpius lied. "He'll show up. And when he does, you'll just have to be brave enough to defend yourself, to apologize to him the way you just did to all of us."

Nigel was staring directly at Scorpius as he said this, and after looking around at the other nodding heads in the room, he said to Scorpius, "Come on. I'm not going to let myself ruin anything else for you."

And at that, Scorpius followed Nigel out of the room and into the hallway. As they walked, slowly but steadily (which seemed to match Nigel's normal pace) passing the rest of the wounded players, Scorpius reminded himself not to think of Quidditch anymore. His teammates would all be okay eventually, and most had suffered worse before. Plus, soon Scorpius would have Rose, and just like Ilana had said, she was all he needed.

It didn't take long to find her. Rose was waiting for Scorpius in the hallway right outside the hospital wing and was in the middle of a long pace when she saw Scorpius limp through the doorway.

"Are you okay?" She asked frantically as she approached him. Seeing her fearful expression made Scorpius think his injuries might look worse than he thought they did, but he didn't dwell on it.

Realizing how close she was to Scorpius, Rose added, "I'm sorry; I know you said you weren't ready yet, but I had to make sure you were all right. So, are you?" She knew that he was, but he knew that she needed to hear him say it in order to believe it herself.

"I'm all right," he confirmed, giving her permission to breathe again. Then, with a nudge from Nigel, he asked Rose, who had changed from her Quidditch gear into jeans and one of her many hand-knitted, red sweaters with an enormous 'R' in the middle of it, "Um, do you think you could come with me? I wanted to show you something."

Confused, Rose looked from Scorpius to Nigel and back again, but she didn't seem to know what was going on. Scorpius hadn't actually intended to bring her to the Great Hall himself (he had planned to intercept her on her way down for supper), but at this point he had no time to waste.

"Okay," Rose agreed hesitantly. Smiling, Scorpius led the way, walking beside Rose with Nigel trailing close behind them.

Though he didn't expect to be, Scorpius suddenly felt nervous. He was fairly certain that most of the night would go according to plan, but what about afterward? What if everything that Scorpius was going to tell Rose, everything that she'd been waiting to hear from him, scared her off? What if his explanation for leaving her this summer wasn't enough of an excuse? What if she didn't take him back?

Scorpius was at the verge of complete panic as they approached the double doors that led into the Great Hall. Though these doors were normally open, Scorpius had cast a spell to keep them closed, so Nigel ran up ahead of Scorpius and Rose to open the doors and let them inside. And once Scorpius was inside the hall with Rose and the door was shut behind them, all of his anxiety vanished.

The room was empty but for the two of them. The tables had been pushed to the side, and the wooden floor was completely covered in rose petals and paper snowflakes, not showing even an inch of the floorboards underneath. Above them, Gryffindor and Slytherin banners were hanging from an invisible ceiling.

Rose was gaping at the sight of it all, so Scorpius took the time to walk through the petals and to the front of the room. After Rose had gathered her thoughts and turned to Scorpius's new position, Scorpius was quick to be the first one to speak. He knew that she'd have a thousand questions, but it was about time that he gave her a few answers.

"This is the place where we first met," he said loudly, as Rose was still standing by the doorway. "I recognized you from King's Cross, because my dad had warned me about that fiery head of hair you have." He had had this speech prepared for the longest time; it felt good to finally say it.

He had caught Rose's attention by now, and she was walking closer to him as he continued, "You came up from behind and stood right next to me while we waited for our names to be called out to be sorted. I remember you looking me straight in the eye and saying that your name was Rose Weasley and that your dad had warned you that I was dangerous. I was about to spit back at you, like _my _dad had told me to, but then you said that you'd be willing to give me the benefit of the doubt."

Rose chuckled at this part. She had been so confident back then, but that wasn't the reason why she'd gained so many friends. She had also always been open to everyone, regardless of where they came from. Scorpius hadn't realized then how rare of a trait that was.

"You were the first person who truly reached out to me," Scorpius said. "And almost instantly, I completely forgot all of my dad's warnings. In fact, during your sorting, after I'd already been put in Slytherin, I secretly hoped that you'd join me there. When you didn't, I promised myself that I wouldn't let our different houses come between us. I wanted to make you notice me again, because I already knew that I'd never stop noticing you."

By now, Rose seemed to understand that she wasn't supposed to speak. She didn't even try to respond once Scorpius was finished, but instead bit her lip and followed him back to the doorway. With a swish of his wand, Scorpius opened the doors and suddenly all the rose petals and snowflakes from the Great Hall flew up and over Rose and Scorpius's heads and into the empty entryway, where they fell peacefully to the floor, marking a path for the two to follow.

The path led to the Transfiguration classroom, in which Rose and Scorpius entered to find desks piled with bucket loads of unlit matches. Taking a stance in the middle of the room, Scorpius faced Rose and said, "Our first class together was Transfiguration, and I came in determined to perform impressively. When we were told that we had to transform a match into a needle, you nearly had it with a single try. Knowing that I had to beat you in order to gain your attention, I decided to give it a go. I put so much focus into that spell, more focus than I thought was humanly possible, and somehow, it worked. You looked at me with the most envious expression I've ever seen you wear, but I was just happy that you'd looked at me at all. Plus, you had no reason to be jealous. After all, you were the reason I'd ever even tried. Since that day, Transfiguration has been my best and favorite class, and that's because of you.

"You inspired me to work hard at something, something I loved. I've even managed to work so incredibly hard on it this past year that I think I might be able to grab your attention again." At that, Scorpius backed up from Rose and quickly transformed into his white falcon self. He took one complete turn of the room, then pulled all the energy from his stomach, just like he'd been practicing with McGonagall, and lit the piles of matches on fire. Once the tall, bright flames had encircled Rose from her spot on the ground, Scorpius returned his focus to the matches and transfigured them into sharp, burning needles. He'd come pretty far over the past few weeks in his work to perform magic while in Animagus form, and it was something he'd been dying to show Rose ever since he'd started.

When Scorpius was back on his own two (human) feet, Rose decided that she couldn't keep silent any longer. "That was incredible!" she said to him. Shaking her head, she added, "I'd never be able to do something like that."

"Sure you would," Scorpius said without the slightest hesitation, for he was being completely honest. "You can do anything. We both can." She had taught him that, too.

Their next stop was the Charms classroom, which wasn't too far down the hall. Here, though, Scorpius didn't lead Rose inside right away. Instead, they stood just outside the closed door as Scorpius joked, "We had Charms second period. Now here, you whooped my ass."

Right on cue, the doors burst open as soon as Scorpius finished his sentence. Small, yellow canaries were now flying around the room, and before they came out, Scorpius performed a silent spell to make all the rose petals in the path float up to the entryway, where they formed a thin wall of red. Moments later, the canaries flew straight through the rose petal wall to come out the other side as bright red cardinals. Before long, the birds had perched themselves on Rose's shoulders or the molding around the door and were singing the same song Rose's patronus had sung over a year ago now.

When the birds stopped singing, Rose reached up a hand to pet one of them, but it disappeared as soon as she touched it. The others vanished as well, but Rose was still smiling at the sounds they had made when she and Scorpius started walking to the next location.

Scorpius stopped abruptly, right in the middle of the path, when they reached a statue of the late Wilfred the Wistful. It took a moment for Rose to notice that he had stopped walking, and she turned around to see the statue, looking even more confused then she had before. It almost seemed like she thought Scorpius might be stopping to rest his injuries, but he could barely feel them anymore. He was running on pure adrenaline now, and this statue was far more important than it seemed.

"This spot probably means nothing to you, but it represents a big turning point for me," Scorpius explained to Rose. "See, toward the end of our first year, I was already really good friends with Al, but you and I just couldn't get through a day without screaming at each other. Once I realized how rattled you got when I beat you at Transfiguration, I just kept getting under your skin. I didn't realize how fed up Al was about it, until he sat me down behind this statue and ordered me to be nicer to you. The ironic thing was, all I was waiting for was permission. From then on, I vowed that I would always be kind to you and that I would protect you in every way that I could. Even then, it made perfect sense to me. I knew that I couldn't win a game of chess if I didn't have a knight to protect my queen, so I decided to make myself a knight for you."

Rose was blushing so much that she barely heard the window beside the statue shatter. When she did, Scorpius followed her gaze to see ghosts of horseback driven knights jump into the hallway, the window mending itself behind them. In total, five knights lined up in front of Rose and Scorpius, where they bowed to their queen, one by one.

Then the knights were off, riding in the direction of the rose petal path, which Rose and Scorpius continued on until they reached the hall of moving staircases. Scorpius had to be careful which stairwell to take, but eventually he found the right one (which was also covered in roses and snowflakes) and climbed to its twenty-ninth step.

"In our second year, you tripped on this step," he proclaimed. Pointing to it, he emphasized, "This one, right here. I was walking behind you, so when you fell, I offered my hand to help you up. It was the first time we touched."

This time, Scorpius had no tricks up his sleeve. He didn't want any magic for this part of his plan. So, without fire, birds, or ghosts, he stepped toward Rose and took her hand in his. She smiled at the feeling, as did he.

Hand in hand, the two ascended multiples staircases in order to reach the seventh floor. Scorpius's nerves had returned to him now, since this was the part that Hugo was needed for. Nigel had surely gone looking for him, but Scorpius wasn't sure that he'd be successful. But Scorpius didn't get to be reassured right away, as he stepped into the hallway that led to the Gryffindor common room to find that there wasn't a soul in sight.

Hoping that Hugo was waiting in his hidden position, Scorpius carried on, saying to Rose as he held her hand tightly, "Well, I think you know why we're here. This is where we first kissed, exactly one year ago. And when it happened, it started to snow."

That was the moment when the paper snowflakes were supposed to float into the air and then assemble a tunnel pathway to the end of the hall. They were supposed to, but they didn't. Nothing happened. Scorpius even waited a little while, but still nothing happened.

He was just about to ignore the misstep and move on when he heard voices coming from the stairwell. Rose heard them too, as she tilted her head in their direction.

"Would you just stop for a _second?" _screamed a voice that Scorpius recognized as Nigel's.

"You're the one who just _had_ to come remind me what I'm supposed to be doing right now!" a second voice yelled back. This one was Hugo's; Scorpius could tell by the tighter grip Rose put on his hand upon hearing it. "Because we all know I'm not allowed to do what _I_ want. I just get to be the _nurse _or the _secret keeper_ or the _slave_ to everybody else!"

"You're being ridiculous!" said Nigel, sounding out of breath. As Hugo came nearer and nearer to the floor, it seemed as though Nigel was starting to struggle to keep up with him. "And you have to stop. You're too late for Rose and Scorpius; they'll probably be gone by now, anyway."

"Oh yeah?" Hugo spat back. "See if I care!" And then he reached the top of the final staircase and was standing directly in front of Rose and Scorpius.

Though they stood silent, he managed to catch sight of them and said sarcastically, "So sorry I missed the show. I'll send a condolence gift when I can." Then he approached the Fat Lady on the wall and said the Gryffindor password, "Laures," which proceeded to open the portrait hole that Scorpius assumed led to the common room.

"STOP RUNNING AWAY AND _LISTEN _TO ME!" came one of the loudest cries Scorpius had ever heard. Nigel's new register caught him off guard, as it seemed to for Hugo as well. As if in unison, Scorpius, Rose, and Hugo all turned back to Nigel, who had finally made it to the top of the stairs, with gaping mouths.

"Please just listen to me," Nigel pleaded less forcefully, half-keeled over and out of breath. He had now attracted quite the audience, since most of the Gryffindor students had overheard the yell from inside the common room and had since come through the portrait hole to gather around the live drama.

James was somewhere in the crowd, but Scorpius ignored him as he tried to get a good look at the extent of his opponent's injuries. The only other people in the crowd who made their presence known were Lily and Roxanne, Hugo and Nigel's best friends, who took their places just behind Hugo. Fred also came closer to the action, stepping toward Nigel as his new right-hand man.

As Hugo crossed his arms and waited for Nigel to speak, Nigel's ears grew even redder than Scorpius had seen them during the match that morning. He was already nervous enough to confront Hugo; the crowd couldn't be helping much. Luckily, he seemed to have some support, as Fred put a hand on his shoulder and whispered something in his ear.

Upon hearing whatever it was that Fred told him, Nigel stood up straighter and faced Hugo. He didn't look at anybody else when he said, "I'm so sorry, Hugo. I never wanted to be on the Quidditch team; you know that. I would never purposefully take something from you, not something you'd owned for a lifetime, nor something you'd always wanted. I would never purposefully hurt _you_."

Hugo wasn't giving in. Though Roxanne was pouting with pity for Nigel, Lily and Hugo were still indifferent toward him. When Hugo rolled his eyes, Lily raised her eyebrows, and Nigel's eyes filled with tears. Still, something told Scorpius that this time, Nigel wasn't going to let them fall. He looked like he was going to braver than that.

Nigel took a long, deep breath, before he said seriously, "But you've been hurting _me_, Hugo. You walk around this school like you own the place, and that's fine. But you don't own _me._ You think it hurts to feel like a nurse, or a secret keeper, or a slave? Well, that's how I've felt this entire year, thanks to you."

Nobody dared to interrupt as Nigel continued, "I've been there for you whenever you've needed me, researching wandlore for days on end to figure out what happened to your wand even though you hardly ever joined me, and letting you stay at my house this summer even after you spent the previous fall convinced that my brother was a murderer. I've let you drag me around, watching every Quidditch match with you even though you knew how much I hated them, and then trying out for the team only because you didn't want to do it alone. Worst of all, I've had to keep my own secret from all my friends just so that you can keep yours."

If people hadn't been paying attention before, they most definitely were now. Ears shot up at the word 'secret', none higher than Lily's. In fact, the only person who didn't seem overly curious to learn what half of the Gryff Group had been hiding was Rose, who was looking between her brother and his friend with nothing but sadness.

Hugo had his eyes locked on Nigel now, and they seemed to bare a mixture of fear and guilt as Nigel concluded, "You're my best friend, Hugo, but you make me feel like I have nothing... like I _am_ nothing."

Whatever bit of guilt Hugo had been displaying washed away at this, and he furrowed his eyebrows with fury as he pointed at Nigel and yelled back, "NOTHING? You have _everything_! You _are_ everything!"

Nigel was shaking as Hugo stepped forward and said in a slightly lighter tone, "Don't you get it? Wandlore is your passion, your talent. You have a future, whereas I can't see a bloody foot ahead of me. You have a family that knows who you are and loves you for it, whereas I have to lie to mine every day to be sure I'm making them proud. You hate Quidditch because you see it as more than just a game, whereas I'm only interested in the plays and the hits. You're a great Beater, whereas I can't seem to swing a bat. _Best_ of all, you're confident enough to tell your secret to the whole world, whereas I can barely tell it to myself."

Nigel was silent for a while and Hugo was now rubbing his face with his hands. They both looked exhausted, but Nigel managed to find the energy to step closer to Hugo and say sympathetically, "You can tell people. You can tell everyone. You're the bravest person I know. You can do anything."

At his last line, Scorpius instinctively glanced at Rose, whom he was pleased to see was looking back at him.

"No, I CAN'T!" Hugo's frustrated scream broke Scorpius and Rose's connection, and they turned back to the scene to find Hugo's hands held motionless in the air, grasping at the nothingness around him.

"I'm not as brave as you think I am, okay?" Hugo continued, letting his hands down slowly, where they sat at his side. "I'm only smart if I'm taking my mother's advice. I'm only funny if I'm telling my father's jokes. I'm only cool if I'm walking by Lily's side. And I'm only brave if you're holding my hand."

Scorpius was taken aback by Hugo's final comment. It seemed as though others were as well, since nearly everybody started whispering to each other then, questioning what Hugo had meant about holding Nigel's hand. At least, that was until Rose hushed them all sharply, trying to gain whatever respect she could for Hugo and Nigel's privacy.

But they themselves didn't seem to care. Hugo had long since forgotten that Lily and Roxanne were watching, and Nigel no longer needed Fred's support. They only saw each other as Nigel said, "That's not true. I happen to know that your marks have been the top of the class this term, and these days, you spend every waking minute in the History of Magic section of the library. I know plenty of people who laugh at your jokes, and I know for a fact that some of the ones your father tells came from you first. I know that every other fourth year looks up to you over Lily, because they put in hours of work into your birthday celebration every single year, and not because they're asked to. And you _are_ the bravest person I know, because it's you who has made me brave enough to do this..."

And as Hugo stood completely still, Nigel traveled the foot or two that was needed to stand so close enough to touch Hugo's face. Then, slowly but steadily, as was always the case with Nigel, he stood tall, leaned in, and kissed Hugo. Though Hugo seemed shocked at first, he soon reciprocated the gesture, and the two were locked in a tight embrace. He had his arms wrapped around Nigel, his right hand grasping Nigel's sweater while gripping onto his own wand. Without saying the incantation for the spell, Scorpius's paper snowflakes had levitated from their spot on the ground and were floating around Hugo and Nigel, just as they were supposed to.

It took a while for the couple to break apart, but eventually they did so. Scorpius, like most of the people in the crowd, was still trying to wrap his head around this secret they'd apparently been keeping for a year. Still, it didn't take long for Scorpius to accept that the boys were gay; he was just happy that they had each other, and that their row had ended well after all.

Most of the others seemed to share the same thought, as Hugo and Nigel were bombarded with hugs and pats on the back soon after they'd stopped snogging. Fred and Roxanne were especially thrilled, as they refused to leave the two boys' sides. James was also happy for his little cousin, and Scorpius had to let go of Rose for a moment so that she could give both Hugo and Nigel a hug (though it was clear to Scorpius that she'd known Hugo's secret all along). Just about everybody seemed supportive, much to Hugo's surprise. Unfortunately, though, he had had some reason to be apprehensive.

Lily ran off and back into the common room before Hugo had the chance to notice, but Scorpius could tell that Hugo was looking for her amongst the line-up of people approaching him. Knowing Lily, she wouldn't be happy to be kept unaware of an important secret for such a long time, but Scorpius had a feeling there was even more to it than that. After all, if there was anything he had learned about Lily over the summer, it was that she was the type of person who couldn't bear the thought of being alone. With Hugo and Nigel's relationship now out in the open, he knew she'd be worried about being left behind.

But now wasn't the time for Scorpius to be thinking about Lily. He had promised himself to focus on Rose, though admittedly, they had both been distracted by the scene that had just played out before them. As soon as Rose returned to his side, though, Scorpius whispered, "Come on. We're not done yet," then took her hand once more and led her along the rest of the path.

"Well, none of this is going to seem nearly as romantic now that we've witnessed the beginning of a budding love, but I don't want to let all this work go to waste," Scorpius teased as he came to the end of the hallway, where a rather large covered pot was sitting in front of a giant, stained glass window.

"Oh, you mean, you didn't plan that last part?" Rose joked back.

Laughing, Scorpius pulled Rose's head toward his own and kissed the top of her forehead playfully. He hadn't thought about the gesture before he'd gone for it, and luckily, he didn't feel the need to regret it afterward. Rose looked much too happy for him to feel bad. She was practically radiant, in fact, beaming with love for both her brother as well as Scorpius (or so he hoped).

Smiling at the thought, Scorpius used his free hand to pull the sheet off the covered pot, revealing a goblet filled with love potion beneath it. Rose's nostrils flared as the smell overcame her, and Scorpius was once again overwhelmed by three distinct scents.

"When you told me you loved me," Scorpius started, "It wasn't at Hogwarts. It was in your bedroom in Ottery St. Catchpole, and you had to tell me nearly ten times before I said it back. Since then, I've lied to you by saying that I wasn't ready to love you after all. But I can assure you now that I am ready. I'm ready because for me, this potion smells like seawater that's been carried from the ocean by a traveling wind, the warm smoke from a wood-burning fire, and the perfect sweetness of wild raspberries. It smells like you, Rose – your eyes, your hair, your lips. It's everything I love. _You're_ everything I love."

Rose was beaming even brighter now, and she'd taken Scorpius's other hand in hers so that there was no way they could move away from each other. She was also happy to have her own response this time, as she said to him, "When I said I loved you nearly ten times, I would have kept saying it until you said it back. I had never been so sure about anything in my life, and it's still the thing I'm most certain of. For me, this potion smells like rain, and only rain. I've never told you this before, but the reason I love the rain is because it smells just like you."

Now it was Scorpius's turn to blush, and he had to remind himself that he couldn't kiss her just yet. There was more to say first. So he led Rose to the window, which he used his wand to open before giving a signal to a sly Sir Nicholas and then stepping onto the sill. "Will you trust me, Rose?" he asked, motioning for her to join him.

She did so without question, though she looked both petrified and exhilarated as she stared down seven flights of darkness. When she squeezed Scorpius's hand, he knew that she was ready, and so together, they leaped off the sill and into the unknown night.

The hippogriff flew by just in time for Rose and Scorpius to land on her back. They had fallen three or four stories before mounting the beast, and both had been screaming with excitement. Now, they were flying above the Hogwarts grounds, Rose holding onto the feathers in the hippogriff's neck and Scorpius behind her with his hands clasped around her waist. They weren't going that fast, but there was something to be said about seeing the castle at night.

It was majestic, with all its tower windows lit up by candlelight and spells that students were shooting out the tips of their wands. And as the hippogriff led Rose and Scorpius away from the castle, the magic only grew. They were approaching the Black Lake now, and as they proceeded to fly around its perimeter, Scorpius himself was surprised to see an assortment of jack-o-lanterns lighting up the island that sat in the center of the lake. There must have been at least fifty of them, all carved with various sizes of raindrops that perfectly mirrored the flames within them. It looked as though Scorpius really wouldn't ever know what to expect from Holly Longbottom.

After circling the water, the hippogriff slowly descended to a patch of land by the edge of the lake, just next to the boathouse. Once on the ground, Rose and Scorpius hopped off the animal and Scorpius let her go free. Then he walked Rose along the dark ground toward the water. Here, there was another pile of rose petals on the nearly frozen grass, and Scorpius picked one of them up and turned it into a flattened stone. He then threw the stone out onto the lake, where it skipped on the surface of the water to reveal a magical sidewalk atop the lake.

Stunned to see the stone skip all the way across the lake and to the central island, each skip extending the pathway until it made a bridge between the bank and the island, Rose finally asked Scorpius, "How did you do all this?"

Shrugging, Scorpius said, "Well, I've been practicing with the stones. The rest, I had a bit of help with."

Accepting his answer, Rose followed Scorpius onto the water bridge, which they walked upon to reach the jack-o-lantern island, a tiny piece of land surrounded by deadly waters and the Forbidden Forest. Scorpius went straight to the center of it, which had been laid with blankets, pillows, and baskets of food for the night. This was the final destination in Scorpius's planned journey, and he only hoped that Rose would agree to stay there with him.

"Look," he said to her, taking both her hands just as she had done with him before, "I don't know where tomorrow will bring us, and I know that we're surrounded by danger. But together, we have our own oasis. I'm ready to tell you everything, Rose, everything about this summer and about Astoria. I'm willing to spend the night telling you all that I know, but the first thing I want to say is, I love you. I never stopped loving you, and I never will. You know I won't."

Rose's face, illuminated by candlelight, was shimmering with tears as she asked, "You did all this for me?"

"For us," Scorpius nodded. "I didn't want you to have any doubt of my love for you. Not anymore. I want you, Rose. Only you."

"And you're going to tell me everything? Every last detail, even if it takes all night?" Rose asked. She wasn't willing to let him back in until she was sure that he'd be honest with her.

"What do you think the blankets are for?" Scorpius teased her. Rose laughed, and together they lay down on the ground and buried themselves under the covers. They were both on their backs and were staring up at the night sky, Rose's head leaning on Scorpius's shoulder and her hand lying atop his wounded chest, when the fireworks started.

"You can't be serious?" Rose laughed.

"Yeah, we sort of stole Peeves's secret stash," explained Scorpius.

Rose turned onto her stomach then so that she could face Scorpius as she said, "Thank you... for all that you did tonight, but mostly just for you. I love you, Scorpius."

"I love you, Rose," Scorpius returned before Rose kissed him. He couldn't describe how amazing it felt to have her in his arms again, to taste her lips on his, to hear her perfect voice say that she loved him. Today hadn't gone exactly as planned and neither had the past year, but there was something to be said about the unexpected. Sometimes all it took was a knock in the chest to take a person's breath away, but nothing could be better than the feeling that came with getting it back.

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_**Note: **Did you like it? Let me know in a review! Also, up next is a one-shot that will follow Nigel, uploaded separately as always (so 'author alert' me if you haven't already). Thanks for reading!_

_-Hailey_


	19. Draco's Distress

_**Note: **__If you haven't already noticed, I have written a oneshot following Nigel Creevey, which is meant to be concurrent with the last chapter, Chapter 18 - The Only One He Ever Deared. If you haven't read it, I hope that you take the time to now. Afterward (or if you choose not to), feel free to continue on to this chapter, #19._

_Finally! I know I've been a bit MIA lately, but here is Chapter 19. It's a heavy one, but it has to be, since it is the penultimate chapter of Part 2! That's right... Scorpius's chapters will come to an end after Chapter 20 :( But for now, he still has the spotlight, so I hope you enjoy his chapter!_

_-Hailey_

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**19 – Draco's Distress**

"Say it," she whispered. He could just make out her smile with the light of the rising sun.

"Rose," he replied. And then they watched the deluminator in Rose's hand as a tiny, blue ball of light emitted from it and floated right between their chests. It stayed there for a while, as if it didn't know how to take Rose to Scorpius when she was there already, and then dissipated back into the light-holder.

"That's incredible," said Scorpius, marveling at the magic. He wasn't a fan of what had happened that summer after the deluminator had brought Rose to him, but he couldn't deny how brilliant it actually was, or how useful it could be in the future.

Thinking the exact same thing, Rose said, "So, if we're ever apart again, for whatever reason, all you have to do is say my name and I'll find you. I'll rescue you. I promise."

Scorpius kissed her; he couldn't help himself. They'd been here all night, trapped on their oasis island in the middle of the Black Lake, talking and kissing, then talking and kissing some more. Neither of them had gotten any sleep, but they hadn't wanted to. They had been apart for so long and now they had to make up for the time they'd lost.

"Your turn now," Rose said as they broke apart. They were filling each other in on their lonely summer and fall, piece by piece. "I want to know about your transformation. What did it feel like?"

Scorpius grimaced at the thought, making Rose take his hand in hers to show her unflagging support. With a deep breath, Scorpius explained, "It was terrible. I mean, the process was… excruciating. But now, I'm so glad I pushed through it."

Rose smiled, just as proud of Scorpius as he was of himself, before turning serious once more and asking, "And when did Lily find you?"

Scorpius hadn't been looking forward to this part of his explanation. Surprisingly, though, Rose had accepted the lies he'd written her in his last letter, just as soon as he promised to never lie to her again, even if for good reason. Maybe, if he was lucky, she'd understand what had happened with Lily as well.

"It was right after I'd made my first full transformation," Scorpius began. "I'd tried to do too much too quickly and ended up hurting myself pretty badly. I made it back to my tent, but then I must have collapsed. Next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground in a pool of blood and was staring up at her. She had me drink this potion she stole from Al's and, slowly but surely, I healed. She visited me almost every day, bringing me food and things, but I never told her about the transformation, and we rarely talked about Astoria."

Rose nodded, telling Scorpius in a single gesture that she understood, but he could tell from her squinting eyes that she still had questions for him. "You said she found you when she was playing Quidditch at her house?" Rose asked.

"Yeah. My tent wasn't far from Godric's Hollow."

"So, why there?" asked Rose, this time looking more hurt than curious. "I know you wanted to protect me, but you could have just gone to the woods behind _my _house." It wasn't that she didn't respect his attempt to keep her out of danger; it was solely the fact that he didn't feel the need to be near her that stung somewhere deep in her chest.

Scorpius didn't want to answer this question either, but he had promised to be honest with Rose. So in keeping that promise, he replied, "I went to your house, actually. In fact, it was the first place I went. I wasn't thinking about protecting you yet; I just needed to talk to you, after what happened with Astoria. But then your dad answered the door, and he…"

"He asked you to leave?" This was the first time all night that Rose's voice had taken an even remotely angry tone. Ron had already tried to keep them apart once before and Rose wasn't about to stand by after it had happened again.

"Not exactly," Scorpius said quickly, hoping to dissipate Rose's frustration with her father. Ron had been doing the right thing, even though he hadn't done it in the best way. Scorpius felt empathetic about it, though, since he hadn't exactly acted much better himself. "He just didn't want you to get hurt. If I had stayed with you, Astoria might have come for me the very next day, and I can tell you now that she wouldn't have spared you or your family to get to me. Your dad was the only one thinking ahead, that's all."

Rose seemed to be listening, but Scorpius could see the corners of her eyes itching to roll themselves around. After spending a moment to grasp Scorpius's revelation, Rose stated, "I'm not going to let him get away with this. He made a promise…"

"And he kept his promise," Scorpius argued. Ron had said it himself that night; he had sent Scorpius away so that he wouldn't have to order Rose to _stay _away.

"Look, if you want to blame someone, blame me. I'm the one who lied to you, in more ways than one," he added, thinking of omitting the finding of Rose's ring in the Forbidden Forest, refusing to tell Rose about Astoria's attempted suicide, and finally, the letter from that summer. He wasn't going to punish himself for it anymore; he had done enough of that. Still, a part of Scorpius almost wanted Rose to punish him, just so that he could stop feeling so guilty.

Once again reading his mind, Rose put a hand on Scorpius's cheek and then pressed her forehead against his while whispering, "I don't want to _blame_ anyone. I just want the truth; the whole truth."

"And now you have it," Scorpius said with sincerity. "And as of right now, you'll always have it from me." He would never lie to her again, of that he was certain. He trusted her enough to tell her everything, and she was strong enough to take it.

This time, Rose kissed him. When their lips parted for a moment, Scorpius chuckled and whispered, "I'm starting to be pretty thankful that it's still the weekend. Let's just stay here all day."

Rose leaned away from him at that and sighed heavily. "I wish I could," she began to explain, "But I've got a prefect meeting in a half an hour."

Scorpius could feel his smile curve downwards in disappointment, and Rose must have seen it too, since she immediately offered, "I could just skip and ask Bobby to fill me in later."

"No," Scorpius argued. Of course he wanted her to stay with him, but he wasn't about to tear her away from her meeting. In fact, Rose's schedule reminded Scorpius that he wasn't exactly free all afternoon either. "You shouldn't skip the meeting. And anyway, I just remembered that I have to meet with McGonagall soon."

"Really?" Rose asked curiously. "How is that going? She's training you, right?"

Scorpius had shown Rose some of the skills McGonagall had been helping him with, using transfiguration while in Animagus form. He had forgotten to tell her about the Order, though, a subject which he himself often tried to forget, until McGonagall would mention the impending meeting he was to host for the Hogwarts faculty.

"It's going well," Scorpius replied after thinking about it. "I mean, the magic is amazing, and she's a brilliant teacher, of course."

"But?" Rose sensed that there was more to Scorpius's description than he was letting on.

"But," Scorpius caved, "She's also informed me that I'm to be the new leader of the Order of the Phoenix."

Rose's mouth dropped in surprise, but she didn't say anything while she waited for further explanation.

"The Order's trying to gain as much power as it can right now, mostly awareness and followers and such. There's a core alliance as well, with McGonagall, Harry and Ginny, your parents, and a couple others. But I'm leading all of it, or at least, I'm supposed to be."

"Supposed to be?"

"Well, I haven't actually led any meetings yet, though I do have one coming up. But I'm supposed to be gaining support from the rest of the school, only nobody really wants to follow me." Scorpius wasn't trying to sound pitiful, though it may have come across that way. He just didn't know what he could do at this point, to get people to understand that he was on the good side rather than the bad. "I'm not exactly a natural leader."

Scorpius was looking down at the ground, one hand anxiously pulling threads out of the blanket he and Rose were sitting on. His other hand, however, was being squeezed by Rose in an attempt to gain back his attention. Upon feeling the sharp chill of her ring sink into his palm, he looked up and into her eyes as she said, "Just because you're not a natural leader doesn't mean you can't learn to be. People will follow you, Scorpius. They just need to find a reason to first."

Nodding, Scorpius thought about what that reason could possibly be. Nobody had any proof that he was acting as a spy for Astoria, but he didn't have anything that would prove otherwise either. Right now, all he had was Rose… but perhaps that was it? Over the past week, Scorpius had banned together an entire crew of followers to help him with his serenade, all of whom had done it for Rose. People cared for Rose, even looked up to her. Maybe, with her by his side, he could rally enough of the students, at least most of the Gryffindor ones, to believe in him.

And so, with this thought in mind, Scorpius asked Rose a question that he rarely asked of anyone. "Will you help me?"

With a single kiss, Rose answered his question and said, "I will. You know I will."

Scorpius drew her drew her back into him, clasping a hand behind her neck and steering her toward him. As they embraced yet again, Scorpius could feel Rose getting on her knees and trying to stand up. Eventually, she did so, breaking apart from him and standing tall with a guilty expression.

Scorpius knew what she was thinking before she said it, for he knew that she was about to leave him to go to a prefect meeting with Al, and so she must be wondering what to say to him. After rubbing her tired eyes, she asked, "I should tell him, shouldn't I?"

"Yes," Scorpius replied, standing up so that he could face her again. It would be good for Al to find out from her, rather than anybody else. Thinking this, Scorpius asked, "I should tell Lily, shouldn't I?"

"Yes," Rose agreed. "And soon." Hugo and Nigel had helped with the reconciliation, so it was only a matter of time before they spilled the beans to Lily.

"But I should go," Rose sighed.

Scorpius wanted to plead for her to stay, but he wouldn't let himself. Instead, he kissed her forehead and then stood still and closed his eyes, saying, "Just go. Go, before I catch another glimpse of you and decide to make you stay."

As Rose's laugh filled his ears, Scorpius felt her hand run down his arm until it reached his own hand, which she squeezed once more before saying, "I'll find you later," and walking away.

When Scorpius opened his eyes, Rose was gone. Automatically, he felt lonely without her, but distracted himself by cleaning up their oasis, putting everything in the bag Colin had dropped off there, and then headed back up to the castle through the crisp December air, a permanent smile etched across his still exhilarated face.

He arrived at McGonagall's office earlier than they had scheduled, and so the Headmistress wasn't alone when Scorpius entered the room. Off to his right stood McGonagall with Professor Smethley, the two of them bent over an abnormally empty mirrored cabinet.

"It has to have been a student," Scorpius overheard Smethley mumble to McGonagall. "No one else has come into the castle recently, and I can't imagine that anyone on the faculty would ever do something of the sort."

"Yes, I believe you're right," agreed McGonagall. "Though I pride my predecessors in the security of this office, it has been broken into before. I would be fooling myself if I proclaimed otherwise."

As soon as McGonagall had finished her sentence, Scorpius knocked on the wall to announce his presence. He wouldn't have minded to keep listening, but he also didn't want to intrude rudely. "Hello, Professors. Er, I came for our meeting. I'm sorry; I know I'm a little early."

"Oh, that's all right, Scorpius," McGonagall said as she turned to see him there. "Please, come in. Professor Smethley and I were just discussing the disappearance of my pensieve."

"Your what?" asked Scorpius once he came closer to them, where he now remembered an old stone goblet full of shimmering liquid used to sit.

"My pensieve," McGonagall repeated. "It is an old tool of Hogwarts that was passed down through generations of Headmasters. It allows one to review memories, either from their own mind or any other source."

Scorpius had grown curious at this point, itching to know who might have taken the pensieve. Smethley, on the other hand, was merely confused, looking between McGonagall and Scorpius with astonishment at how honest McGonagall was being with the boy. Noticing Smethley's questioning looks, McGonagall told her, "He is the leader of the Order of the Phoenix, Sylvia. It is my job to keep him informed. After all, I answer to him now. We all do."

Feeling belittled, Smethley addressed McGonagall weakly and said, "I understand. I suppose I should leave you two to your discussion, then. I'm afraid there isn't much more I can do regarding the pensieve, anyway." And without another word, the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher was gone.

Watching her go in a flash, Scorpius commented, "She's terrified of you."

"No," McGonagall laughed. "She is terrified of _you_."

When Scorpius looked back at McGonagall with furrowed eyebrows, she explained, "It seems that the Sorting Hat's proclamation has once again taken shape. You see, this pensieve was most likely stolen by a student, and while I do not know whom that student might be or what they intend to use it for, I am positive that they did not form the idea alone. I believe Astoria has a spy here at Hogwarts, and Smethley believes that that spy might be you."

Scorpius froze as McGonagall walked around the room and sat calmly at her desk. He remembered very clearly the words of the Sorting Hat's most recent song, and at the time, he had even considered that he himself was the spy, since so many already believed this to be true. Of course, having a teacher believe it made Scorpius's anxiety about leading the Order far worse, not to mention the fact that yet another student in the school may be working under Astoria's control. What had started out as such a happy morning had suddenly taken a rather terrible turn.

"What does this mean?" Scorpius asked once he gathered his thoughts and was able to move once more. He had taken a seat across from McGonagall now, eager for her to provide him with some direction.

"Well," McGonagall sighed, "It means that I was wrong. I told you in September that it didn't matter that people had no interest in following a person they believed to be a criminal, because I truly thought that they would eventually come to their senses and see that they had no other choice."

"But they still aren't choosing," Scorpius stated disappointedly. It was one thing to have most of the of-age students' support, since many of them had already signed up to be a part of the Order, but that still left the majority of the school skeptical of their bona-fide trailblazer.

"No, they are not," McGonagall shook her head. "The faculty meeting is only a few days from now, and with Professor Smethley sensing danger, we can be sure that some of the other professors might listen to her. Meanwhile, all the students will be going home for the holidays soon, and I don't want them filling their parents in with nonsensical information regarding the likes of you and the Order. The last thing we need is masses of people questioning your motives and forgetting who the _real_ source of danger is."

"Well, if they won't believe me, maybe they'll believe somebody else," Scorpius suggested, thinking of Rose. With her, three of the four houses would be behind him in no time. Slytherin, on the other hand, was most likely a lost cause.

Smiling, McGonagall clasped her hands and leaned forward to say, "I've been thinking the exact same thing."

Doubting that she'd really been thinking the _exact_ same thing, Scorpius waited for more explanation. When McGonagall pulled a sheet of paper out from her drawer and handed it to Scorpius, he read the phrase, _Sign of Support_, printed across a drawing of a phoenix that flew out of flames and off the page before returning on the other side of the paper.

"I've had my Head students inform the prefects of their newest assignment," McGonagall started. "They have all agreed to try to gain as many signatures as they can from their respective houses. They'll be posting the sheets in their common rooms this evening, and they are currently waiting in the hallway for you to give them further instructions of what to tell their students."

"So, what," Scorpius asked, "We're just supposed to ask people to sign a paper and hope that that means something? Hope that that means they've pledged their loyalty?" The idea seemed slightly naïve, though it wasn't as if he had a better one.

"Signing this paper is signing a contract, Scorpius. It's making a promise. I'm not about to put every student in this school under the Unbreakable Vow, so right now, a promise is the best we can do. You just have to make sure that the prefects listen to you, so that the rest of the school can listen to them."

Scorpius didn't reply, and instead just nodded. Even with Bobby Dormer, Rose would be sure that Gryffindor earned the most signatures. Lucy would get plenty from Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw probably wouldn't be bad, either. Then there was Al, and Scorpius already knew that there was no way he'd be willing to offer any help, especially once Rose told him that she and Scorpius were back together.

"You should go talk to them," McGonagall woke Scorpius from his reverie. "They should be here by now. I'll see you tomorrow afternoon, and don't forget that the faculty meeting has been scheduled for this Wednesday."

"Right," Scorpius stood from his chair. "Okay. I'll see you tomorrow, then."

He was just about to step over the threshold when McGonagall called after him, "Oh, Scorpius, I've been meaning to ask how you're doing. I seem to remember you being rather broken only yesterday."

It felt like years had passed since yesterday's disastrous Quidditch match that had ended with the entire Slytherin team (except for Mercy) hospitalized for injuries inflicted upon them by Nigel, who happened to be Gryffindor's new Beater. Come to think of it, Scorpius's newly mended ribs were still quite sore, but after being with Rose all night, his joy had overwhelmed his pain.

"Actually, Professor," he answered, "I've never felt more whole."

And with one last smile from McGonagall, Scorpius was out the door and on his way down the spiral staircase to the seventh floor hallway. The prefects were huddled in a group a few yards in front of the gargoyle, Lucy chatting lazily with her Hufflepuff counterpart, the two Ravenclaws silent and tapping their feet with impatience, Patty Parkinson sneering at Muggle-born Bobby Dormer, and Rose whispering something to a crossed-arm Albus in a far corner of the hallway.

"Scorpius," Lucy said cordially, the first to notice Scorpius's appearance. Once she spoke up and Scorpius stepped closer to address them all, the rest of the prefects turned toward him, though Rose and Al still seemed distracted by their own conversation.

"Hi everyone." Scorpius tried to put a smile on his face, but it felt unnatural. When a few of the prefects snickered with disrespect, Scorpius tried to get to the point. "So, I'm sure Molly and Lorcan have filled you all in about this _Sign of Support_ campaign that the Order of the Phoenix is launching. And, well, seeing as I'm now a part of the Order, it's my job to ask each of you to help raise awareness of the group."

At that, Scorpius handed his pile of sign-up sheets to Lucy, who in turn passed them to the other prefects. Then he continued, "The campaign's pretty simple. Just tack the papers up in your common rooms and give a little speech to everyone telling them what the Order stands for-"

"And that is?" cut in the girl from Ravenclaw.

Scorpius was caught off guard, and almost found himself looking to Rose for help in answering the girl's question. He wasn't one for eloquent explanations, with the exception of when he spoke to Rose. But when he looked to her now, she wasn't there to find, her face turned away from him and staring at Al, who had his own facing the floor.

Curious to know if Al's harsh temperament was in reaction to learning of Rose's reunion with Scorpius, the latter had to tear his eyes away from his friends' direction in order to revert his attention back to the Order. "Er," he started, "We're a defensive unit. We stand for tolerance, acceptance... peace. But we can't achieve any of that alone, which is why we need all the support we can get."

"We'll get everyone we can," Lucy promised him. After helping Scorpius with his plans to serenade Rose, Lucy had become rather convinced that Scorpius would be a brilliant leader, and had decided that she and Lorcan would do all they could to support him in this daunting task.

At that, Lucy and the other Hufflepuff prefect ran off to their common rooms, the Ravenclaws and Bobby following suit. Al had gone off as well, leaving Patty to have to run to catch up, and Rose far behind in his wake.

Scorpius, still feeling anxious about the campaign and suddenly worried about his friends, approached Rose hesitantly. "I'm guessing that you told him?" he asked once he was close enough to Rose to take a loose strand of her hair and tuck it behind her ear.

Rose looked up at him disappointedly before replying, "He didn't say anything. He just stood there with his head down, like he couldn't look at me anymore."

Secretly, Scorpius had been hoping that Al was beginning to forgive him, especially after Harry had promised to talk to him about it. Now, though, it seemed as if that hope had been a complete waste of Scorpius's energy. Al wasn't anywhere near forgiving Scorpius, and in turn Scorpius had now given Al a reason to distance himself from Rose.

Taking Rose's hand in his, Scorpius said sincerely, "Rose, you don't have to do this. You don't have to choose between us. I could never ask you to give up your best friend for me."

"No!" Rose responded sternly. "Scorpius, _you're_ my best friend too, and I'm not letting you leave me again. Anyway, Al will realize eventually that I'm here for him, no matter what."

"Yeah, okay," Scorpius nodded. "I just wish he'd realize the same about me."

"He will," promised Rose. When Scorpius smiled slightly in hopes of convincing Rose that he believed her, she breathed in sharply and shook away her grief. "Anyway, what's done is done. Now I just have to tell James, which should be easier. Oh, did you get a chance to tell Lily yet?"

Scorpius shook his head, explaining, "I've been with McGonagall this whole time."

"Right," Rose responded, her thoughts not entirely present. "How'd the meeting go? Any news, other than the campaign, I mean?"

Though Scorpius had temporarily forgotten McGonagall's problem with the pensieve, he now recalled what his mentor had warned him about. Not bothering to question whether or not he should tell Rose, Scorpius said, "Yes, actually. Something's been stolen from her office. She says Astoria may have found a new spy."

"One under the Imperius curse?" Rose asked with concern, no doubt thinking of last year's Vincent Goyle, who'd carried out Astoria's bidding against his own will and was now suffering the consequences in Azkaban Prison.

"I don't know," said Scorpius before Rose could become too worried. "Smethley's looking into it."

Rose was already in mystery-mode at this point, but Scorpius couldn't let her try to solve this now. Doing so would only give her an excuse to think more about Albus, since the two of them always discussed these matters together while Scorpius pretended to listen. In an attempt to take Rose's mind off the subject, Scorpius announced, "I should go find Lily. Meet you in the Great Hall later?"

Rose barely had the chance to nod before Scorpius leaned in and kissed her. Something felt wrong as his lips touched hers, though, making him feel as if he was kissing a ghost. When he leaned away from her, he was surprised to see that although Rose's face had gone pale and her eyes were shifting, there wasn't a tear on her face, nor any welling beneath her eyelids.

Scorpius quickly sensed that he wasn't the only one who had changed that summer. Rose was stronger than she used to be, already refusing to break down when she clearly wanted to. She seemed unwilling to let the red patches under her eyes ever glimmer with tears again, and though Scorpius was proud of her for such determination, he still wanted her to know that she need not hide her emotions from him.

"Rose," he said, holding onto her arm. "What's in your head right now? I know this isn't just about Al, let alone what McGonagall told me. Please, Rose, talk to me."

With her eyes locked on the marble floor, Rose sighed and answered, "Al's not speaking to me. Lily surely won't be speaking to me. I sure don't feel much like speaking to my father. I just don't think it's going to be the best Christmas, that's all."

Christmas was Rose's favorite holiday. She'd always loved it, though Scorpius had no idea why. He'd had a couple of pleasant holidays with the Potters before, but last year's catastrophe had almost been worse than the lack of celebration he'd experienced growing up at Malfoy Manor.

Speaking of which, Scorpius doubted that he'd be invited to the Potters again this year, being that Al wasn't speaking to him either. He'd probably stay at school and spend most of his time with Ally and McGonagall, meaning that Rose would be left on her own to brace Ron and later the Potters, come Christmas morning.

Not knowing what else to say, Scorpius merely stated to Rose, "You'll make it through. You always do. Plus, I'll be here when you get back."

Somehow, his words managed to put a smile on her face, if only a slight one. "Thank you," she whispered in his ear before gently pushing him away and adding, "You should go. We don't want Lily finding out about us from somebody else. Meanwhile, I've a campaign to launch."

"That you do," Scorpius laughed. Running a finger through her hair, he said, "Just focus on that for now, okay? We can deal with the hard stuff later... together." Having Rose back meant that Scorpius had a partner again, somebody he had learned to lean on, but also somebody he had to be sure to let lean on him.

And with one last nod, Rose turned around and headed to the Fat Lady's portrait, which she shortly disappeared behind.

Scorpius then headed downstairs, hoping that he might run into Lily at some point. Instead, though, he practically collided with Hugo and Nigel, who were walking hand-in-hand in the opposite direction.

"Scorpius!" Nigel shrieked upon seeing him, a perpetual smile on his face. Hugo merely laughed at Nigel's extreme cheerfulness.

"Nigel, Hugo," Scorpius greeted them as he backed away some. "How are you?"

They looked at each other knowingly before responding in unison, "Fantastic." Scorpius was pleased to hear it.

"And what about you?" asked Nigel.

"Yeah, did it go well with Rose?" Hugo added, a hint of a threat underpinning his especially gleeful tone. He had been relying on Rose a lot lately, so Scorpius was pleased to see that now that Hugo was back on his own two feet, he understood that it was time to be the protective brother Scorpius always knew he could be.

"It went brilliantly," replied Scorpius, receiving a congratulatory pat on the back from Nigel and eyes that seared with warning from Hugo. To the latter red-head, he added, "Don't worry. I won't break her again."

Hugo made the smallest smile as he said, "I know you won't. After all, she's a whole lot tougher to break now than she was last spring. We both are."

"I can tell," Scorpius agreed. The Weasley siblings, once so incredibly fragile, now seemed ready to take on the world. It was a good thing too, since like Rose had said, they'd need all the strength they could get if they wanted to make it through the holidays.

After giving Scorpius and Hugo a moment to connect over their shared love for Rose, Nigel nudged Hugo and said with a shrug, "We should get going. We don't want to keep your grandfather waiting."

"Oh, you're probably right," Hugo agreed. "See you later, Scorp."

Scorpius almost let them go before he remembered that he was currently in the midst of looking for their friend. When he realized that they might be able to help him find her, Scorpius whipped back around and asked, "Wait! Do either of you happen to know where Lily might be?"

Nigel shrugged his shoulders in response, but Hugo tilted his head to the floor guiltily. Scorpius understood that Lily might be hiding from Hugo today, but that didn't mean that Hugo didn't know where she was. Hoping to pry an answer out of him, Scorpius asked, "Hugo?"

Hugo kept his head down as he answered, "She might be on the bridge; the stone bridge." From the tone of his voice, Scorpius could tell that this was a spot where Hugo had spent many hours with Lily, and a place that he had tried to avoid today. Now that Hugo was with Nigel, there was nothing he wanted more than Lily's support, but he and Scorpius both knew that she would never give it to him. Or at least, not so soon after hearing the revelation.

"Thank you," Scorpius said before he left Hugo and Nigel, headed for the stone bridge that overlooked the Black Lake.

The day had grown much foggier since that morning, dark clouds forming atop the canyon that lay beneath the bridge. Scorpius could just make out the shine of Lily's hair blowing on the other side of the stone wall that was punctured with glassless windows. She was breathing deeply, her cold air forming puffy clouds of its own in the wintry sky as she shivered and huddled beneath a Gryffindor sweatshirt that was much too big for her.

"I don't feel much like talking, so if that's why you're here, you might as well leave now," Lily stated to the sky, not bothering to address Scorpius as he leaned on the open sill next to hers.

Scorpius didn't respond. If Lily didn't want to talk, then he wouldn't make her. They both knew that it was enough for him to just be there with her, if only for this one afternoon. Plus, Scorpius figured that there was nothing left to tell her. She'd probably been on the bridge all day, and it had the perfect view of the island where Scorpius and Rose had spent their night and most of this morning. There was no doubt in Scorpius's mind that Lily had seen them there, and he had no intention of reminding her of the pain that had surely made her feel.

So, as the snow started falling and shortly turned into a blizzard, Scorpius and Lily didn't speak. They just waited, staring out across the lake until Scorpius could almost swear that he saw a part of it freeze. And as the two of them stood there together, one lonely heart beating beside one that had recently been reformed, Scorpius decided that he'd finally forgiven Lily.

It was simple, really. She'd done wrong and Scorpius had paid the consequences for her rash and ill-thought actions, but he had still won in the end, while Lily had been left with nothing. And he wasn't willing to let her feel alone because of all the people she'd scared off, because he knew better than anyone how that feeling could tear a person apart.

He was about to tell her this, having decided to break their vow of silence if only for a moment, when Lily said rather loudly (so that Scorpius would hear her over the shrilling wind), "Everybody's moving on, and I'm just here. Freezing... frozen."

Lily, the girl full of life, had just admitted that she couldn't keep up, that she'd fallen behind. Scorpius could barely believe the words that were coming out of her mouth, yet he was sure that he had heard correctly. Lily really did believe that she'd lost herself, but Scorpius knew that that wasn't true. Just because everybody else in her life was changing didn't mean that she had to as well.

He didn't know how to make her believe this too, but he was damn well going to try. So, he said, "When I was lying in that tent, bleeding to death, I couldn't stop thinking about Rose. I was sure that she would come for me, that she would save me, and that everything would be okay again. I needed her to pick me back up, because somehow I'd fallen behind. And she never came." He finally turned to her as he finished, "But you did."

This made her look at him, which is exactly what he wanted her to do as he explained, "There's always going to be somebody who will find you and pick you up when you fall. It's just not always the person you think it will be. And sometimes that feels wrong, but other times that person might end up being the one you needed all along." Scorpius didn't know what would have happened if Rose had found him instead of Lily. He didn't know if he would have survived just as well, but a part of him was convinced that Lily had been meant to find him there. After all, what Scorpius had really needed then was his family, and that's what Lily was to him.

With a snicker, Lily asked, "I suppose you're not going to be the one to pick _me_ up?"

"No," Scorpius stated. "I'm not." As much as he wanted to help her, all he would do would cause her more grief, and Lily didn't need that. That was what made Scorpius walk away, pushing his body against the wind and keeping his shivering hands stuffed in his pockets.

But Scorpius didn't make it very far before Lily screamed his name and then crashed into his chest. He was immediately overcome by her warmth, but it was the whisper of, "I'm sorry," that convinced him to wrap his arms around her.

She was the one who finally pushed him away. "Please, don't think of me as just somebody that you used to know."

Scorpius laughed, because it was so impossible, but also because it was so sad. He never thought he'd witness Lily Luna Potter _begging_ somebody to be her friend. With her, the grovelling usually came from the other end.

"I won't," Scorpius answered before Lily became too offended by his chuckling. "I love you, Lil'. I just don't love you the way you want me to."

Her brown eyes were muddy, darker and duller than the golden wood they tended to resemble. They were wide open, unblinking and showing no sign of leaking with tears, when Lily asked, "What do I do now?"

"Find your friends. They haven't changed, Lily. They still love you, and they deserve to be loved back. And no matter what you might think right now, you deserve the same." She'd find somebody eventually, of that he was positive. She'd find the kind of love with someone that would induce jealousy for generations to come. But for now, she was still so young, and she still had her own kingdom of fourth years to rule. Nigel might be able to gain Hugo's attention for a while, but he'd never replace Lily as Hugo's queen.

When Lily nodded, Scorpius walked her back to the castle, but left her at the hallway of the moving staircases, Lily heading up to the Gryffindor tower to change her clothes while Scorpius made his way to the Great Hall to meet Rose for supper.

Rose wasn't there yet when Scorpius arrived, so he walked over to the Slytherin table and took a seat next to Ilana. A plate of food appeared as soon as he touched the table, a warm roll of bread with steaming soup and a glass of pumpkin juice. Just seeing it all made the frozen hairs on Scorpius's arm fall back against his skin in relief.

"You look like an igloo," Scorpius heard as he gulped back his soup. Ilana wasn't one to hold back on the insults, but this time Scorpius probably deserved it, what with the piles of snow he could feel melting off his shoulders.

"Yeah, well, I feel like one too," Scorpius managed to reply after swallowing. Shaking off the cold, he added, "But I've been meaning to thank you. Things went really well last night, and Nigel told me that you were the one who pulled everybody together. I seem to owe you quite a lot at this point."

"Don't mention it," Ilana shrugged off the compliment. "So, what's this whole _Sign of Support _campaign about? That girl prefect just pitched it in the common room, but nobody seemed to be listening."

"Why am I not surprised?" Scorpius mumbled before saying, "I just need signatures, but I doubt I'll get any. I don't suppose you'd sign it, would you?"

Ilana looked at him blankly as her hand gripped the book she'd been holding more tightly. When Scorpius glanced at its cover, he noticed that it was the same book he and Rose had given Al last year, the one all about potions that had an unmistakable stain smeared across its binding.

Scorpius didn't get the chance to ask Ilana if Al had lent the book to her, nor did Ilana get the chance to respond, before Rose popped herself down next to Scorpius and distracted him with a cheerful 'hello'. Ilana disappeared as soon as Rose had caught Scorpius's attention, but he didn't forget that she had failed to reply to his original question.

"I am happy to announce that I have collected a signature from each and every Gryffindor student," Rose said before noticing that Scorpius was still lost in thought. Once she sensed this, though, she asked much more seriously, "Scorpius, what's going on?"

Scorpius let himself blurt everything out before he could even think things over. "Ilana. She's of age, but she's not in the Order. Everybody else is, but she's not."

Rose was waiting for more explanation, but Scorpius was still processing. Ilana had been a good friend to him this year, and he almost felt connected to her in some strange, symbolic sort of way. But she was also so mysterious. He didn't really know anything about her, and McGonagall had said that one of the students might be acting as a spy. Was it possible that Ilana was being his friend because she was supposed to get closer to him? And if so, how did Al fit in to all of it?

"You think she might be the spy?" Rose asked when she finally caught on.

"No," Scorpius stated instinctively, but then shook his head and said, "I don't know. Maybe. But she couldn't be. Could she?"

"I don't know," Rose shrugged. "We're not really that close. Actually, I don't think I've spoken a word to her since last spring."

Scorpius tried not to think about it. It was unfair of him to accuse Ilana of something he had no proof of. Plus, since when had he become so paranoid? It seemed as though ever since McGonagall had warned him about this possible spy and Rose had freaked herself out about Al and Ron, he couldn't shake the feeling that this blizzard might be blowing danger their way, and fast.

"Never mind," Scorpius told Rose. He had other things to focus on, just as he had reminded Rose earlier that day. "You said you got a lot of signatures?"

"Loads," Rose smiled. She seemed to understand that he wanted to drop the subject of Ilana for now. "You have more support than you think you do."

"I guess so." Scorpius was grateful for all the help Rose had already given him with this campaign, but he still wondered if Gryffindor would be enough.

Changing the subject once again, he asked, "Are you doing all right?"

Rose answered him with a kiss. "I'm doing all right."

Scorpius shifted in his chair and was about to ask Rose if it'd be okay if he left her to go to sleep early when she said, "Go. We were up all night; you have reason to be tired. I'll be fine. I'll probably just eat supper with James and then go to bed myself."

"You sure?" If she asked him to stay, he would.

"I'm sure." She gave him one last kiss just to prove it, and he squeezed her hand as he stood up and walked out of the hall.

On his way into the Slytherin common room, Scorpius was bumped in the shoulder by a red-faced, loudly laughing Mercy, clad in a Montrose Magpies jersey with her hand extended out to an invisible space.

Scorpius scoffed at her, knowing full well that Mercy was sneaking James in for the night, no doubt under his Invisibility cloak. He hated to think that Rose wouldn't have anyone to eat with after all, but he knew that she'd manage.

So, Scorpius carried on through the common room, passing by the usual stares of suspicious Slytherins and finally approaching the bulletin board. He stopped here before going to his dormitory to check the campaign sign-up sheet. As Scorpius had expected, the sheet didn't have a single name on it. What he hadn't expected was the feeling of disappointment that came with it.

* * *

Later that week, with the aid of Professor McGonagall, Scorpius hosted the Order meeting for Hogwarts faculty. They were still in the middle of the _Sign of _Support campaign, but McGonagall had wanted to gather the teachers together before the term ended. Though Scorpius had been rather nervous about this night for quite some time, it didn't go nearly as badly as he'd anticipated.

All the professors had gathered themselves in McGonagall's office, the Heads of Houses seated on either side of her and Scorpius, the rest forming a semi-circle in front of them. None of the teachers were at all disrespectful toward Scorpius, though he did receive a few pointed looks from Smethley when he tried to give her orders. Luckily, Hagrid had a way of shutting them up with a single grunt every time Scorpius spoke.

After a couple of hours, they managed to talk through everything McGonagall had on the agenda, each teacher being assigned a job to do in order to not only help raise forces for the Order, but also for preparation to defend the castle if it were to be attacked. McGonagall wasn't willing to take any chances after what had happened in the Second Wizarding War, and Scorpius was undeniably grateful for that.

Professor Flitwick was the first to be given a task, and he would be involved in securing the school under highly powerful protective charms. Scorpius also suggested that he set aside a few Charms classes to teach all of his students these spells so that they could place them on their homes, since most of their families wouldn't be aware of such technical charms, not to mention the Muggle families that might be the first targets.

Pontner, the Potions professor, was up next. McGonagall informed her that she'd be in charge of brewing both goblets full of _Felix Felicis_, 'Liquid Luck', as well as antidotes that could be stored in the Hospital Wing, while Neville Longbottom was asked to grow some natural herbs that might aid in the treatments. Smethley was responsible for training both her students as well as out-of-practice professors in the art of dueling and would also be giving lessons on the subject to interested witches and wizards in London over Christmas break.

Binns was to rally all the ghosts he could find, while Patil and Trelawney kept their eyes out for signs of an invasion. Arthur Weasley was given the special task of visiting all the homes of the Muggle-born children over Christmas to inform them of the Forbidden Flock as well as the Order, and to ensure them that they and their children were being put under the best possible protection.

Hagrid was the last to be assigned a task, and his was arguably the most daunting of all the others. Not only was he asked to corral all of the Hogwarts game, but he was also responsible for speaking to the centaurs and spiders, training the thestrals, and seeing if he could gain the support of either the dragon breeders in Romania or the giants that had hidden somewhere in eastern Europe. When Hagrid seemed overwhelmed by his assignment, Scorpius reminded him that he could ask his students for help, and Hagrid agreed to put both Colin Creevey and Lorcan Scamander to work.

Once all the assignments had been handed out, some of the teachers began to reminisce over the last war, bringing up problems they'd had that might want to be avoided this time around. Though it was rather morose to speak about a war as if such a thing was already predetermined to take place, Scorpius understood that as long as he was in school, and as long as Astoria was supposedly after him, Hogwarts was the most likely candidate for the outbreak of a war to take place. Plus, Scorpius appreciated being let in on all of the design tactics and flaws that he would never have considered otherwise.

He was quick to write down some of these topics, ranging from the lack of floor plans of the castle and similar lack of defensive strategy, to the lack of space to hold the wounded, to the lack of replacement wands for all those who'd lost theirs during battle and then died upon being rendered defenseless. Though Scorpius didn't suggest any solutions to these problems during the meeting, he had tons of ideas rattling through his head that he made sure to note down.

After all, the Marauder's Map would be an incredibly useful tool if Scorpius could convince James to share it amongst the core alliance, let alone if he could figure out how to make duplicates for everyone. A strategy could easily be devised amongst the core alliance, and Scorpius would hopefully have Harry's help for that. More space could be made for the wounded if the school were to be given more medical supplies that could be stored in the dungeons or the Great Hall. (Scorpius had a feeling St. Mungo's might be willing to give a sizable donation if he were to remind them how early they'd discharged a certain murderous woman.) And as for the wands, well, Scorpius didn't think it would be too much of a challenge to convince Nigel to take up wand-_making_ as a new hobby.

As Scorpius kept these plans to himself, however, McGonagall tried to reassure all the professors that enhancements would be made to the castle's facilities in due time, but that for now the focus was on raising awareness and keeping the students safe over the holidays. Once everyone accepted this and promised to make good on their assignments, McGonagall dismissed them for the night, Hagrid giving Scorpius a hug before he left and Neville agreeing to stick around longer to discuss something with McGonagall and Scorpius.

Neville was the only professor other than McGonagall who was also in the core alliance of the Order, so Scorpius assumed that was why McGonagall had him stay behind. His theory was confirmed when McGonagall sat back down at her desk and said, "We need to discuss the next Order meeting."

Scorpius and Neville turned their seats around to face McGonagall as the latter filled Scorpius in on her newest plans. "Professor Longbottom and I have discussed this at length, Scorpius, and we've agreed that a core alliance meeting should be held over the upcoming holiday break."

"Oh?" Scorpius asked. Break was starting next week, meaning that this meeting would take place relatively soon. Scorpius had been nervous enough for _this_ meeting, and one with the core alliance, for which there was so much more responsibility involved, was sure to be far more nerve-wracking.

"Well," Neville piped in, "It seems time now that word is getting out about the Order for the leaders of the group to sort out some things. It'll be much less hypothetical than this meeting was, since the discussion will be on more practical terms: How close Harry is on Astoria's trail, what Hermione can tell us about Shacklebolt's plan to defend the Ministry, which Aurors Ron thinks might be ready to go after the other members of the Forbidden Flock, things like that. Really, we just all need to be on the same page, and we need you there to make sure that that happens."

As Scorpius tried to keep up, his brain still buzzing from all the war talk of the last hour, he nodded and said, "Okay. So, the meeting will be here, then? At Hogwarts?"

Neville wore a guilty expression as he let McGonagall take back the reigns. "Actually, Scorpius," she said. "Hogwarts is going to be completely closed this Christmas."

"_What?_" Scorpius practically spat at them. "You can't _close_ Hogwarts!" Where was he supposed to go if the castle was on lockdown?

"Well, to be fair, I will stay at the castle," McGonagall defended herself. "But everyone else has been asked to make arrangements to stay elsewhere. We thought that it would be best to protect both you and the school by separating you during your most indefensible time."

Though the idea made sense, Scorpius had one rather large problem with the plan. "But if you're staying at the castle," he asked, "And everybody else is meant to leave, where will the Order meeting be? And where exactly am I supposed to stay?"

"I will not be attending the meeting," stated McGonagall curtly. Scorpius was about to ask why the hell not when McGonagall added, "You are more than capable of running things on your own. You proved that tonight. And do not worry about where you will stay; we've already made arrangements for you."

From the tone of her voice, Scorpius could tell that he wouldn't like what he was about to hear. Sure enough, Neville informed him of the terribly ironic location in which the meeting would take place. "I've asked Ron and Hermione to host the meeting in their house."

Scorpius felt like puking upon hearing Ron's name and knowing what his face might look like when Scorpius showed up at his doorstep again, not to mention the argument that Ron and Rose were bound to get in the moment she stepped of the train at King's Cross. Just to be sure that he'd heard correctly, Scorpius asked, "And Ron has agreed to this? To letting _me_ stay at his house?"

"No, you won't be staying there," corrected McGonagall. That made more sense. "As a matter of fact, you won't technically be staying anywhere."

Scorpius didn't even bother asking what she meant this time. Luckily, McGonagall sensed his confusion and continued, "Ron and Hermione have been told that you will be spending certain days of the vacation in their home with them, including Christmas morning and Christmas day, which is when the meeting will take place. On the other days, however, as well as every night, you will be hidden in your Animagus form, which no one but Professor Longbottom and the younger Ms. Weasley will be aware of."

It didn't take long for Scorpius to comprehend what exactly McGonagall meant by what she was saying. She didn't want him staying with any family over Christmas, since it would only put a target on them from Astoria's eyes. His Animagus offered the perfect camouflage, allowing Scorpius to quite literally disappear whenever he needed to. As for the long, cold nights, Scorpius understood when McGonagall winked at him that he'd be able to sneak in to Rose's room, so long as he kept his presence hidden from the rest of the Order.

_Well_, Scorpius thought, _this was sure to be interesting_. On the one hand, he was glad that he'd have Rose with him, and that he'd be there to support her if and when she decided to address her father about what he'd said to Scorpius that summer. On the other hand, Scorpius wasn't so thrilled about spending any more time in that house after his experience there last Christmas, especially if it meant hosting an Order meeting with Ron, but without McGonagall there to cool the air between them.

Hoping to hear that Harry might be able to attend the meeting, Scorpius asked Neville, "So, will the entire core alliance be coming? Other than Professor McGonagall, that is."

"No," Neville replied, much to Scorpius's disappointment. "Harry's not willing to abandon Astoria's trail just yet. But everybody else should be there."

Scorpius didn't feel the need to hide his obvious sigh. Harry was the person he wanted to be there more than anyone else, so to hear that he wouldn't be, and that Scorpius would be completely alone in a room full of witches and wizards far more powerful than him, was even more daunting than Hagrid's assignment had been.

Trying to remember who exactly was part of the core alliance in hopes of realizing that there might be somebody he could lean on, Scorpius thought of someone he'd nearly forgotten about and asked, "Is my dad going to be there?" Scorpius wasn't completely sure if he even wanted Draco at the meeting, especially if it meant that he and Ron would be arguing the whole time, but he did think that it would be good to see him.

McGonagall answered this time, with a simple, "I've sent an owl his way and am awaiting a reply."

As soon as the words came out of her mouth, an owl appeared and was perched on the other side of one of the office's windows. The bird was large and most likely had black feathers, but half of them were covered in the snow that had continued to fall all week long. The three turned toward the owl as it tapped the glass with its beak, and Neville stood up to open the window for it.

Scorpius could see that it was Eldritch, his father's grumpy, old messenger when the bird shook the snow off of his pure black feathers and opened up his gray eyes that then stared straight at Scorpius.

The bird released its envelope to Neville, who then handed it over to McGonagall. McGonagall opened it and read the message calmly, but grew much tenser as she finished reading and tucked it neatly atop a pile of papers on her desk.

"Well, what did he say?" Scorpius asked curiously. He had his hands gripped on the armrests of his chair, though he wasn't consciously aware of how worried he'd suddenly become. He could sense that something was wrong, but his mind continued to tell him that Draco was just writing to say that he'd be at the Order meeting on Christmas, nothing more.

McGonagall was about to reply when Neville suddenly opened the window again. This time, he'd received what looked like a magazine, but it hadn't come from an owl. In fact, from what Scorpius could see, it hadn't been delivered from any animal at all; it had just appeared out of thin air. Had Scorpius been in his right mind, he might have realized that it must have come from a thestral, an animal which he'd never been able to see but had learned about at the end of last year in Care of Magical Creatures. Unfortunately, he wasn't in the best state of mind to put two and two together just yet.

Neville answered both Scorpius and McGonagall's question before they had to ask. "It's from Luna," he said. "The newest volume of the _Quibbler_." He didn't say any more, but Neville's face had grown pale white and his eyes had gone wide with shock.

Unable to stay silent anymore, Scorpius stood from his seat and asked to whichever professor would listen, "What's going on?"

McGonagall walked over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. Scorpius knew by the gesture that he was right in worrying. Still, he didn't feel comforted by his mentor; he wouldn't be able to feel comforted until he knew what she was hiding from him. When he tried to tell her this through a harsh glare, she said, "It seems as though your father has decided to pay you a visit. He'd like to speak to you about something. He's waiting just outside this door."

Scorpius remained silent as he turned around and headed for the griffin-shaped knockers. He opened the doors with shaking hands and found himself staring at his father's back, covered in the usual black blazer, his white-blond hair greased to the side atop his head. "Let's go for a walk, son," Draco said as soon as he sensed Scorpius's presence.

Scorpius followed his father down the spiral staircase and into the hallway. He walked behind him, still unable to see his face, as Draco led him down seven flights of stairs that Scorpius could swear had stopped moving and had instead cemented themselves in place amongst the thousands of hanging portraits that were completely silent and looked on at the Malfoys with pity.

He followed his father through the entrance hall, not noticing all of the students that were holding copies of the _Quibbler_, whispering his name as they read. He followed his father as Draco led him through the front gates of the castle and into the cold, stormy winter's night. He followed his father down to the shores of the newly frozen Black Lake until Draco stopped walking and started breathing, sharp wisps of air shooting out of his nose with the pace of an exhausted Seeker after playing through a day-long Quidditch match.

Just as he had done with Lily and then McGonagall, Scorpius waited for his father to speak. As he stood there in stillness, he found his hand wrapped around the chess piece he'd been keeping in his pocket ever since the beginning of that summer. It was the knight from his bedroom windowsill, and though he couldn't explain why, it seemed to keep him from falling.

"Astoria broke into the house last night," Draco said when he had enough air to hold his breath once more. "I was working late at the Ministry. I didn't get home until early this morning, but she was already long gone by then."

Scorpius took his hand out of his pocket but kept it locked around the knight, and put his other hand on top of it. He knew they would freeze out in the open blizzard like this, but it was the only way to keep them touching; the only way to make sure he could still feel.

"Harry Potter was at the house, standing in front of the fireplace in the entryway. I asked him what he was doing there and he said that he'd followed Astoria Apparitions. I asked why he hadn't been able to capture her, and he said that he hadn't gotten there in time."

Scorpius was turning the knight in his hand, its stone tip beginning to tear at his already torn skin.

"When I asked what he hadn't gotten there in time for, he told me to go upstairs. He told me that some other Aurors were on their way, but that he had to go right away if he didn't want to lose Astoria's trail. So I started walking up the stairs and I heard him leave."

A tiny trail of blood was now leaking through the gaps in Scorpius's fingers. It was probably staining the chess piece, as well as his skin. He didn't notice. He didn't care.

"He hadn't told me where upstairs I was meant to go, but I already knew. I could feel it, almost like something was pulling me into her room. And when I got there, I wasn't surprised. All I felt was guilt. And I just collapsed. But when I tried to take her hand, it didn't feel like her. It felt more like a rock."

He needed to hear his father say it. He wouldn't believe it until Draco said the words.

"I think that's when it actually sunk in. That was when I finally understood what had happened, what Astoria had done, what I'd _let_ her do. She murdered her. She murdered my mother. She murdered your grandmother."

Scorpius's strong, powerful, and crumbling hold on his knight crushed the chess piece into tiny, sharp blades of rock as he fell to the ground. He let his hands separate and sink into the snow at his sides, the blood from his palms flowing into the white magic and turning it a brilliant shade of red.

His family had officially fallen apart. His home had been broken, his support system had died, and his mother had taken a side. She'd chosen hate, and in doing so had murdered any speck of love the Malfoys had had left.

Scorpius must have sat on the snow for an eternity, since at one point Draco grew so worried that he started a fire with his wand to keep the two of them from catching some sort of hypothermia. Once he'd determined that they'd be kept warm enough, he joined Scorpius on the ground and just sat beside him.

Neither of them moved. Neither of them spoke. Neither of them cried. They just sat there, Scorpius's white collared shirt forming a camouflage in the snow, and Draco's blazer forming a camouflage in the night sky.

After a good hour of stillness, silence, and numbness, Draco managed to pull enough energy from the fire to say to Scorpius, "I don't think I should leave you here alone. I'll ask McGonagall if I can have a bed in the hospital wing. Maybe we could stay in the castle over Christmas as well."

"No," Scorpius stated. Speaking was easier than he'd thought it would be, but his order did sound more like a croak than a word. It wasn't that he didn't want Draco there, though. He just didn't want to change McGonagall's plans for him, and that meant that Draco would have to find somewhere else to run away to. Scorpius wasn't about to show the world that he was suddenly close with his father just to have Astoria blow up that relationship as well.

"Scorpius," Draco argued. "I know what it's like to think of nothing else but a person's death, during every minute of every day. I won't let you go through that alone."

"Why not?" Scorpius asked. He'd accepted his father's change of heart toward him, but that didn't mean he'd forgiven him for the childhood he'd made Scorpius endure. "I've been alone for as long as I can remember, and you didn't seem very concerned about it before. Nobody was, except for Narcissa."

"I know that," Draco admitted. "And I'm sorry." He didn't try to convince Scorpius to let him make up for his absence or the pain he'd caused on his son. He was too sympathetic for any of that.

Still, Scorpius didn't want to inflict any more weight onto Draco's shoulders. He was carrying enough guilt as it was. So, to subside that, Scorpius said, "And anyway, I won't be alone."

Draco didn't know whom Scorpius was referring to as his companion, and Scorpius took a moment to decide whether or not he should reveal Rose's identity. In the end, he went with his gut and said, "I'm seeing Rose Weasley. Actually, I'm not _just_ seeing her. I'm in love with her."

This caused an effect on Draco that Scorpius hadn't seen coming. With the way he'd been acting lately, Scorpius had hoped that Draco might accept his alignment with the Weasleys, but Draco did no such thing. Instead, he was quickly on his feet and was walking away from Scorpius, only to turn around suddenly and say sharply with a rather threatening tone, "I'll see you at the Order meeting."

Well, Rose had been right about that, then. This was going to be one _hell_ of a Christmas.

Scorpius was like a ghost as he made his way back to the castle. McGonagall must have left the gate open for him, for he had no trouble getting inside even though it was surely past midnight. Though he wasn't thinking about where he was headed, Scorpius let his feet lead him downstairs to the dungeons, where he walked through the long, empty hallway to the point of entry into the Slytherin common room.

He had his head down as he entered what he'd expected to be an empty room. But when he saw shadows laden across the carpet, he lifted his head to find nearly every Slytherin student piled into the room, the underclassmen falling asleep atop one another on every couch or chair available, and the older kids chatting to each other between yawns.

They all noticed Scorpius's appearance around the same time. As they looked to him with the same pitiful expressions as all the paintings in the portraits had shown, Scorpius realized that they had all stayed up and gathered together because they were waiting for him. And for the first time all year, Scorpius felt nothing but support from their overwhelming stares.

As they woke up and went silent, Mercy approached Scorpius and said, "We'd all like to apologize. None of us wanted to believe you when you said that you weren't a part of your mother's Flock. But we understand now that you couldn't possibly be working as her spy, not after what she did to your grandmother."

Scorpius glanced down at Mercy's hands, one of which was holding the same magazine Neville had received earlier, which must have had an article detailing Narcissa's death inside. In Mercy's other hand, however, was a single sheet of paper that Scorpius recognized immediately.

Upon seeing Scorpius take notice of the sheet, Mercy handed it over to him and said, "We all signed it, almost every single one of us." Mercy was one of the seventh years who was already part of the Order, but that was an allegiance to the right side, not to Scorpius. Her signature was now on the very top of Slytherin's _Sign of Support_ campaign, followed by the names of various other Slytherin students. The only ones that seemed to be missing as Scorpius perused the sheet were, of course, Albus Potter and Ilana Higgs.

But Scorpius wouldn't fret about that now. He had plenty of other things to worry about, and so he wouldn't let something so trivial stop him from shaking Mercy's hand and nodding to the rest of the group in thanks as he walked to his dormitory. They'd all finally found a reason to follow him, but he couldn't help but wish that that reason hadn't been his grandmother's death.

This thought was in the forefront of Scorpius's mind as he opened his bedroom door to find Albus waiting for him by his bed. Before Al could say anything, Scorpius countered, "I'm not in the mood for an argument." Al hadn't yet addressed the topic of Rose with Scorpius, but Scorpius had just been waiting for the moment to arise.

Surprisingly, this wasn't the moment after all, since instead of yelling, Al replied softly, "Neither am I."

Scorpius looked up at Al then. His green eyes were surrounded by puffy, pink skin. His sharp jawbone was clamped tensely, and his black hair looked like it hadn't been washed in days. Something was definitely still going on with him, and it looked like he might have even spent the night crying.

"I'm sorry about your grandmother," he said sincerely.

Scorpius didn't reply as he tried to figure out why Al had suddenly become so sympathetic. He managed to get somewhat of an answer when Al handed Scorpius a glass jar from his bedside table and said, "Rose came to me about an hour ago, and she told me to give this to you. She said that you would know what it meant."

The jar was filled with Rose's classic bluebell flames, but somehow she had shaped them in a way that they formed a slowly burning rose petal. Beneath the floating embers sat a still golden needle. This was her way of telling Scorpius to come to her, and giving him an idea of how to do it.

Scorpius was almost out the door when he heard Al say, "I'm not going to stop being her best friend, even if she's willing to forgive you when I'm not."

Turning his head to the side but not completely facing Albus, Scorpius responded with, "Good. She needs a friend right now." He decided not to add the part about him needing one too.

Scorpius retraced his footsteps back up to the castle's open gate, where he quickly transformed into a falcon and flew through the night to the Gryffindor tower, which he circled around a couple of times before spotting Rose's open window and flying through it.

He was quick to transform back into a human as he landed rather ungracefully on her bed. Luckily, none of Rose's roommates woke up and Rose swiftly shut the window with her wand and drew the bed curtains closed around them. Then, just as Scorpius felt his body beginning to shake and a well of tears forming behind his eyes, Rose took him into her arms and held him while he grieved.

For the longest time, he couldn't stop shaking. Scorpius had been holding in all of his emotion before, and now it was seething out of him uncontrollably. He hadn't needed his father to stand by his side through this; he'd needed Rose.

"What does it feel like?" she asked as the shaking subsided, though Scorpius was still wrapped tightly beneath her, his tears dripping into her hair. "The pain?"

Scorpius remembered Rose's question from the other morning, when she had asked what his transformation had felt like. He hadn't answered in much detail then, but he could now. Because he remembered exactly how it felt: every piercing needle, every snapping nerve, and every shrieking cry. He remembered each and every second of that pain, but somehow, this was worse.

This time, there weren't any feathers that cut like razors, bones that crushed like shards of metal, or skin that burnt like the coarsest rope. This time, all he felt was his heart, shriveling at an exponential rate until he had to wonder where it had gone, and until every breath he took was an arduous fight to hold onto his last pocket of life. Much like his chess piece that was now gone forever, he was crumbling from the inside out.

"It feels like I'm disappearing." To himself, he added, _and you're the only thing that's keeping me holding on._

And because she could see right through him and read his mind, she whispered, "Don't worry. I'm not letting go. I won't ever let go."

And just to be sure that she would never leave, that if for some reason he did disappear and she couldn't find him, he said the word that would always bring her back to him. "Rose."

* * *

_**Note: **What did you think? I know it was sad, but it had to be done. Also, if you're interested in reading some more about Scorpius and Narcissa's late relationship, please check out my new ongoing story, 'Kids That I Once Knew', which follows the second generation kids through various moments in time. (Chapter 3 in particular offers a lot of insight into Scorpius's past.) Anyway, thanks again, and please review if you can!_

_-Hailey_


	20. Christmas Behind Closed Doors

**_Note:_** _The final chapter of Part 2 is here! (As I've mentioned before, the story will consist of 4 parts.) I won't say much about it now, except thank you for reading and reviewing throughout all of Part 2. I hope you enjoy its last 'hoorah' before Part 3 rolls around!_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**20 – Christmas Behind Closed Doors**

Flying in the cold was like walking through a blizzard, even without the falling snow. The chill sent a tingling sensation all along the nerves of one's spine, from the tip of the nose to the toenails. The wind blinded one's eyes, making them water until they ran completely dry. After a while, that chill and that wind made one's body so cold and so empty that it shut the body down, causing it to go completely numb in defense, its only way of fighting against the flight.

Scorpius knew all this from the Quidditch games he'd endured through the long winters at Hogwarts. Now, though, as his falcon self flew through a blue December sky on his way to Ottery St. Catchpole, Scorpius didn't feel any such tingling sensation, or watering eyes, or numbness. His feathers caught the chill and pointed it away, while his eyes were coated in a protective layer that the blinding wind bounced right off of, and his wings flapped and then soared, feeling every bit of the air upon which they floated.

He felt at ease in this climate, as he seemed to in just about any kind of weather. Transforming into a falcon provided Scorpius with a true escape from the human world, where thoughts of death and worries of life plagued his every breath. Still, his grief was washing away much faster than he had expected it to, mostly thanks to Rose.

She had barely let him out of his sight over the past week at school, and he'd needed very little convincing to fly to her dormitory or meet her in the Room of Requirement every night. And as she held him each evening, she'd ask him what the pain felt like, and he'd tell her that it wasn't as bad as the night before had been. Then they would fall asleep, and Scorpius wouldn't have any nightmares, so long as Rose was there. Just as Narcissa had held him as a child and covered his ears from his parents' screams in the hall, just as Al had stood by him when he'd arrived at Hogwarts feeling completely alone, and just as Lily had brought him back to the light when he'd nearly lost it forever, Rose was the one he needed now. She was the only family he had left, and so she was the only one who could help him heal.

Even as Scorpius flew now, he made sure to glide past Rose's compartment window every so often, to remind himself that he wasn't alone and to let her worried heart know that he was okay, that he was still there, that he hadn't left her. Each time he did so, she'd send a smile his way, large enough that he'd see it but small enough that Al wouldn't notice.

Albus was sitting across from Rose on the Hogwarts Express, which Scorpius had been flying alongside for over an hour now. Al, along with just about every other Hogwarts student, had no idea where Scorpius was headed for Christmas, and those who had any clue of his whereabouts (Rose, Hugo, and James) had all been ordered to remain silent by McGonagall herself. The Headmistress had gone to great lengths to ensure that Scorpius would remain protected, and Scorpius only hoped that her plan would work.

For the rest of the journey across the English countryside, Scorpius flew around the train lazily, diving underneath the elevated tracks and shooting past the window behind which sat Lucy and Lorcan, leaning against each other as they slept, with Lysander and James using their wands to draw on the two lovers' innocent faces from across the compartment. In another car of the train, Scorpius spotted the Gryff Group, Hugo and Roxanne sprawled across the two benches while Lily tried her best to help Nigel sort through a pile of books he'd recently checked out on wand-making. Scorpius also passed by Ilana Higgs as she stared blankly through the window of her lone compartment.

Scorpius hadn't let himself think of Ilana as the possible spy ever since he'd accused her of such to Rose. He wasn't going to try to analyze the motives of a girl who had only ever been there for him. The spy would have to be revealed eventually, but Scorpius refused get in the middle of it; he already had more responsibility than he could handle.

After another hour or so, Scorpius could just make out the sight of London's Tower Bridge sitting right on the horizon line. They weren't far from King's Cross Station now, so Scorpius took the opportunity to veer away from the train and start heading west for the Weasley house.

He arrived before the Weasleys did, and because they weren't supposed to be aware of his presence just yet anyhow, Scorpius tried to hide himself amongst the bare branches and bountiful snow of their front yard maple tree. Just as soon as he'd perched atop a sturdy branch, however, he heard a rustling sound that told him he wasn't alone.

Scorpius turned his head quickly to see a scruffy, black bird perched on a branch across from him. This bird was much smaller than Scorpius's falcon, but Scorpius still found himself intimidated by it. After all, he had never actually interacted with a real bird while in his Animagus form before. He also didn't know much about birds, but he did know that they had a pecking order. Upon seeing the other bird a second time, which was some sort of crow, Scorpius assured himself that a falcon would be much higher on the totem pole than this little thing. So, Scorpius subtly puffed up his chest and stared down at the crow with intimidation, which seemed to work, as the smaller bird ended up moving to a branch further away from Scorpius. The crow didn't seem to want to leave the tree, though, as it ended up staying there the whole time Scorpius waited for the Weasleys to come home.

Ron's car came up the long, straight driveway with wide, uncontrollable turns in every which way, then nearly crashed into the maple tree. Neither Scorpius nor the crow shuffled at the tree's shaking roots, though Scorpius looked down at the car curiously.

Hugo was the first out from his seat in the back, and was shortly followed by Rose. The two slammed their doors defiantly before collecting their bags from the boot. When Hermione stepped out and had sufficiently brushed herself clean of the snow that had uprooted from the earth upon their arrival, she wrapped one arm around Rose and the other around Hugo and walked with them to the front door.

Ron was the last out, and seemed both exhausted and disappointed by his less than satisfactory driving skills and the way in which his family had deserted him. After a moment of wondering whether or not they had left him alone on purpose, Ron ran after the other three while calling out, "Oi! No need to rush!"

When the door to the house closed behind Ron, Scorpius left the crow and flew to the shorter apple tree where he could spy through the kitchen window. Ron was just taking something out of a cupboard when Scorpius peeked inside, but the former kept turning his head to the opening of the kitchen, which led into the living room. That was where Rose, Hermione, and Hugo were sitting on the couch and talking, Hermione laughing at all the stories Rose and Hugo had to tell.

At one point, Hermione looked over at Ron and gestured her head for him to join them, but Ron didn't go. Instead, he turned around and faced the window above the sink, looking out at the apple tree and meeting the eyes of Scorpius, the falcon.

Scorpius knew that Ron didn't know it was him perched on the tree, but it must have been odd to see a falcon in one's front yard. Still, Scorpius found himself holding Ron's gaze for a while, if only because he could see the same loneliness and guilt in Ron's blue eyes – Rose's eyes – that Scorpius had been a victim to all year.

He hadn't meant to ignite anything between Ron and Rose, but Scorpius could already tell by Rose's cold shoulder that she wasn't going to let go of Ron's lie. Meanwhile, Hugo had something to tell his father, and it looked like he'd be keeping his distance while waiting for the proper moment.

But Ron wouldn't look away. After playing numb for the longest time, Scorpius bent his stubby legs and pushed off the tree. He passed by the maple tree to see that the crow was still there and then flapped his wings forcefully to gain altitude. He flew across the countryside for the next couple of hours until night fell, and he swore he could feel Ron's eyes on him throughout duration of his the journey.

The sky was completely black by the time Scorpius returned to the Weasleys' front yard. He could see lights shining from the living room, from what must have been the Christmas tree, but he didn't see anybody inside. He quickly hopped onto the maple tree, which the crow had finally deserted, and edged carefully along the branch that led him to the third floor, the location of Rose's bedroom window.

Just as she had been when he'd come by that summer, Rose was tucked up in a chair in the corner with her reading lamp on. Scorpius tapped the window with his beak, and Rose looked up and smiled at him. She pointed her wand to her closed door and said a quick spell, probably the _Muffliato _one that would be sure to keep her parents from overhearing anything if they came upstairs, and then ran over to the window.

Scorpius flew in the second it was open and landed, as a human, right in front of Rose.

"Hi," she said while patting down some of his air-blown hair. "I snuck up some food for you," she added, motioning to her desk.

Scorpius nodded in thanks and then started eating; he hadn't had any food since early that morning. In between mouthfuls, he answered her silent question, "I'm fine. Been a bit bored, but the flying was nice."

"Good," Rose sighed with relief. She'd sat back down on her chair now, wrapping herself in an old Gryffindor blanket.

When Scorpius finished off his bread, he joined Rose on the chair, sitting on the armrest and letting her lean her head in the crook of his shoulder. It was funny; he hadn't been in her room since last Christmas, and this time felt so much different. He felt immediately comfortable here, like he could live in this one room for the rest of his life.

He loved everything about it: the overflowing bookshelf that had been packed four books deep on each panel, the walls that had been painted a sky blue color to contrast all the orange Chudley Cannons posters and red Gryffindor banners, and the stack of a year's worth of _Daily Prophet_ volumes sitting by the dresser. But there was something odd about the papers.

Next to the volumes, atop Rose's dresser, sat a different pile... this one filled of letters. Scorpius knew immediately that they were all the ones he'd sent her that summer. He knew all too soon that she'd kept every last word, every last lie.

"Scorpius, it's nothing," Rose said as Scorpius stood up and walked over to the dresser. He didn't listen to her, deciding to shuffle through the letters anyway, looking for the one that had ruined everything.

Oddly enough, this letter, the final one, was in the best shape of all of them. It was in perfect condition, its folds creased back in the exact way it had been sent, the ink as clear and bold as if it had been written yesterday. Scorpius couldn't help but assume that Rose had made an effort to keep it so pristine.

Holding the letter but not daring to read it, Scorpius mumbled, "I wish you had thrown this out."

He could hear Rose coming up from behind him, so he asked, "What's the use in keeping it?" The other letters were a testament to their love for one another, but this one had no such meaning.

Rose took the letter out of Scorpius's hand gently and said, "Because it was the only proof I had that you still loved me."

Scorpius didn't understand. This was the letter in which he'd ended things between them, in which he'd said that he _wasn't_ ready to love her.

"I knew none of it was true," explained Rose. "But sometimes my mind would tell me otherwise, and then I'd read the letter and I'd remember. I'd remember how hard you had tried to make it sound convincing, and I'd realize that it couldn't possibly be true. And then I'd talk to Al and we'd figure out where next to look for you."

Scorpius didn't feel any less guilty upon hearing this, but he decided it wasn't worth tormenting himself over, especially when that involved him reminding Rose. So, for now at least, he dropped the subject, put his arm around Rose, and the two sat on her well-made bed.

"Speaking of Al," Scorpius said quietly, "How were things between the two of you on the train?"

Rose lit up immediately upon hearing Al's name, like she had been waiting to talk to Scorpius about him all afternoon. "Oh, he's great!" she said, turning her body ever so slightly to face Scorpius.

But as she looked at him, Scorpius knew all too quickly that Rose wasn't being perfectly honest, not just with Scorpius, but with herself. She was smiling from cheek to cheek, but her eyes didn't have enough light in them to match.

"He doesn't seem very angry with me anymore," Rose continued. "And I mean, he still feels a little distant, but he's there, you know? That's all I can really ask for."

Scorpius didn't like to see Rose pandering to what was sure to be nothing but bitterness and sarcasm in Al. He wanted to tell Rose that no, that's not all she could ask for, that she could have more, that she _deserves_ more, but he couldn't do it to her. He couldn't do it because no matter the circumstance, Rose always had hope, and to take that away from her would be like losing the central piece of a puzzle. Scorpius had chipped off the edges already, so he wasn't about to make it any harder for her to be put back together. She could have her hope, so long as he had enough skepticism for the both of them.

So Scorpius refrained from giving Rose a lesson on realism and instead lied down on the bed and held her as she took her place beside him.

"I have a good feeling about this," she said as she closed her eyes. "The three of us... we're going to be okay. Everything will be back to normal soon. I can feel it."

Scorpius kissed the top of her head lovingly, but he didn't respond to her wishful thinking. He didn't comment on her voice cracking, or the tenseness of her hand that had fisted itself around his shirt, or the fact that she had closed her eyes just so that she could lock her tears away. He didn't say anything. He just let her sleep, dream, and wish, because faith had gotten them both this far, and because it was her light that made him feel safe enough to sleep at night.

* * *

The next morning was the day before Christmas, and Scorpius woke from a uniquely undisturbed slumber as soon as the sun started shining through Rose's window. She wasn't up yet, but he knew he had to get out of her room, so he quickly went into her bathroom, changed his clothes into a clean pair of pants and another collared shirt that Rose had smuggled here in her suitcase, then came back and kissed her on the forehead before heading out the window as a falcon.

The crow was back. There was fresh snow on both the ground as well as the branches of the maple tree as Scorpius circled the house a couple of times before perching himself there. The bird was in the exact same spot that it had been in the day before, and Scorpius felt somewhat unnerved by its presence. Luckily, he wouldn't be there for long.

Today (along with tomorrow) was one of the days that Ron and Hermione had agreed to 'host' Scorpius, according to McGonagall. So, after waiting about a half an hour to see smoke come out of the Weasley's chimney, Scorpius decided it was time to head inside.

Because he didn't want to transform in front of the creeping crow, Scorpius flew into the woods to transfigure himself, then walked down the driveway as a human. Ironically, the crow flew off just as soon as Scorpius made it to the Weasleys' front porch. Trying not to give the bird's odd behavior too much thought, Scorpius took a deep breath and knocked on the pale blue door that stood in front of him.

As soon as his fist touched the door, however, Scorpius noticed its color changing. Right in the middle it, a thin streak of black was painting the words, 'The Bird's Nest', in perfect cursive handwriting. Scorpius smiled at the magic, already impressed by the lengths Hermione was going to make her home the official headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix.

But the message disappeared as soon as the door opened, Hermione Weasley standing in the entryway across the threshold from Scorpius. She had on jeans and a long-sleeve, red shirt that would surely match the color of her family members' hair. She was wearing the necklace that Ron had given her last Christmas, and her bushy hair was hanging down around her shoulders. Just like Rose, her smile lit up the room, and Scorpius felt more than obliged to walk inside and let her greet him with a hug.

When he broke away from her, Scorpius said, "Thank you so much for having me. Oh, and I really like the door."

"You're more than welcome, Scorpius," said Hermione. "And the door was actually Ron's idea. Our new code-name will only appear if it is knocked on by a member of the Order, and if it is met with someone who is not a member, it will send an alarm through the house. That way, we won't have to worry about any intruders, since we had to take down some of the protective charms on the property in order to let people through for the meeting. It's quite brilliant, I think."

"Definitely," Scorpius agreed. He could tell how pleased Hermione was with Ron, as well as how happy she was to be deemed as the mother hen.

"Well, come on inside," Hermione opened her arms for Scorpius. "I hope you haven't eaten breakfast yet."

Scorpius shook his head and then followed Hermione into the kitchen, in the middle of which sat an old wooden table already set for five. Rose was seated on the side with two chairs, but she stood up and wrapped her arms around Scorpius upon seeing him.

"Hi," she said cheerfully as she took his hand and made him sit down beside her.

"Hi," he replied. He nodded his head at Hugo as well, who was sitting on the other side of the table, holding an unopened envelope with shaking hands.

Scorpius didn't get the chance to ask what was in the envelope when Ron walked into the room, kissed Hermione (who was piling pancakes onto plates at the counter), and then took a seat at the head of the table.

"Scorpius," he said, noticing the young Malfoy had arrived.

"Ron," Scorpius returned, standing from his seat and leaning over the table to shake Ron's hand. Rose, who was in between the two men in her life, didn't show any sign of a reaction at Ron and Scorpius's newfound understanding.

Soon, Hermione had finished cooking and the food was on the table. After telling everyone to take as much as possible, Ron and Hugo taking twice as much as anyone else, they all started eating and Hermione turned to Hugo and said, "Go on. Open it."

Hugo had already stuffed back an entire pancake when he looked at his mother for encouragement. When she smiled at him, Hugo turned the envelope around and started peeling off the fold, and Scorpius noticed the Hogwarts address on the front.

All the Weasleys looked at Hugo anxiously as he pulled out a piece of paper and read it to himself. After a moment, he put the letter down on the table, stared blankly ahead, and said, "I did it."

Rose and Hermione were squealing with joy, and Scorpius soon realized that Hugo had just received perfect marks for his most recent term at Hogwarts – a feat that only a Granger could ever accomplish. But as the Weasley women swelled with pride, Hugo looked to his father.

Ron wasn't screaming or jumping. He was sitting at the table in silence, but his eyes were wide and watery as they met Hugo's, and Scorpius could tell that the father and son were trying to read each other's expressions: Hugo still terrified by how much he was differentiating himself from his dad, Ron still unsure of just how different he and Hugo actually were.

The rest of the meal passed by quickly, Hermione, Rose, and Hugo chatting up a storm about all the books they'd read recently. For both Scorpius and Ron, however, breakfast was fairly silent, neither of them having a way to jump in to the central conversation.

After breakfast, Scorpius spent most of the day with Rose, either talking by the fireplace or walking in the snow. They didn't discuss Al much more, but Rose helped Scorpius get ready for the core alliance meeting, telling him all that she knew about some of the members whom Scorpius had never met. Then Scorpius asked her about Ron, and whether or not she was planning on talking to him any time soon. She assured him that she would, but she needed some time first.

The two were just coming inside from one of their walks when they arrived at the door to find Hugo waiting for them. He asked Scorpius if he might be able to talk to Rose for a while, and though Scorpius was hesitant to be left alone in the house, he handed Rose over willingly, knowing that Hugo wanted to talk about Ron and figuring that it would be a good idea for him and Rose to strategize together.

Not knowing what to do by himself, Scorpius walked aimlessly into the living room, where he found Hermione sitting on the floor behind the couch, surrounded by a sea of floating wrapping paper, scissors, and tape.

Scorpius was drawn to Hermione's elf-work, taking a spot on the floor and asking, "Do you need any help?"

The very focused Hermione didn't look away from her current gift as she answered, "Yes, actually. Could you help me with that pile?" She gestured toward a mountain of unwrapped presents to her right, which Scorpius got started on.

Though Scorpius could have tried to use charms to do his wrapping for him like Hermione was doing, he figured that it would be safer to start off by hand. Unfortunately, he couldn't even manage that, and ended up folding a simple shoebox into a frightening, disproportionate dragon covered in a pattern of swirling snowflakes.

"Bloody hell," mumbled Scorpius as he took a look at his dreadful work. He was as much of a perfectionist as the next person, especially when it came to neatness. Naturally, this just wouldn't cut it for him, nor did he think it would for type-A Hermione.

As Hermione heard Scorpius's swear, she turned to him instinctively and bit her lip to keep from laughing. Because she couldn't help herself, she said in the sweetest possible tone, "Please don't take this the wrong way, but that is ghastly."

Scorpius laughed with her at that, saying, "Yeah, I'm pretty hopeless. I bet you're wondering what Rose sees in me right about now."

Hermione chuckled at this as well, but it was lighter and more sincere than the last. Then she took Scorpius's hand off what used to be a shoebox and held onto his arm for a moment as she said, "Scorpius, I've never wondered for a second what Rose sees in you. If I had, I'd be the greatest hypocrite alive."

Scorpius's heart warmed at her touch, and for a minute he felt like he was about to cry. He didn't understand why she reminded him so much of his late grandmother, nor did he realize that what she had just told him was what his real mother should have been saying to him since the day he was born.

"Here," Hermione said suddenly, waking Scorpius from his momentary trance. "Let me show you how to do it."

She took the next gift off the pile, a simple book that was probably meant for Rose, and picked out one of the wrapping papers rolls. She unrolled the paper smoothly and did a test-wrap around the book to see how much she'd need, then cut it in one long, straight stroke. Then she folded the paper over the book, making sure the edges weren't at all torn, taped it together, and wrapped a gold ribbon around it.

"I used to do it by hand every Christmas," explained Hermione as she handed the gift over for Scorpius to examine. "It was one of my favorite things to do. Now, of course, I don't have enough time to wrap them all by hand, but the charms help."

"I wouldn't even know where to start," said Scorpius as he marveled at the perfection of Hermione's wrapping skills. "I mean, clearly I didn't with the wrapping, but I'm talking about the gifts as well. How do you know what to get people?" He was thinking about Rose of course, because though she'd picked out plenty of trinkets for him to give to her family, he hadn't thought of anything to give to her.

As Hermione started on the next gift, this time using her wand to wrap it, she said, "From what I've heard, all the gifts you've ever given have been plenty appropriate."

Scorpius thought about what he'd ever given Rose before that she might have told Hermione about, but the only thing he could think of was the ring, and he just happened to have found that in the Forbidden Forest. Now, he only had one day to come up with something perfect, and he didn't exactly think that the woods of Ottery St. Catchpole would be filled with free jewelry.

After grunting about such, Scorpius said, "Well, it's the thought that counts, right?"

"Oh no, that's complete rubbish."

Scorpius looked up at Hermione to see that she was entirely serious, and he grinned when she said, "It's the delivery that counts. And I've been told from more than one witness that no matter how worried you are about something, you always deliver."

She was right. The ring hadn't been the perfect birthday gift; the perfect gift was letting Rose know that he still cared. His transformation of the Room of the Requirement hadn't been the perfect Valentine's Day gift; the perfect gift was every moment that Rose and Scorpius had spent in their clearing since. The rose petals and fireworks hadn't been the perfect anniversary gifts; the perfect gift was finally telling Rose everything she'd been waiting to hear.

And it was true; he did have a way with delivery, whether that meant conjuring his patronus at the last possible moment, catching the snitch even when his team had no hopes of winning, or leading a meeting full of witches and wizards that had twice as much experience as him. Scorpius always found a way to do what he was supposed to in the end, even when nobody expected him to succeed.

Thinking about how he might deliver for Rose, Scorpius admitted, "I just want her to know that leaving her this summer was the biggest mistake of my life, and that I never want to leave her again."

Hermione didn't seem to have any trouble figuring out whom Scorpius was speaking of, as she suggested, "Then find a way to tell her that you're done leaving. Find a way that will make her believe that you're ready to be still."

As he listened to Hermione, Scorpius was struck with an idea. So, as he stood up in determination, he said to Hermione, "Thank you," before heading out of the room.

On his way, however, he paused by the chess set that was sitting on the coffee table beside the couch, looking down at it and picking up the white knight.

"Do you play?" a voice asked from behind Scorpius.

Scorpius put the knight down and turned around to see Ron looking at him from the doorway, where he might have been standing for a while now.

"I used to," answered Scorpius plainly.

Ron didn't say anything more on the matter, but he dropped his head down to face the floor as he added, "Would you like to stay for dinner?"

No thought was necessary for Scorpius to reply with, "I'd love to."

* * *

Christmas morning was perfect. Scorpius woke with Rose in his arms, and then re-entered the Bird's Nest after flying out of Rose's bedroom window. The crow was back on the maple tree, but Scorpius ignored it and was let inside the house by a beaming Hermione and an enthusiastic Ron.

Because the Potters had decided to spend the morning with Teddy and Victoire so that they didn't have to shuffle baby Remy around, it was just the Weasleys and Scorpius for the first half of the day, corralled around the Christmas tree opening gifts with each other. Rose and Hugo put their differences with Ron aside for the time being, so everyone was included in the gathering.

Ron, as usual, went first in the annual round robin of gift-giving, followed shortly by Hermione, Hugo, Rose, and finally Scorpius. There was nothing too surprising about any of the presents, and Scorpius had decided the night before that he didn't want to give Rose her gift right away. He wanted her to open it in private, so he'd told her as soon as they'd woken up that he'd give it to her later that evening, when they were alone in her room again.

All too soon, the morning was over, and Scorpius was on the couch listening to Rose argue with Hermione as they all waited for the core alliance members to arrive for the scheduled meeting.

"I don't understand why I can't just sit in the background and listen," Rose pleaded. "I promise I won't make a sound." She was upset that her parents had ordered her to be absent (or rather, upstairs with Hugo) during the meeting, as she was still underage and therefore couldn't yet be a member of the Order.

"Rose," Hermione responded, "These are McGonagall's orders, not mine. You need to respect that."

"Your mother's right, Rosie," Ron piped in. He'd been cleaning up in the kitchen while keeping a lookout for any of the expected gifts, but now he had joined the crowd in the newly spacious living room (everything had been pushed to the side to make room for all the people that were coming) and was standing by his wife's side.

"But I thought Scorpius was supposed to be the leader!" Rose fired back at them. "Doesn't that mean that he should get to make all the decisions?"

Scorpius shrugged his shoulders and tried to hide himself within the wooden chair he was currently sitting on. He didn't want to get in the middle of this particular fight, since he knew that Rose had inherited her persuasive skills from _both_ her parents.

"Yes, but imagine how that would make him look." Hermione replied. "Plenty of other underage witches and wizards, including the majority of your cousins, are looking to be a part of the Order as well, and we can't very well let you all in. Even some of the ones who _are_ of age and who _are_ part of the Order aren't allowed to be in the core alliance."

With the exception of Scorpius, James was the youngest member of the core alliance, at only seventeen, but he was the son of the Ministry's best Auror, so he had a right to his role. And Rose would have that same right, just as soon as her next birthday came around.

"Fine," Rose sighed, realizing that she wouldn't win the fight against her mother.

As Hermione made her way out of the room, Ron looked at Rose and pointed to his ear, but the sly suggestion was thwarted by Hermione when she yelled from the kitchen, "And don't bother trying to use any Extendable Ears! We're going to have eleven pairs of eyes watching for them!"

At that, Rose and Ron both sighed in disappointment, but when the doorbell rang and Hermione announced that the Potters had arrived, Rose's face perked up and she ran to the door. Ron and Scorpius followed suit, while Hugo could be heard crashing down the stairs.

Ginny, James, and Teddy walked inside with cherry cheeks and snowy skin. They were quickly bombarded with hugs and kisses from the Weasleys. Just as soon as all had greeted one another, Hermione offered Ginny some tea and she and Ron dragged her into the kitchen, while Rose pulled James aside as Scorpius overheard her asking him, "Did you happen to bring your Invisibility Cloak?"

Meanwhile, Teddy and Hugo had some sort of secret handshake they were performing that showcased Teddy's color-changing hair. By the time they finished, Teddy had settled on his preferred color, blue, before he and Scorpius walked through the hallway and into the room that was now full of chairs, ordering Hugo to stay behind on watch-duty.

"How are you, Scorp?" Teddy asked as they took their stances by the doorway, both of them trying to ignore Rose and James's not-so-inconspicuous whispering in the corner.

Scorpius had always felt slightly awkward when around Teddy Lupin. He supposed it was because they had similar upbringings, raised mainly by a grandmother and the Potters. But of course, Teddy was actually Harry's godson, whereas Scorpius wasn't truly connected to the boy who lived at all.

"I heard about Narcissa," Teddy added solemnly. Scorpius's grandmother had been the last living Black daughter, after the infamous Bellatrix Lestrange was killed in the Battle of Hogwarts, and following the death of Teddy's grandmother, Andromeda, from a few years back. Now that they were all gone, Teddy and Scorpius were two of the very few wizards remaining from the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

Scorpius nodded, not wanting to recount the grief he had endured following Narcissa's passing, some of which he was still struggling with. Teddy seemed to understand this, perhaps better than anyone, as he didn't say that he was sorry or ask if there would be a funeral. He had been an orphan from only a few months old, so Teddy was well versed in the topic of death, and therefore knew that pity was far more aggravating than comforting.

With frustration rather than pity, Teddy commented, "This whole Forbidden Flock is getting way out of hand. Hearing all the deaths pile up almost makes me wish I'd become an Auror so that I could start fighting now."

For as long as Scorpius had known Teddy, through seeing him with the Potters during the summer or at Christmas, he had been somewhat obsessed with avenging the death of his parents. After graduating from Hogwarts, he'd enrolled in an intensive training program to become a member of the Wizengamot, the wizarding court of law. Scorpius knew that he was just waiting to bring in the death eater responsible for murdering the Lupins, though it sounded as if he'd settle for any killer these days.

"Tell me about it," Scorpius agreed. He hated having Harry out there looking for Astoria and not being able to help with the cause. He just didn't feel like the difference he was meant to make was one that could be made from backstage in the wings.

Still, Scorpius was curious to know how much Teddy knew about some of the members of the Flock other than Astoria, so he asked, "Have you convicted anyone yet?"

"Of the Flock?" asked Teddy. When Scorpius nodded, Teddy answered, "Not since Vincent Goyle. I'm itching to give Rookwood a piece of my mind, though."

Knox Rookwood was the one who had killed those two Muggles in Little Whinging. Scorpius didn't know much about him, other than what Albus had mentioned about him being related to an old death eater, but it sounded like Teddy knew plenty.

"Did you know him or something?" asked Scorpius, looking directly at Teddy to see him staring into nothingness, his big brown eyes drooping just as his skin began leaching the blue out of his hair.

"Oh, I knew him all right," said Teddy. "He and his twin sister were in Victoire's year when we were at Hogwarts. They didn't know much of each other until Dom got to school." Dominique Weasley was Victoire's younger sister, and she must have been about twenty years old now. Scorpius remembered her from Hogwarts, but he'd never had the chance to meet her, since she'd been four years above him and was in Ravenclaw house.

"She and Knox were together for years, even after he graduated," Teddy continued. "He was her date at Victoire's and my wedding two years ago, by which time they were already living together. But then we came back from our trip to Paris to find out that he'd disappeared, not even bothering to leave a note for Dom. We never heard from him again until we saw that article about him in the _Daily Prophet_. Now, Dom's still a complete wreck, and apparently he's become Astoria's best pet."

Rose hadn't mentioned any of this to Scorpius before, and he had a feeling that Teddy was telling him in confidence. And as appreciative as Scorpius was to know more about this Knox person, who would have been in his seventh year when Scorpius started at Hogwarts if he was Victoire's same age, something about the story just didn't add up.

Trying to make sense of it all, Scorpius asked, "But if Knox was older than Dominique, how'd they ever get to know each other?" He was fairly certain Dominique had never played Quidditch, and that was one of the only ways students interacted with others who weren't in their same year or house.

"They were in Ravenclaw together," stated Teddy matter-of-factly.

Scorpius turned to Teddy in shock. He had assumed that Knox had been in Slytherin. With the exception of Peter Pettigrew, there wasn't a single witch or wizard who went bad who _wasn't_ in Slytherin, and there had definitely never been one in Ravenclaw. At least, not until now.

Unfortunately, Scorpius didn't have time to ask anything else before another knock was heard at the door. "It's the Creeveys!" yelled Hugo from the entryway.

Teddy and James remained in the living room as Scorpius went to greet the guests, Rose catching up to him in the hallway. She had her hand around his instantly, and he asked, "Did you get it?"

"Of course I did," she said proudly.

Scorpius glanced at her sweater to see that it was a little fuller than usual, James's cloak stashed underneath it. "Don't get caught," Scorpius warned her.

"I won't," Rose promised as they came to the entryway. She then kissed Scorpius on the cheek and whispered, "Good luck, and don't worry. I'll be there the whole time." He smiled and watched Rose say hello to the Creevey couple before heading upstairs to her room.

Once she was gone, Scorpius introduced himself to Dennis and Natalie Creevey, the parents of Colin and Nigel. They were lovely people, both incredibly common-looking in appearance, with mousy hair and mahogany eyes, but they were also abhorrently happy, with permanent smiles that warmed the entire room.

After meeting Scorpius, the Creeveys turned to Hugo and embraced him like a son. It only took a few seconds for them to start chatting away with Hugo, who quickly warned them not to mention his secret to Ron and Hermione. They promised him to keep quiet, and then Hugo hugged them one last time before being banished to the third floor.

Just as Scorpius motioned for Dennis and Natalie to meet the others in the living room, the door opened again to a very bundled up Neville Longbottom. He shook Scorpius's hand and wished him a Happy Christmas, but seemed distracted by something from outside.

Scorpius shifted himself around the still open door to see a woman with long, unkempt waves of blonde hair standing in the middle of the front yard and staring up at the leafless maple tree.

"Is that an Umgubular Slashkilter in that tree?" asked the woman, whom Scorpius assumed was Luna Lovegood Scamander.

"Oh, it's probably just that bloody crow," Scorpius yelled out to her, not sure what sort of creature she had just spoken of, but completely certain that it wasn't residing in the Weasleys' tree.

Just as soon as Scorpius had finished his sentence, however, Neville had a hand on his shoulder and was saying, "Don't try to set her straight, Scorpius. There's absolutely no use in it."

Scorpius didn't respond as Neville widened his eyes and held his arm out for Luna to take his hand as she made her way up the front steps. "I don't think it was a crow," she said as Neville slipped off her coat.

Luna was wearing one of those ugly Christmas sweaters with an embroidered reindeer that had a protruding red nose, along with the strangest earrings Scorpius had ever seen. Though they didn't stay in his line of vision for long, he was fairly certain that they were tiny jewels in the shape of radishes.

How Lysander and Lorcan could have ever been created from this person, Scorpius would never know. Still, he invited her inside cordially and pointed her in the direction of the kitchen after she said something about craving pudding.

"Isn't she brilliant?" Neville said dreamily as he walked after her, to which Scorpius didn't feel the need to reply.

As Scorpius remained in the entryway, he silently counted all of the core alliance members that were already here, while listening to the dizzying sound of conversation coming from just about every direction. Upon coming to the conclusion that there were ten people in the house (not including Rose and Hugo), Scorpius realized that they were missing only one person, and at the same time he remembered who that one person was.

He didn't have more than a split second to brace himself before a pop came from down the road and Scorpius spied through the door's peephole to find his father walking up the driveway. Scorpius opened the door for Draco before he even got to the front porch, and let him inside without saying a word.

As soon as Draco's shoes touched the rug in the entryway, it was as if all the coziness of the Bird's Nest started peeling off, layer by layer. Draco's sour face and surly disposition gave the air around Scorpius a kind of tenseness that hadn't been there before, and as Draco made his voice heard by saying hello to his son, silence swept across the rest of the house like a flood of water coming over a lively forest ground.

It was an odd thing to be the one leading Draco. Scorpius had always walked behind his father, and he had such a distinct memory of doing so right before Draco had told him of Narcissa's death. But now it seemed as though they both knew that Scorpius would no longer walk behind his father. As he approached the living room where the most important members of the Order of the Phoenix were waiting for him, Scorpius knew that he would no longer walk behind anyone. Others would now walk behind him.

Ron was the first person Scorpius and Draco came to. The chairs had been arranged in a large circle within the room, but Ron had the chair by the doorway, just beside the one in front of the fireplace. That one was more alone than any of the other seats, separated from its neighbors, Ron on one side and Neville on the other, by a couple of feet each. Scorpius didn't need to be told that that was to be his chair.

He didn't sit down right away, however. It took a while for Ron and Draco to glare at each other before Ron manned up and shook Draco's hand, then gestured toward an empty chair on the other side of the room, directly across from Ron. Draco still didn't say anything as he took his seat and surveyed the assembled group of witches and wizards.

Scorpius did so as well, taking a moment to familiarize himself with his surroundings before he sat down. Ron was on his left, followed by Hermione. Then came Ginny, James, and Teddy. Draco was lodged in between Teddy and Dennis, who was beside Natalie. Luna and Neville connected the Creeveys to Scorpius, and thus completing the circle.

In the center of that circle sat the moved dining room table topped with piles of paper, and in between Hermione and Ginny floated a small notebook and a Quick-Quotes quill that would be recording the meeting's minutes. And though there wasn't anything visible between Scorpius and Ron, the former could hear the steady, rhythmic breathing of the girl he loved, hidden beneath James's cloak.

Knowing that Rose was there, Scorpius found the confidence to finally take his seat and address his team. "Okay," he started, rubbing his hands across his pants to try to shake off his nerves. "So, first off, I'd just like to thank you all for coming. For those of you who I'm only just meeting, I'm sorry it's not under better circumstances, and I hope that I'll be able to get to know you over time."

There was chuckling and smiling from most of the room, which Scorpius took to be a good sign. So at that, he decided to turn things over to Ron, saying, "I suppose we should start with some updates. Ron, what can you tell us about Astoria and Harry's whereabouts?"

Nine pairs of eyes automatically shifted away from Scorpius then, which felt somewhat refreshing. Soon, his own eyes followed, looking directly through Rose to face Ron as the newly-appointed Head of the Auror Department informed everyone, "Astoria's exact whereabouts are currently unknown, though Harry came close to catching her when she took a detour to Malfoy Manor. Unfortunately, he arrived too late and was then stalled when–"

Suddenly, Draco interrupted quite bluntly, "When he found the dead body of my mother upstairs and decided to wait for my arrival from the Ministry."

Everyone lowered their heads when Draco spoke, trying to avoid eye contact with the man who felt very much like an imposter. Scorpius was beginning to wonder why he had agreed to appointing Draco to the core alliance, not to mention why he had ever told his father about Rose. Both decisions seemed utterly nonsensical now, but Scorpius supposed that he would just have to live with them.

"Yes, exactly," Ron picked up where Draco left off, trying to lighten the mood once more. "But what matters is that Harry didn't lose Astoria's trail completely. He's been following her through Scotland this past week."

"You mean, he's near Hogwarts?" asked Neville. He was the alliance's main spokesperson for Hogwarts, so naturally he was worried that the castle might be in danger.

This time, Ginny answered, most likely because she was the last person to have spoken with Harry directly. "He thinks Astoria's just toying with him," she explained. "She wants him to think that Hogwarts is threatened so that he'll order Ron to send out the rest of the Aurors. She's not actually going to attack."

"And even if she were," Scorpius added, "McGonagall's the only one at the castle, and it's completely locked." Neville already knew this, of course, but Scorpius thought it might be good to let the others know. Dennis, Natalie, and Teddy sighed in relief.

Turning everyone's attention back to the Aurors, Scorpius asked Ron, "And is the rest of the Flock being tracked?"

"Yes," Ron answered. "I have my ten best out following some of the people that have been sighted with Astoria, including the ones I fought off at the Creeveys' this summer."

"What about that dark boy?" Dennis asked from across the room.

"Oh, yes, the hooded one," added Natalie in remembrance. She and her husband weren't nearly as experienced in fighting off dark wizards as Harry, Ron, or even Hermione, but they were still more than qualified to be here. They had held their own when Astoria had attacked their home that summer in search of their Squib son, Colin, and Scorpius didn't sense any fear in their voices as they relived that night now.

They were used to dealing with fear. Rose had told Scorpius the other day that they were trained Obliviators, witches and wizards that worked in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes and specialized in modifying and erasing the memories of Muggles who had witnessed magic. The Creeveys were experts in the art of fragmenting fear, and so they knew how to fragment their own.

"I'm going to take a wild guess and say that the hooded figure was Rookwood?" asked Teddy.

"It was," Ron concurred.

"Slimy little geezer," Teddy swore under his breath, throwing James into a bit of a tizzy.

Once they both calmed down some, Ron continued, "But Rookwood doesn't seem to be an easy one to keep track off. My guys don't have any clue where he is now."

There was obvious disappointment in just about everyone's faces upon hearing this, most of all in Teddy's. His hair had just turned a shade of bright orange, a cross between hopeful yellow and raging red.

Figuring it was about to time to switch subjects, Scorpius transitioned the alliance into the next update. "Hermione, any news from the Ministry?" he asked. She wasn't the only Ministry worker in the room, but she was the highest ranked, and therefore the closest to Shacklebolt, the Minister for Magic.

Hermione took the floor with ease, saying, "The Minister's main priority right now is getting word out, just as Scorpius and McGonagall have been doing at Hogwarts. Post has gone out with informative letters, wanted posters have been put up all over Diagon Alley, and most recently, every overage witch or wizard has been sent a Ministry token that is in direct correlation to the Auror department. It's meant to be used for safety measures, as a sort of S.O.S. It was modeled after the ones we used in Dumbledore's Army, so a message can be sent from where the serial number should be in order to request help from an Auror."

This was the first time Scorpius was hearing about the new form of communication, and he was thoroughly impressed. The coins would make it possible to have a country-wide security system, and there was no way Astoria could infiltrate it, since each coin would be coming from the Ministry itself.

"That's excellent!" Scorpius praised highly. Now that they'd gone over all the news from the primary departments at the Ministry, Scorpius asked, "Are there any other updates we should all be aware of?"

He didn't expect there to be any, but surprisingly enough, James leaned forward in his chair and said, "Yeah, actually. My mum and I have taken the liberty to talk to all of the major Quidditch teams about the Forbidden Flock. They've agreed to put extra precautions on all the stadiums, protective enchantments and things like that. I've also spoken with some of my teammates from the Montrose Magpies, and we'd all like to donate the majority of our sponsor money to the Auror department. They're going to need to train people fast if they want to keep up with the growth of the Flock, so we figured they could use a few extra galleons."

"I've an article written about it for the _Daily Prophet_ that should be printed this week," Ginny added.

Scorpius was impressed with this too. After what James had pulled with Nigel at the last Quidditch match back at Hogwarts, Scorpius had lost a lot of respect for the guy. Now, though, he couldn't help but see the compassion Rose was always trying to convince him was actually there somewhere. Then again, the whole thing might have just been Ginny's idea.

"All right, great," Scorpius commented before moving on. The next topic was what he'd really wanted to get to, since it was the one _he_ was most involved in. "Next on the agenda is strategy. We've got the Aurors out there, and we've raised awareness, but we need to be prepared for an attack. For that matter, we need to be prepared for a _war_."

Reactions to Scorpius's proclamation ranged from excitement (Teddy, James, and even Neville), to anxiety (Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Dennis, Natalie, and Luna), to absolute dread (Draco). Amongst it all, though, there wasn't one person who was willing to object.

Still, they did have questions. Draco, the one whose face had been flushed with anguish, asked bitterly, "How are we supposed to prepare for a war when we don't know where or when it will take place, let alone how strong the enemy force is?"

Scorpius didn't want to be the one to respond to his father, but when nobody else had any ideas, he gave in and said, "I've been thinking about that a lot, actually. See, right now, we're all assuming that Astoria has all the control, but maybe that's only because we're handing it to her."

Everyone was intrigued by this, and Scorpius was so rattled up by his idea that he found himself standing up and clapping his hands on the central table as he suggested, "What if _we_ decide where we want this war to take place? I'm not saying that we have to give it a date, but we could at least choose a location. We'll just make it so that the Flock has no choice but to meet us there if they really want to take us down. That way, we get the home-court advantage."

"And where exactly do you suggest we make our 'home court'?" asked Dennis. The home court was a Quidditch metaphor that Scorpius had read about once before.

"Actually," replied Scorpius, "I was hoping that one of you might be able to tell me."

For a while, there was silence. Nobody wanted to offer up a place they knew and loved just to see it get destroyed, which Scorpius didn't blame them for. Just when it was quiet enough to hear a pin drop, however, Luna said in an incredibly high-pitched voice, "How about Hogwarts?"

All those who had been a part of the Battle of Hogwarts looked to Luna with creased foreheads and pained eyes. Meanwhile, Scorpius, James, and Teddy looked to each other with fresh enlightenment. Scorpius had already been helping McGonagall prepare Hogwarts for a _possible_ attack, so why not prepare it for a war?

"Luna," Scorpius spoke to the table, pointing a finger in the air as he shook his arm to keep his blood flowing. "That is a _brilliant_ idea!"

Now the creased foreheads and pained eyes were all on Scorpius, but he wouldn't let anyone protest before he could explain himself. "Think about it!" he exclaimed. "Everybody who will be fighting in this battle went to Hogwarts, so we all know it well. The castle's one of the largest and most protected buildings in the country. And most of you have fought there before, which means that you can learn from any mistakes you made then and prevent them from happening this time around. That's about as perfect a place as I can think of."

"And what about all the kids?" asked Natalie. "When Hogwarts was threatened during the Second Wizarding War, hundreds of underage kids ended up in the middle of the fight, either because nobody was there to make sure they left the castle, or because by the time they knew what was going on, there was no way to leave. I should know; I was one of them."

"Then we make sure there are enough ways in and out of the castle for them to escape," James said, standing up and pulling out the Marauder's Map. Scorpius didn't even have to ask before James offered to try to make copies for everyone.

Neville and Ron were on their feet as well, quickly hunching themselves over the opened map and suggesting all sorts of hidden doors and tunnels that could be built into the castle's foundation. Before long, everybody had gathered around the table as Scorpius led a discussion on defensive and offensive enhancements to the castle, as well as possible placements of Order members all across the grounds.

Eventually, the discussion took a turn for the worse when Teddy asked if the Order should have any rules regarding the outcome of a fight. "If we made sure to keep everyone alive," he suggested, "They could be taken to court, and that way everything would be perfectly legal. They'd most likely end up in Azkaban anyway."

Some people were fine with the idea, like James, who added, "Yeah, we could take their wands and keep them in the dungeons until the battle's over. I mean, that's what the cells are there for, right?"

"They could use a few security enhancements," said Draco, recalling his days in the battle, having been brought to the dungeons with the rest of the Slytherins only to escape from the basement with ease. "But I agree. Not everyone in the Flock deserves to die."

Scorpius was skeptical of the idea, though. Ron seemed to be thinking the same thing, as after having a silent conversation with Hermione, he looked directly at Draco and argued, "They might not all deserve to die, but I can tell you one thing: They _will_ be fighting to the death. If we try to give them any second chances, we'll only lose twice as many battles."

From then on, the argument grew into just what Scorpius had been afraid of: an extremely personal brawl between two completely opposite wizards. Still, there was no stopping it once it had started. Everybody else in the room didn't dare to interrupt the tallest and most powerful men there, and so they just watched and listened with narrowing eyes.

"I thought the Order was meant to be a defensive organization," Draco fired back. "And now you want to take out every possible life that's aligned with the enemy, even if they're aligned against their will?" Scorpius knew that Draco had been a death eater so many moons ago, but that he had had no say in the matter.

Even if Draco had good reason to argue his side, though, Scorpius still found himself agreeing with Ron as the latter replied, "Well, we won't have time to separate between the ones who are fighting against their will or not. And even the ones who are doing it against their will can do plenty of harm. Do you really want to take the risk of seeing what fear can do to them?"

"I know perfectly well what fear can do to a person," Draco seethed. "But if they know that they won't be killed by the other side, they won't have any reason to succumb to that fear in the first place."

Dennis and Natalie were nodding hesitantly in the background. They didn't like the idea of killing anyone, especially the innocent. James and Teddy seemed to agree, but they hadn't lived through a war like their parents had, nor had they witnessed the true wrath of Astoria like Scorpius had.

It was clear that Ginny, Neville, and Luna stood firmly on Ron's side, for they comprehended the gravity of the situation, and knew all too well that it would take far too much time, effort, and space to try to spare anyone on the Flock.

Hermione was the only one who seemed to be completely torn between the two sides. She knew that the sacrifice would be worth all the lives of Order members that would be saved if the Flock was to be rid of completely. On the other hand, she kept looking to Draco with pure and unbiased sympathy, wanting things to be as fair as possible.

But none of their opinions had any influence on Ron or Draco. They just kept fighting amongst themselves, Ron the next to speak. "Look, we need to keep as many lives as possible from our side."

"Oh, so you think this is all for the greater good?" Draco interrupted. "Because I don't know about you, but I would define the greater good as keeping as many lives as possible, _period_. It shouldn't matter which _side_ they're on."

"So says the man who just happened to choose the _wrong_ one!" Ron had no sympathy for Draco, and most everybody knew why.

Similarly, Draco refused to be disparaged by a Weasley, so he threatened Ron by asking, "Do you really want to talk about choosing sides? Do you really want to go there?"

Acting overly confident in himself, Ron leaned over the table toward Draco and growled, "Don't you dare threaten me in my own home."

"I have a right to threaten you when you've let _my_ son inside your home without my knowledge of it!" Draco had been fuming all evening, and now Scorpius's prediction had been confirmed: that Draco's fuming was solely his fault.

Ron was about to argue back when James piped in, "Relax! He's almost seventeen years old, and he still needs permission from his parents to visit his girlfriend? He's the _leader_ of the Order of the Phoenix, for crying out loud!" James had never been afraid of speaking his mind, though it was still surprising to hear him try to defend Scorpius.

But James learned his lesson all too quickly. In a matter of seconds, both Draco and Ron were glaring at him with clenched jaws and stinging eyes. After that, James kept his mouth shut, along with everybody else.

Draco and Ron slowly faced each other once more, and Ron said quietly in a frighteningly hoarse tone, "My daughter is in love with Scorpius. She trusts him, and if she trusts him, I trust him."

It was one thing to think that Ron may be coming around, but it was another to hear it aloud. Everything that Ron had done up to this very moment had been in attempt to protect Rose. It just so happened that now, after everything that Scorpius had been through that summer and fall, and considering how strong it had made him, _he_ had become the best way of protecting Rose.

"You would trust a Malfoy?" Draco asked doubtfully. "Why?"

"Because this Malfoy chose the _right_ side," answered Ron.

That hit a soft spot somewhere deep in Draco. He uncoiled himself slowly and took his hands off the table, then held his left wrist, where he'd once been branded with Voldemort's Dark Mark, and said solemnly, "I can't erase the scar he gave me, nor the ones he carved into anyone else."

Out of the corner of his eye, Scorpius saw Ron take Hermione's hand as he nodded and said to Draco, "I know. But if you want to be a part of our side this time, you need to be willing to let go of the other."

Draco surveyed the room, his eyes meeting Hermione's with remorse, then Ginny's and James's with uncertainty, Teddy's with understanding, Dennis's and Natalie's with pain, and Neville's and Luna's with admiration, until he came to Scorpius. Draco's icy eyes met his son's with nothing but hope.

It was one small smile that did him in. Scorpius merely lifted the corner of his mouth ever so slightly, but it was enough for Draco to nod with complete exhilaration and answer Ron with, "Okay. I'll do it. I'll let it go. I'll let her go. I'll do anything you need me to do."

He shook hands with Ron and then Scorpius, and upon seeing the smiles and yawns make their way across the other faces, Scorpius addressed them all one last time and said, "How about we call it a night?" They'd accomplished a great deal of planning tonight, and everyone had various jobs to do now. They could sort out their fighting rules another day.

Everyone agreed and soon lined up at the front door to leave. Teddy was the first to go, hoping to get back home in time to help Victoire put Remy to bed.

Dennis and Natalie went next, and they thanked the Weasleys for having them and told Scorpius to say goodbye to Hugo for them as they walked outside to brace the cold.

Neville and Luna left shortly afterward, and their rekindled love for one another was infectious as they kissed amongst the falling snowflakes before Apparating hand-in-hand, Luna calling out, "It really is an Umgubular Slashkilter!" as they disappeared.

Ginny and James gave plenty of kisses and see-you-soon's as they walked into the freshly darkened sky, headed back to Godric's Hollow.

Last but not least, Draco shook Ron and Hermione's hands once more and said sincerely, "I am so sorry for all the pain I've caused on your family." Ron let Hermione answer by kissing Draco on the cheek, though he didn't let go of her hand. Scorpius thought about what Harry had told him that past August, about how Hermione had been tortured at Malfoy Manor, and he was proud to see his father finally taking responsibility for it.

But when Draco turned to Scorpius and asked, "Would you mind walking out with me?" Scorpius was hesitant to follow.

That was until he heard a velvety whisper from his right ear say, "Go on. I'll meet you upstairs."

"Okay," Scorpius told his father. Draco waited while Scorpius put on his coat, then hugged Hermione and turned to Ron.

"Thank you," he said, "For standing up for me."

"Thank you for standing up for Rose," Ron replied. He had most definitely overheard Scorpius's conversation with Hermione from the day before, and Scorpius appreciated the effect it had had on Ron. He only wished he could be completely honest with Ron about where he was actually spending his nights, but he knew that if Ron were to find out, whatever trust he had in Scorpius would be completely crushed.

So Scorpius didn't say anything more as he left the Weasley house and stopped at the driveway to speak with Draco. His father had his hands on Scorpius's shoulders as he said firmly, "I meant what I said in there. You're the side I choose, Scorpius."

Looking up at Draco, this was one of the first times Scorpius saw his dad – not his father, but his dad. And because of that, Scorpius let his guard down, if only for a moment, to ask Draco, "And you really believe we can stop her?"

Draco's eyes glistened, whether from tears or just from being in the moonlight, Scorpius didn't know. Either way, the sparkling ice added a whole new layer of meaning as Draco said, "With you leading us the way you just did in there, I don't think there's any way we _won't_ stop her."

Like Draco had said before, he couldn't erase what he'd done in the past. He couldn't save Astoria like he so desperately wanted to, and he couldn't go back to Scorpius's birth and be more present during his childhood. But he could try to make up for the time he'd lost, and his last words were what convinced Scorpius to let him. At that, he hugged Draco, and he imagined that one hug representing the hundreds they had never had.

Draco didn't ask Scorpius where he'd be leaving to, Apparating by himself and trusting that Scorpius could manage on his own. And that he did, Scorpius walking into the woods to transfigure into a falcon and then sit on the tree branch next to the crow, waiting to hear Rose's window open. After twenty minutes or so, Scorpius heard the familiar sound of the sliding glass and flew up to meet Rose.

She was standing in the middle of her bedroom looking positively giddy, biting her lip to refrain from squealing with happiness after seeing how the meeting had gone. "You were amazing," she said once Scorpius was back on two feet. "You _and_ my dad."

Scorpius blushed and said, "Thanks. And you're right; Ron was really great." At this point, Scorpius had come closer to Rose and had his arms wrapped around her waist.

"I know," she said with surprise. "I've more than forgiven him for what he did this summer. Gosh, I can't even believe I was ever mad at him... And to think only last week I was terrified of coming home this Christmas. Look at how it turned out now!"

Nodding, Scorpius raised his eyebrows and teased, "You know, it's not over yet."

She looked to him questionably as Scorpius walked over to her bed and pulled out a single piece of paper from underneath the mattress. Before he handed it over, though, Rose sighed in exasperation and said, "Oh bugger, I left James's cloak downstairs before I had dinner. I should probably go get it-"

"Not now," Scorpius interrupted her. He gave her the letter and explained, "Nobody will notice it. And anyway, I still need to give you my gift."

That seemed to shut Rose up, as she took the letter and sat on the edge of her bed. As Scorpius settled in next to her and watched her read, he tried to recall every word he'd written the night before, under the light of his wand, while she was fast asleep:

_Dear Rose,_

_This past summer, I wrote you a letter that was filled with lies. I can't possibly express to you how much I wish that letter had never been written or sent. I can't possibly apologize enough for the pain it caused you, but I hope that over time, I might be able to make up for it. To do that, I figured I'd start with a letter... a letter that I should have written you this summer instead of the one that I did... a letter filled with truth. _

_You are still, Rose. All my life, I've been moving. I've been hiding, flying, and leaving. I've gone from living in a broken home to not knowing if I even have a home. I tried to find one at Hogwarts, and though I loved it there and still do, I've never been fully accepted. I've always felt trapped being in Slytherin, and there are plenty of people in the school who only see me as my parent's son. I tried to find a home with the Potters, a family that I always dreamed of being a part of. But I never quite fit in there either. They already had Teddy, their own stray, and they didn't need another one. I tried to find a home out on my own in the woods, but I've never felt so lonely or lost. Then I found you and your family, and I realized that this is the home I've been looking for. You're it, Rose. You are my home._

_You are still, Rose. When everyone else is falling, breaking, or trying to fight off the pain, you are still. You stay grounded, you don't break, and you wash away the pain. You're always there for your family, for your friends, and for me. When I couldn't fall asleep last year, you lay by my side. When I lost myself this summer, you found me. When I came back to Hogwarts and started falling and breaking all over again, you waited for me to pick myself up. And in the meantime, you grew stronger and stronger, so much so that I know that if I ever fall again, I won't have to get up on my own. You'll be there to carry me through._

_You once told me that if something comes back to you, it's yours forever. Well, I've come back to you, Rose. And this time, I'm not moving. I'm not hiding, flying, or leaving. I'm not falling, breaking, or trying to fight off any more pain. I'm here for you, and I'll go wherever you will go, because I'm ready now. I'm ready to hold you, and to never let go. I'm ready for forever. I'm ready to be still._

_I love you,_

_Scorpius_

When Rose's eyes stopped shifting and once Scorpius was sure she had finished reading, he whispered, "Happy Christmas, Rose."

She looked back at him with loving eyes and pink cheeks. She didn't say anything as she leaned in and kissed him, and then she didn't stop kissing him. He reciprocated, not bothering to think as he let his body take control. Soon, his hands were wrapped in her hair and hers were at his waist, tugging on his shirt.

They had to separate themselves momentarily for Rose to pull Scorpius's shirt over his head, but then it was on the ground and they reconnected. Scorpius spent a minute kissing her neck before he pulled away and let her look at him. He closed her eyes as she traced her hands over the scars he'd earned from his transformation, then grabbed his necklace and used it to pull his lips back to hers.

The two of them were so engrossed in each other, so completely oblivious to the world around them, that they failed to hear Ron's footsteps coming up the stairs or his booming voice as he yelled, "Rosie, you might want to take this before your mother finds it!"

Rose and Scorpius didn't notice any of this until the door opened and Ron was standing in the doorway, dropping James's Invisibility Cloak onto the ground, widening his eyes, and asking in what seemed like slow motion, "What...?"

Rose and Scorpius were still upright, but they were on her bed, and he was shirtless, and they had been snogging... a lot. And when they both realized what that must have looked like in the eyes of a father, Rose jumped off the bed and ran up to Ron, trying to push him out of the room and as far away from Scorpius as possible.

Meanwhile, Scorpius hurriedly searched for his shirt and threw it back over his head. He wasn't fast enough, though, since Ron had pushed Rose aside and was standing right in front of Scorpius once his head popped out the top of his collar.

"What were you just doing?" Ron asked with a finger pointed at Scorpius's chest. "Why are you even in here?"

"I-" Scorpius started but couldn't get the words out. Ron had finally learned to trust him, and now he had betrayed that trust and would most likely never earn it back.

"He's been spending the nights here," Rose answered for him. "But Dad, we haven't done anything, I promise," she frantically tried to explain, but Ron had stopped listening a while back.

"Get out," he ordered Scorpius, turning his pointed finger toward the door and the stairwell that followed it.

Scorpius didn't waste a moment before walking past Ron and Rose and then running down the stairs. He could hear Rose bounding down the steps behind him, followed by Hugo's voice asking what was going on from his bedroom on the second floor, but Scorpius didn't stop. He kept descending until he came to the entryway, where Hermione was standing, looking between Scorpius and the assembly line of people crashing down the stairs in confusion.

"Oh, no," she said when she pieced everything together. "He found you?" Of course, Hermione had known all along that Scorpius had been sneaking into Rose's room every night; nothing could get past her.

"He found me," Scorpius confirmed, his hand on the doorknob that could get him out of here before Ron had the chance to tear him into a million tiny pieces and scatter them across his brother's dragon farm in Romania.

But Hermione was blocking the door from opening, and then Rose had caught up to them and was saying, "Scorpius, don't go. You can't leave."

"Rose, I have to," Scorpius argued as he heard Ron's powerful, steady footsteps coming from the top of the house. "I'm sorry."

Scorpius had a hand on Rose's face and she had closed her eyes and was breathing in his scent one last time when Hugo made it all the way downstairs and stated, "No, you don't, Scorpius. You don't have to go."

Scorpius wasn't sure what the youngest Weasley was talking about, but Rose seemed to understand, since she opened her eyes wide and shot a warning look at her brother as she said, "Hugo, don't. Now is _not_ the time."

"Yes, it is, Rosie," said Hugo, glancing up at the stairs to see that Ron had gained ground and was now standing on the second floor landing. "Now is the perfect time."

Scorpius was still confused, as was Hermione, but neither of them asked for an explanation. Before long, Ron had made it to the very last step and was looking down at Scorpius with intense fury. "I thought I told you to _get out_," he fumed.

"Ron!" Hermione yelled at him, shocked by his anger. But she wasn't able to draw Ron's attention away from Scorpius.

Hugo attempted to do so as well, taking a stance right in front of his father to block him from the others, who had all backed up against the wall of the entryway. Hermione, Rose, and Scorpius waited for something to happen, for Ron to blink or for Hugo to speak up, since they weren't sure which would happen first.

It was Hugo. Ron's eyes were completely fixed on Scorpius right up until the moment Hugo opened his mouth and said, "You think _this_ is bad? You think _this_ was some big secret? You're going to punish Scorpius for having a place to sleep at night?"

Ron finally turned away from Scorpius and looked at Hugo, but he hadn't lost his previous train of thought. He only seemed determined to get Hugo out of his way as he said, "Hugo, stop. This isn't of your concern."

Now, Ron's eyes were back on Scorpius, but Hugo wasn't giving up. "It's not really any of your concern either!" he shouted at his father. Then he took one enormous breath and added, "And while we're on the topic of secrets, you should probably know that I'm gay."

Rose and Scorpius both released their breaths just as Ron and Hermione held theirs back. It had worked flawlessly; Hugo had gained every last speck of attention his father could give, and Hermione too had taken a step toward her son, riveted by his words and smiling at his confidence.

Before Ron could say anything, the knowing Hermione put her arm around Hugo and said, "I'm so proud of you." But Hugo, along with Rose, had expected Hermione to react well; it was Ron's reaction he was waiting for.

But no such reaction came. Ron looked to Hugo in silence, not saying a word nor moving an inch. While the others waited for him to show some sign of acknowledgement that he had in fact heard Hugo's confession, Scorpius stood back by the door, right in front of its side windows.

He soon found himself gazing outside, and was looking up at the maple tree to see that familiar crow staring back at him, illuminated by a light on the front porch. Though Scorpius still didn't know what Luna had been talking about regarding the bird, he had to agree with her that it was a little strange. After all, it was almost January... all the birds should have been long gone by now.

As Scorpius tried to gain a closer look at the bird, he noticed that it wasn't just any common crow. Seeing its thin, greyish beak and peaked head, Scorpius remembered seeing this type of bird before, in and around Malfoy Manor. But there was usually a flock of them; he'd never seen one on its own.

And at this thought, Scorpius panicked. The bird outside wasn't _just_ a crow. It was a rook... _Rook_wood. And it wasn't alone; its entire flock was there somewhere... the entire _Forbidden_ Flock.

Just as Scorpius was about to warn the Weasleys, his fears were officially realized when the bird took off from its branch and flew to the ground, transfiguring itself into a dark, hooded figure before landing in the snow and disappearing with a pop.

"Dad, say something," Hugo was begging Ron. "Please, say something. Anything?"

"I think he's in shock," Rose stated nervously about Ron while Scorpius turned back to them and took a step forward to join the group. When she saw his pale face and empty eyes, she added, "I think they're both in shock."

Once Hugo deciphered whom Rose was speaking of, he asked about Scorpius, "What is _he_ in shock for?"

Though Hermione refused to turn away from the still numb Ron, Rose turned her focus to Scorpius and put her face right in front of his as she asked, "Scorpius, what's going on?"

Scorpius needed a moment. He needed a moment to think things through. He needed a moment to be scared. He needed that moment, because soon he wouldn't have any left. Soon, he'd be outside fighting alongside the Weasleys, and he would have to be a leader. He wouldn't have any time to be scared. So, just for that one moment, Scorpius let the fear penetrate his every nerve. He let it wrap itself around his body like a boa constrictor, let it flow through his veins like a virus, and let it tear at his heart like the inescapable pull of death. Then, just as soon as he was immersed in it, Scorpius shook it all away and came back to life.

"They're coming," he said, as the blood pumped straight into his forehead and as he wrapped his hand around the wand that he'd been storing in his pocket.

This time, it was everyone else's turn to go into shock, but Ron was finally pulled out of it. "How do you know?" he asked, moving past Hermione and Hugo so that he could look out the window. Ron was in full-on Auror mode now, and any grudges he may have had against Scorpius or Hugo had been put on hold.

"I saw Rookwood Disapparate in the front yard just now," Scorpius answered. At this point, Rose had joined them at the window and Hermione and Hugo were locked in a tight hold on each other just behind them.

"How many will there be?" asked Rose, her wand already out while her free hand clasped Scorpius's.

"There were at least five the last time," replied Ron, referring to the Creevey attack from that summer. But whether there would be five, ten, or twenty, Scorpius already knew that they wouldn't be able to hold them off for long. This wouldn't be as big as the war they'd been preparing for, but Astoria clearly wanted something from them, and Scorpius knew that she wouldn't stop until she got it. After all, he was the same way.

Ron, Rose, and Scorpius turned away from the window at the same time in order to face the others as Hermione claimed, "We need a plan." Hugo nodded from within her arms, which he didn't seem to want to get out of anytime soon.

"Not a plan, Hermione," Ron shook his head. Plans never worked out the way were supposed to. In fact, they were almost meant to be broken. "What we need is a strategy."

Already one step ahead of Ron, Scorpius was looking at Rose with a pained expression. "You have to use the cloak," he told her apprehensively.

"What?" Rose responded furiously to Scorpius's request. "I'm not going to hide; I'm going to fight! You're the one who should be in the cloak. I mean, she's probably coming for _you, _after all."

"Exactly!" Scorpius practically screamed at her. "I'm the one who will need to fight her off, and I can't do that if I'm worried about you the entire time. Please do this for me, Rose. Please be still for me."

Rose sighed and looked around Scorpius to her father, who told her, "Do as he says, Rosie."

With that, she finally complied, turning back to Scorpius and kissing him as if it was the last time they would ever kiss. When they broke apart to catch their breaths, Rose whispered, "Don't get caught."

"I won't," Scorpius promised as he watched Rose run up the stairs to fetch the cloak.

Hermione was quick to yell after her, "And get Harry! Use the coins!" to which Rose waved a hand behind her in confirmation.

Just as soon as she was gone, the remaining four marched out the front door and into the yard, lighting their wands on the way. "So, what's our strategy?" Hugo asked. He was still standing close to Hermione, but he had a new-found certainty in his voice. He may have been young, but he was more than ready for this.

When Ron failed to come up with anything, Scorpius spoke up, deciding to use a metaphor that he knew each of the Weasleys would understand. "We play it like chess," he said.

He was about to explain further when Ron finished for him, "We corner them."

Ron gave Hermione a single look and she understood, glancing back at her family before she ran off to their right, taking up the wing of the property. Scorpius tried to give a similar look to Hugo, who nodded and said, "I'll cover the left, then."

That left Ron and Scorpius, and before the latter could claim his coveted position, Ron said, "As for me, I'll be a knight."

Scorpius didn't argue with him. Rose had been right: Astoria was surely coming after him, and that didn't make him the knight. That made him the king.

Before Ron stepped forward to take his spot in the front, he turned around to Scorpius and said defiantly, "Whatever you do, stay behind me."

"Whatever you do, don't get killed," Scorpius reciprocated. And when Ron laughed and smiled with a full, genuine grin, Scorpius knew that he'd already gained back Ron's trust. Whether it had been from the way he'd protected Rose, the idea to fight the Flock as if fighting on a chess board, or the joke he'd just made with Ron, Scorpius wasn't sure. Maybe it was even a combination of his actions. Either way, Ron seemed to understand that Scorpius still stood firmly on the right side, and so from this point forward, they would work as a team.

It was a good thing too, since at that moment, the birds came. The first thing Scorpius noticed was the sound of a harsh caw, and it was followed shortly by a louder, more radiant and sinisterly high-pitched shriek from what could only be a hawk. Sure enough, Scorpius looked up at the starry sky to see that same, gorgeous, golden bird that he had been inspired by that summer. She was flying beside the camouflaged rook, and Scorpius knew all too soon that the bird was Astoria.

He cursed himself for not noticing all the signs before. Scorpius had to have inherited his transfiguration skills from somewhere, and Draco had most definitely never had any. _And the markings!_ Those pure markings that Scorpius remembered so clearly, could only have come from an Animagus bird. Astoria's disguise also explained why Harry couldn't catch her; he'd been trying to follow her Apparitions, but little did he know, she wasn't just Apparating. She was flying.

"It's her!" Scorpius called out to Ron as the latter gazed up at the sky. He didn't need to be told twice, as Ron had his wand pointed at her before she even landed on the ground, already transformed into her regal but frightening human self.

"We meet again," she slithered at Ron, and soon the two of them were firing silent spells at each other from across the yard, fresh sparks igniting from their wands every few seconds.

Meanwhile, Knox Rookwood seemed to be under the impression that he could sneak up on Scorpius from behind, but Scorpius had sensed him coming. Just as Knox was about to attack, Scorpius spun around and yelled, "_Stupefy!_"

Knox, who was indeed wearing a long, dark cloak that kept his olive-colored face and dark features well-hidden, shot the spell away with ease. Then he began walking toward Scorpius in long paces, seemingly not in any hurry as he flew all sorts of jinxes his way.

Scorpius dodged them all physically as he ran away from Knox, toward Hugo's side of the yard. He was at a loss for spells that he could use against Knox, since all the ones he was any good at couldn't possibly be powerful enough to ward off Rookwood. Still, while Scorpius may have been rubbish at defensive spells, he made up for it with his talent in transfiguration. That's what made him think of the snow.

There was at least a foot of the white magic on the ground, and it was just powdery enough for Scorpius to create a miniature blizzard with it. So, when he came closer to Hugo, Scorpius stopped in his tracks and yelled, "Pick up the snow!"

Hugo was in the midst of fighting off a young woman who looked to be about Knox's age, and who had similar features but with big, bulging eyes. He seemed to be dodging her attacks more than forming his own, much like Scorpius, so Hugo was thrilled to see any sort of help come his way.

"_Wingardium Leviosa!_" Hugo pointed his wand at the ground, causing what must have been every single snowflake to shoot upwards and levitate in the air.

Once he, Hugo, and their attackers were surrounded in the snow, Scorpius directed his wand at the girl coming after Hugo and screamed with all his might, "_Oppugno!_"

At his command, the flakes grouped together to form razor-sharp pellets that then shot at the girl and knocked her to the ground. Scorpius then drew them away and pointed toward Knox's direction, but the attacker had already vanished.

The next thing Scorpius knew, Hugo was yelling, "RUN! Get them back to the house!" and he and Scorpius were doing just that, sprinting back to where Ron and Astoria were still dueling, trying to keep Knox and the girl from spreading too far out.

But when Scorpius turned around, he realized that they were luring away more attackers than just two. The forces had doubled now, and Knox was in the forefront of the group, spitting fire from his wand with rage.

Hugo kept picking up the snow as they ran, tripping some of the Flock while attacking the others, but it wasn't doing enough. When Scorpius saw a look of terror in Hugo's face, he was met with a rush of adrenaline that freed his mind with a new-found clarity. He had an idea.

As Hugo kept running to his father, Scorpius stopped to face his enemies as he said directly into Knox's fire, "_Aqua Erecto!_" The spell shot a gigantic jet of water into the flames, and then Scorpius was able to control it, making it rain onto the ground so that it formed a small stream in which each of the attacker's feet were immersed.

Next, Scorpius held his wand at an angle that pointed toward the stream, and produced a spark of green lightning with the incantation, "_Verdimillious!_" Scorpius watched anxiously as the electricity from the lightning spread through the stream like ripples, causing an incredible current to rush through each of the four Flock members until they were rolling on their backs and twitching.

To finish his off his perfectly executed idea, Scorpius transfigured the still-floating snow pellets into tiny shards of ice and then wrapped them around the group of bodies in a giant, circular wall that would pierce through anyone who tried to escape from it.

Unfortunately, as Scorpius stepped forward to examine his work, he quickly saw that one had already escaped. There were only three people within the trap; Knox was missing. Scorpius turned his head in every direction to see where he'd taken off to, looking both on the ground as well as in the air, but he didn't see a thing.

He didn't see a thing... he didn't see Hugo. Now it was Scorpius's turn to panic once more, running away from his prisoners and back to the front of the house, where Hugo had been headed before. But when Scorpius arrived to see Ron writhing in pain atop the snow with Hermione huddled over him, he realized that Hugo wasn't there, and that he wasn't the only Weasley in trouble.

"Don't touch her!" Scorpius threatened Astoria, who was standing above Ron and looking down at Hermione with a hideous scowl on her face.

Astoria ignored Scorpius, but Hermione heard him in time to stand up and meet the Forbidden Flock's leader. Scorpius stayed where he was, his feet cemented into the earth, as he watched the two commanding women come face to face with one another from a few yards in front of him.

While he waited for one of them to address the other, Scorpius tried to figure out what to do next. He could transform and try to attack Astoria as a falcon, but he wasn't sure that he should give away his hidden identity just yet. Plus, his magic wasn't yet strong enough to actually be used while in his Animagus form.

So Scorpius stayed put, hoping that he could come up with something before Astoria really went after Hermione. But just as Scorpius glanced back at Ron, he noticed that Ron's eyes were open again, and then he was winking at Scorpius. Ron was staying still in the snow, but he had his wand ready.

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours," Astoria told Hermione, bringing Scorpius's attention back to her.

Hermione followed Astoria's orders, rolling up the sleeve on her left arm to reveal a slightly faded scar that Scorpius almost thought formed a word on her skin. As he took a few steps closer as if in a trance, he saw that his hunch had been correct: branded into Hermione, in plain, sharp lines of dark magic, was the word 'Mud-blood'.

Scorpius understood instantly that this had been a product of Bellatrix Lestrange's torturing of Hermione – the same torture Harry had told Scorpius about, the same torture Ron had used as a reason to resent the Malfoy family for more years than Scorpius had been alive, and the same torture that Draco had finally apologized for only a couple of hours ago. Scorpius finally understood what Draco had actually meant when he'd said that he couldn't erase the scars that had been carved in both himself as well as those around him.

But it was Astoria's scar that came as an even bigger shock for Scorpius. He recognized this one right away, because it was the same one he had seen on his father before, and the same one Draco had alluded to in the core alliance meeting. The only difference was that Scorpius had never known that his mother had also been a death eater. In fact, he had a feeling that this was the first time Astoria was revealing her Dark Mark to anyone, with the exception of her ex-husband.

"Beautiful, aren't they?" sneered Astoria with an ounce of wonderment in her voice. She admired both her and Hermione's scars, so much so that she added, "If only _every _witch and wizard could be so lucky to have one."

Both Hermione and Scorpius winced at the suggestion, and as soon as they did so, Ron decided to take his moment. He was swiftly up on his feet and was now standing in between the women, one arm keeping Hermione behind him while the other pointed his wand at Astoria's chest.

"_Nobody_ threatens the likes of my wife or what she stands for in front of _me_!" Ron snarled through clenched teeth.

For a moment, Astoria trembled with fear, but Scorpius could see that she was faking it. She was just pretending to be scared, and she wasn't very good at it. After about thirty seconds, she couldn't hold her laugh in any longer, and began chortling at Ron as if she was having the most entertaining night of her life.

Ron stood his ground all the way up until Astoria said, "Nice try, Weasley. But didn't you notice? Somebody's missing..."

Scorpius thought back to Hugo just in time to see Knox emerge from behind his favorite tree with a wand-less Hugo in tow, one hand pointing his wand at Hugo's cheek while the other covered the boy's mouth as the young Weasley screamed and fought against him.

"You've all been most impressive, I must admit," Astoria said as Ron lowered his wand and looked to his son. Hermione had gone completely pale and looked like she'd stopped breathing, while Scorpius tried to focus on Astoria's voice, because her threats were the only things that were keeping him from giving up.

"Really, Scorpius," continued Astoria, addressing her son for the first time all night, "The lightning was a nice touch. But I'm afraid, it just wasn't good _enough_."

That was enough to get him moving again. That was the snicker that Scorpius needed to get his blood flowing. That was enough to get him to disobey Ron's orders and walk in front of him, getting so close to Astoria that Scorpius could feel her cold breaths on his face.

"That wasn't good enough, huh?" he spat at her. He shot up his arms and surrendered, asking, "You want more? Huh?"

Astoria didn't reply, but her lips were slowly curling up at their tips as Scorpius went on. "I know what you want," he said, thinking back to her words from that summer. "Me."

Hugo, who'd been pretty still in Knox's arms up until now, suddenly started kicking against Knox's shins and bracing his arms against Knox's shoulders to try to break free from his grasp. Hugo could tell that Scorpius was about to hand himself over to save him, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Astoria was laughing again, and it made Scorpius's heart shutter. This was the only trade he could make, the only thing he could do to keep Hugo from getting killed, and so he prayed that Astoria hadn't changed her mind.

"I did want you," Astoria admitted. "But I'm not certain that I still do. Knox?"

Though Astoria didn't look at her right-hand man when she called on him, Knox seemed to understand what she wanted. His eyes were on Scorpius quickly, and though Scorpius had a hard time seeing them, he almost thought they were narrowing some as Knox tilted his head down and then back up again, as if surveying Scorpius from his toes all the way up to his forehead.

"You do not," Knox stated simply once his eyes were back to his normal size. Scorpius had no idea what Knox had just done, but Astoria seemed to trust him, since she shrugged her shoulders and started walking, circling around Scorpius, Ron, and Hermione in the same way that Scorpius had once circled around her.

"I wanted you for a number of reasons," Astoria began to explain, her words still directed at Scorpius even though she had gained the undivided attention of Ron and Hermione as well. "One of those reasons seems to have disappeared, so I shall have to look elsewhere for it. Perhaps the more important reason, however, was to use you as bait."

Scorpius glared at her with as much hostility as he could muster, but she kept going. "You see, what I _really_ want, what I've _really_ been trying to get a hold of all this time, is Harry Potter – or, more precisely, his hold on the Ministry."

This time, Ron glowered at her, saying, "Harry's been following you for months now. If you wanted him, all you'd have to do is turn around!"

Astoria shot Ron a rather arrogant look, as if what Ron had just said was the most idiotic thing she'd ever heard, and Hermione explained for her, "But Harry would never just hand over the Auror department."

"Exactly," Astoria nodded. "I always wanted to get to Potter, but Godric's Hollow is much too protected, so I couldn't very well attack his family. Initially, I thought that if I captured Scorpius, Potter would try to rescue_ him_. When that plan fell through, I had to think of another way to lure Potter out of his office, so I attacked the home of a Squib child and injured his second-in-command in the process. That worked quite brilliantly, but I still had no leverage against him. Then I decided to have Knox pay a visit to Little Whinging, which seemed to give Potter the wake-up call I'd been waiting for."

Following the Muggle attack, both Scorpius and Harry had thought that Astoria was trying to get him _off_ her trail. Little did they know, she wanted him to keep following her, so much so that he would no longer have time to keep his position at the Ministry. That way, he would have to hand over his responsibility to someone else.

"The wake-up call to hand Head over to me," Ron added.

Astoria stopped walking when she found herself in front of Ron, and put a hand on her chest, proud of herself for all that she'd accomplished. With twinkling, blue eyes, she said in a disgustingly sweet tone, "And now you're going to hand it over to me."

"Like hell!" Hugo managed to scream through Knox's hand. Unfortunately, he paid the price for his bravery, earning a slap across the face from Knox that made tears rush down Hermione's cheeks.

But the slap had an ever greater effect on Ron. He looked at his son, helpless and endangered, and seemed to understand that there wasn't any decision to be made. Scorpius could see that regardless of how Ron may have felt about Hugo's recent coming out, Ron would do anything to protect his family, and Hugo was a part of that family and always would be.

So, without question, Ron looked into Astoria's eyes and said, "I'll give it to you. If you leave my family alone, I'll give you anything you want."

"I thought you might," commented Astoria as she held out her arm for Ron to take.

He did so willingly, clasping his hand over the Dark Mark etched into Astoria's skin, ready to make the Unbreakable Vow. But just as soon as Scorpius questioned who would actually be performing the spell, since both Knox and Astoria had their hands full, he heard groups of footsteps coming from his left.

The three attackers that Scorpius had trapped in his ice enclosure had escaped somehow, all unscathed as they approached their leader. But as they came forward and took their places behind Astoria and Knox, none of them presented themselves to form the bond between their master and Ron. That was until a fourth member, no doubt the one who had freed the rest, came out from behind them and made Scorpius question everything he'd ever known.

This boy was a great deal younger than the others, which was obvious even with his hood on. It was the way he walked, with short, carefully placed strides that were filled with uncertainty and self-consciousness. And when he did pull his hood back, his light skin practically shone against his black hair, and his eyes – light green, a color that was always sorely missed in wintertime – were as bright as the stars. There would be no mistaking him, even if Scorpius hadn't spent over five years as his best friend.

Albus Potter had the Elder Wand pointed at Astoria and Ron's locked arms without making eye contact with any of the Weasleys or Scorpius. They all stared at him, though, completely dumbstruck as to where he had come from, and what he was doing here. Scorpius was the most shocked of all of them, and before he really knew what was happening, he was stumbling backwards, but something managed to catch him before he fell.

Scorpius could feel Rose's invisible arms holding him steady. He could hear her harsh, fearful breaths as she witnessed the same betrayal that Scorpius was seeing. She was carrying him, just as he knew she would, and so he extended his hand for her to take so that they might carry each other.

Hermione was the first to speak, her hands clutched around Ron's free arm as she asked, "Al? What are you doing?"

But Al didn't respond. He was transfixed by the task at hand, but not in the way that somebody under the Imperius Curse might be. He was more focused than that, and Scorpius could see how much energy it took him to keep from breaking that concentration.

"Go on, Albus," Astoria whispered. "Do it."

Upon her command, a thin, transparent string came from Al's wand and wrapped itself around Astoria and Ron's arms. Then he finally spoke, firstly directing his question at Ron. "Will you, Ronald Weasley, relinquish your position as Head of the Auror Department at the Ministry of Magic, to be replaced by Astoria indefinitely?"

Ron looked at his nephew questionably, but when he saw Hugo out of the corner of his eye, he told Al, "I will."

Al addressed Astoria next, asking, "And will you, Astoria, withhold from ever bringing harm to Hermione or Hugo Weasley, from either your own hands or those of any other member of the Forbidden Flock?"

Unlike Ron, Astoria didn't hesitate to answer, "I will."

Then the transparent string sunk itself into Astoria and Ron's skin, and Hugo was immediately released from Knox's hold. He quickly buried himself in his mother's arms, but it was Ron whom he looked to with gratitude, and it was Ron's arm that he refused to let go of.

As Scorpius looked in on the scene playing out before him, he couldn't help but worry about the fact that Rose's name had been left out of the vow. Astoria didn't know that she was there, of course, since Rose was under the cloak, and so she hadn't been granted the same protection that Hermione and Hugo had.

Scorpius kept thinking about this as Astoria and her flock began to walk away, marching backwards in perfect unison while Astoria said to Ron, "It was a pleasure doing business with you."

But they all stopped walking when they noticed that Al wasn't marching with them. He had finally looked up to meet Scorpius's eyes, which had been locked on him since the moment he'd appeared. He still didn't say anything, but Scorpius didn't need an explanation.

Al was the Hogwarts spy. The letter Scorpius had seen him receive in early summer had been one of many correspondence letters from Astoria. The searches Al had gone on for Rose, claiming to be looking for Scorpius while he'd been missing, were really just trips to meet with Astoria. The time Al had brought up the Forbidden Flock in Defense Against the Dark Arts class had been meant to instill fear in the Hogwarts students while also making them question Scorpius's motives. And all of Al's anger toward Scorpius, including his quitting the Quidditch team and refusing to support the Order of the Phoenix, had just been strategy. People liked Al; they respected him and they listened to him. And so by blaming Scorpius for all of his problems, Al had turned everyone's suspicions away from himself and onto none other than Astoria's own son. It was all so obvious to Scorpius now that he knew Al's true motives, and he couldn't stop blaming himself for underestimating his envious and powerful friend.

"Come along, Albus," Astoria suddenly yelled. She was growing impatient, one of her many fatal flaws that Scorpius had learned of long ago.

Al was about to walk away with Astoria when a pop came from the driveway and everybody turned their heads to see Harry Potter standing before them with an impressive assembly of Aurors at his side. It seemed as though the coins had worked their magic.

Astoria and Knox transformed into their bird-selves and flew atop the Aurors until they were well out of firing distance, and the rest of the Forbidden Flock Disapparated from the yard. Harry most likely would have been able to stop them had he not been so distracted by the sight of his son standing in their midst.

"Al?" Harry asked, just as shocked to see him there as the Weasleys had been, but a hundred times more hurt.

Al cocked his head in every which way, looking at Harry, then at the cluster of bodies that Ron, Hermione, and Hugo had formed, then at Scorpius, then at the now visible Rose, and back at Harry. He looked completely lost as he tried to decide what to do, where to go, who to run to. So, instead of running to any of them, he ran away, his feet flying through the snow and into the woods that lined the property.

Harry went after him, not stopping to talk with Ron on his way. Left with the gang of Aurors, Ron walked over to them to give them the news, Hermione and Hugo by his side the entire time because they still wouldn't let go.

Every nerve in Scorpius's body told him to transform. He wanted to fly after Al and Harry so that he could catch up with them. He wanted to talk to them, to Al, so that he could understand what was going on. He wanted to, but he didn't. He didn't run because Rose was standing beside him, and he couldn't leave her. He didn't run because he understood that Harry needed to speak to Al alone. He didn't run because for once in his life, Scorpius needed to be still.

As snow began to fall from the sky, flying through the air with the wind, Scorpius refused to walk through the blizzard. He chose the fight instead of the flight. He chose to be still with Rose so that they could fight the pain together. He chose to hold Rose's hand while they thought through everything that had just happened. They thought about all the time they had spent crying over each other and breaking down while they had failed to notice their already broken friend. They thought about all the signs that Al had given them, but that they'd chosen to ignore. They thought about all the hope they'd had, and all the times they'd wished to know the truth. But as Scorpius had learned time and time again, one should always be careful what they wish for. After all, it might just come true.

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_**Note: **What did you think? I spent a lot of time on this one, so I'd really appreciate it if you could leave a review on either the chapter and/or Part 2 as a whole. It would mean so much to me._

_As for the fast approaching Part 3, it will consist of ten chapters (like Parts 1 and 2), but will follow Al. As I'm sure you can guess, it'll be a little darker than past chapters have been, but I promise there will be light moments as well, and Al's reasoning for what he's done in this chapter will become clearer as the story moves along. I'm sad to be leaving Scorpius behind, but I'm also really excited to see things from a different perspective, so hopefully all of you are as well!_

_Thanks again, be sure to let me know what you thought of the chapter, and I will try to update soon,_

_-Hailey :)  
_


	21. The Life and Lies of Albus Severus

**_Note:_** _I'm uploading this chapter a little later than I'd hoped to, but it's finally here! Chapter 21 marks the beginning of Part 3 of Blood of the Birds, meaning that the next ten chapters will follow Albus's perspective, rather than Scorpius's. I hope you enjoy the chapter and thanks for reading._

_-Hailey_

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**Part 3 - The Albus of the Year**

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**21 – The Life and Lies of Albus Severus**

Guilt was like a time-bomb, escalating with every passing second until eventually, it exploded. If the bomb were to be frozen, or if one were to lie to their guilt, the explosion could be avoided, or at least suppressed. But as soon as that chill wore off, as soon as the truth came out, the bomb would start ticking again, just waiting to explode. And when it did explode, there was no telling how much damage it could do, but one thing was always clear: the holder of the bomb, the one with all the guilt, would be the first one to go.

Albus Severus Potter was a harbinger of a great deal of guilt, and after lying to that guilt for what felt like an eternity, his bomb had started ticking again. He could hear it within his head, pumping wildly at the same pace as his flying feet as they pounded through the snow. His forehead was throbbing, but it was his ferocious heartbeat that made him stop in his tracks.

His knees buckled and he breathed deeply onto the white powder. It was late Christmas night, and Al listened carefully for the sound of his father's footsteps coming from behind him. He took it as a good sign when he couldn't hear any thumping, just the shrieking calls of migrating birds and night owls. But the birdsongs still managed to get Al up and running once more. He needed to get inside; he'd had enough birds for one night.

For a few miles, he wasn't quite sure where he was headed. Anywhere but here was the only destination that came to mind, but eventually Al was running along wide roads with Muggle cars that were all driving toward London. When he started to feel as if he might faint if he continued to run or even walk, Al tried to jump onto one of the large trucks as inconspicuously as possible with a spell he learned from the Half-Blood Prince's potions book. Once he made it onto the roof of the steel box, he was careful to use a sticking charm on his feet so that he'd have no chance of falling off.

He rode the truck all the way into the city center, and luckily the vehicle made a pit-stop behind one of those malls Muggles seemed to like so much. Albus was quick to jump off as soon as the truck came to a stop, and after summoning some food from a local café, he took to the narrow streets and back alleys of outer-London.

Trying to avoid both the Leaky Cauldron as well as the Ministry of Magic, which were sure to be filled with witches and wizards who would recognize him in an instant, Al pulled his hood over his head and let the rest of his body get covered in the falling snow. He lost his way a couple of times, but eventually Al made it to a familiar street that his father, Harry, used to take him to when he was younger.

Al had never visited Grimmauld Place at night, and it made it even harder to find the darkened building that would normally be invisible to all Muggles as well as the majority of wizards, thanks to an ancient protection known as the Fidelius Charm. Still, Al could just make out the numbers of all the houses in the long stretch of a building, finding eleven and thirteen sandwiched around a barren brownstone with closed curtains and an oppressive black door.

After making sure that no one was watching him, if even from a distance, Albus trudged up the walkway and opened the door without any key; the doorknob knew his touch. Once he was inside, Al lit his wand, breathed in some of the warm air from the entryway, and hung his coat on one of the plaques of house-elf heads that lined the hallway. Then he walked through the hall, shaking off the snow that had somehow made its way into his mess of dark hair and began clambering up the stairs, figuring he'd spend the night here and figure out his next move in the morning.

This plan didn't last long, though. Al had only made it a few steps up the staircase when he heard something that sounded very much like a moan coming from one of the middle-floor bedrooms. He nearly turned around to leave, but curiosity got the best of him, and so Al tip-toed toward the noise, his hand gripped tightly around his wand – the Elder Wand – from which he'd released the _Lumos_ spell.

The sound, which was most definitely a persistent moaning, magnified as Al ascended the staircase. When he reached the landing of the second floor, he put his ear up to the first door, which closed off a dimly lit room, but snapped his head back upon hearing the bangs of moving furniture coming from behind the door.

Thinking that whoever was inside clearly wasn't concerned with being found, and still confident in the workings of Dumbledore's charm, Al opened the door with a single turn of the handle and burst into the dusty old bedroom.

Just as soon as he was inside, he wished he'd never gone in. Al was temporarily blinded by the sight of his bare-chested older brother lying atop Hogwarts's resident blonde bimbo, Mercy Golding. She also had her shirt off, though Al didn't dare to look anywhere near her before covering his eyes and exclaiming, "Merlin's _sodding_ pants!" as he ran out of the room, knocking over a lamp on his way out.

"_BLIMEY,_ Al! Don't you know how to KNOCK?" James yelled after him with fury before he pointed his wand at the open door and made it slam shut.

"Well, excuse me for thinking that _I_ was the only one Dad had ever shown his safe house to!" refuted Al from back in the hallway, his hand still plastered over his eyes as he tried to wipe the recent image from his mind. "Or should I say _shag _house?" he added irritably.

James was back at the door then, and opened it just enough to slip out without showing any more of Mercy as she hurried to put her clothes on. "What are you even doing here?" he asked Al, choosing to ignore his brother's previous comment.

Al took his hand off his face but still felt uncomfortable standing next to James, who had yet to put on more clothes than the pair of boxers he'd had on when Al had intruded, so the former walked away from him, headed back downstairs. When James followed, he pried Al for more information, saying, "I thought you were at home with Lily. Weren't you responsible for her tonight?"

Ginny, Al's mother, had left Godric's Hollow with James earlier that evening to attend a meeting with the Order of the Phoenix, which had ended with an attack from the Forbidden Flock with Al in tow. Of course, James couldn't have known about any of this if he'd come straight here from the Weasley house.

Deciding that now wasn't the best time to reveal his secret identity to James, Al merely replied with, "Relax. Lily's fourteen, okay? She doesn't need a babysitter anymore." James wasn't normally so protective of the youngest Potter, but Al knew that James would use any excuse in the book just to push the blame off of him and onto Al.

"That doesn't explain why you're here," James argued. He just wouldn't give this up.

The two brothers had reached the kitchen of Grimmauld Place now, and were fortunate to have not woken up the portrait of the old Mrs. Black on their way down the stairs. Now they were in the middle of the narrow kitchen, which was filled with splintered cabinets and topped with fistfuls of dust. There was a long table sitting in the center, reaching all the way from the gas stove to the soot-covered fireplace on either side of the room. As James walked over to one end and used his wand to spark a few flames, Al walked slowly through the doorway and leaned forward against the table.

"Why are _you_ here, James?" asked Al. He'd always had what he liked to call a wordless relationship with his brother. The less each of them knew about each other, the better off they'd be, so they didn't talk much. And when one of them did decide to speak, it was rare for the other to listen.

James turned away from the now roaring fire and faced Al as he shrugged his shoulders and answered, "Mercy's got younger brothers. I've got Lily and Mum. We needed a place to go..."

"Enough said," Al put his hand up to stop James, still refusing to look at him as James took a seat at the table.

Finally noticing how uncomfortable and downright distraught Al was, James said sincerely, "Look, I wouldn't have brought her here if I'd known you might show up. I swear. But honestly, Al, why did you show up?"

Al couldn't answer James. He couldn't tell James that he'd run away from their father. He couldn't tell James why he'd started running in the first place. Most of all, he couldn't tell James where he'd been running from. If he told James any of it, and even if James did find a way to listen, he'd ask Al how it all started. That was the one question to which Albus would never have an answer.

For a minute, Al tried to think of some way to change the subject, but he couldn't come up with anything to say. Luckily, just before James was about to ask again, Mercy's footsteps could be heard coming down the stairs, and soon she was entering the kitchen from behind Al.

"Sorry about that," she said nonchalantly to Al while walking around the table, where she eventually met James and sat down beside him. Mercy and James had been together for the past three months or so, practically the entire first semester of their seventh year. Al had never paid much notice to Hogwarts's golden couple, for he dreaded the idea of giving them the attention they so clearly desired.

Still, Al was thankful that Mercy provided enough of a distraction for James to drop his curiosity about Al's being here. Mercy had other things on her mind, suggesting, "James, maybe we should try to lay some ground rules? I don't really fancy this happening again."

"It won't happen again," James assured her. "Right, Al?" he asked his brother.

"Right," Al nodded. He had no intentions on walking in on his brother and whichever girl he was currently seeing ever again. Whether or not the memory of doing so would keep Al out of Grimmauld Place for good, though, had yet to be determined.

"And anyway," started James, "You shouldn't be out this late on your own. Not with the Flock out there just waiting to use you as bait to get to Dad."

James really was clueless, Al thought. He had no idea that it was Ron and Hugo who'd been used as bait, not Al. He had no idea that Astoria had used Al for a very different reason.

"Look, if you don't want to tell me why you're here, that's fine," James continued. "But you can't just sneak out of the house every night."

"Why not?" Al spat back. Motioning to Mercy, he added, "Clearly, you two do!"

"Well, we're adults!" said James at what was practically a yell. "We're seventeen, which means that _we're_ legal. We can take care of ourselves..."

Al interrupted James before he could finish with, "Oh, and I can't? You don't think I'm strong enough to defend myself?" Al had learned last year that he was the master of the Elder Wand, the most powerful wand in the world, so he really didn't think that anyone should ever dare to doubt his strength as a wizard.

"That's not what I meant, and you know it!" James was standing now, leaning over the table to face Al just as Al was facing him. "But come summer, you're not even going to be able to use magic, and _I_'ll end up being the one Dad reprimands for _your _disappearance!"

Everything was a competition to James, and the stakes were highest when he was competing against Al. Sometimes that trait made Al absolutely loathe his brother, and this was one of those times. He couldn't help but hate that James was accusing Al of something that hadn't even happened yet, and that most likely never would. See, James had things all wrong. Al may not be turning seventeen until July, but come summer, he'd be able to use more magic than ever before.

But Al didn't get the chance to tell his brother (which would probably prove to be a good thing), since just as he was about to, the shimmery sound of a silver whisper came running down the hallway and onto the kitchen table.

The patronus had taken the form of a translucent stag, and it stood regally atop the wood as it addressed James and announced in Harry's worried voice, "Son, I just came from an attack at the Bird's Nest. None were injured, but Al was there and fled the sight. If you have any idea of his whereabouts, please get him home. I can't keep looking for him if it means leaving your mother and Lily alone at the house. Please, James, find your brother, and bring him back to us."

As soon as Harry's voice cracked, it disappeared along with the charm, and Al was left looking at the faces of James and Mercy, both of which had just been flooded with shock. He even found himself slowly backing away from the table as James looked up and yelled, "You came here from an _attack?_ And you didn't think that was worth mentioning?"

"You heard Dad; nobody was hurt," replied Al as he continued to walk backward down the hallway. James had come around the table by now, though, and was steadily following Al to make sure that the latter didn't get the chance to run.

"That doesn't explain why you were there!" James refuted. "How'd you even know about the attack so quickly?" James and Al may not have been very close, but everyone at Hogwarts knew that Al was currently on the outs with his best friend, Scorpius Malfoy, who happened to have led the core alliance meeting at the Weasley house earlier that same evening. Even if Scorpius had managed to find time to send word out before the attack, he would never have said anything about it to Al.

"It's a long story," Al tried to stall an answer. Unfortunately, both James and Mercy were eyeing him with razor-sharp glares that Al couldn't help but be slightly intimidated by.

James looked confused, but Mercy kept on track, asking, "So what if it's a long story how you got there? My question is, why did you feel the need to _leave_?" The Weasleys were Al's family. It made sense that he'd help them fight if they'd been attacked, but why would he have left as soon as the battle was over?

"It doesn't matter why I left!" Albus lied. He was growing more and more irritated by both his brother as well as the presence of Mercy. What did she have to do with any of this? This was Al's mess to clean up, and James was a Potter, but Mercy most definitely wasn't. And no matter how much she may have wanted to be a part of that family, Al knew that she never would be.

After sighing in frustration and urging Mercy to back off, James took hold of Al's arm and stated, "Forget it. I'll let Dad ask all the questions once I get you back to Godric's Hollow."

Feeling threatened by James's grasp on his arm, Al used his free hand to punch his brother straight in the eye before taking out his wand, pointing it at the newly keeled over James and concerned Mercy, and said, "Don't _ever_ tell me what to do again!"

With a hand over his bleeding eye, James straightened his back and looked over at Al. The latter brother was shaking, having not fully comprehended what he'd just done, or where his sudden rage had come from. His brother, Hogwarts's most talented Quidditch player and the school's most sought-after boy toy, had a black eye, and for the first time in his life it hadn't come from a rogue bludger. It had come from somebody he barely recognized.

"What did you do?" James asked Al in a desperate tone.

A moment later, Mercy added, "Who are you?"

Albus thought about her question as he looked to the darkly varnished wooden floor. Just as he had thought before when James had asked why he'd come here, Al found himself wondering how it all had started. He couldn't seem to remember the last day he'd been Albus Potter, Harry Potter's son and the best friend of Scorpius Malfoy and Rose Weasley. He liked to believe that that boy had disappeared last summer, around the same time that Scorpius had abandoned Rose and Astoria had begun to send Al those manipulative letters. Still, his anger must have been brewing before all of that, since he wouldn't have given himself over so easily had it not.

As he was brought out of his trance by the sound of James's painful groaning, Al looked back up at the wounded warrior and blonde beauty and said simply, "Don't worry. I'm nobody worth knowing." And before James or Mercy could stop him, Al was out the door and running as fast as he could from this grim old place.

He was back on the streets in no time, but he could only thing of one possible destination, and it was the last place Al wanted to go. He couldn't see her yet, not so soon after what she'd done... after what _he_ had done for her. It must have been close to dawn by now, though, so Al wondered if he could stay awake for just few more hours. After that, he could find some alley to sleep in. After all, he wasn't about to go hide in the woods like Scorpius had. (Al had never been a fan of wild animals or crawling creatures.)

Al played out the theory for a good twenty minutes, but then his legs inadvertently stopped moving, as if trying to tell the rest of his body just how tired he really was. Albus took this as a signal to try something that didn't require any movement. He'd been practicing the advanced skill of Apparition for a while now, because like he had done last year with his Patronus, something inside of him wanted Al to be the first to complete a DADA task once it was assigned in school. And since Al had signed up for the spring session at Hogwarts, he didn't have much time left to get it right.

Preparing himself for another attempt, Al walked slowly to a dark corner on a pebbled road, closed his eyes, and focused on a place far away from here. Unfortunately, by the time he found himself spinning through space, his body sucked into an invisible vacuum before being spit back out, Al realized that he hadn't thought properly of where he was going, because the last place he'd pictured before he'd turned on the spot was the snowy yard behind his family's Tudor-style house in Godric's Hollow.

Lily, who'd been sitting anxiously on the back porch, came running over to Al as he was busy catching his breath. "Where have you been?" she asked in a panic frenzy. It was just like her to not bother checking if Al was hurt or had splinched himself before trolling for gossip. Lily's curiosity had always been more than just a healthy concern – it was a complex. "Do you have any idea how _insane_ Dad's gone?"

"Yeah, well, Dad can bugger off," suggested Al as he sucked the blood off his newly nail-less thumb. He winced at the minor injury, for Al had never had a high tolerance for physical pain. That was one of the many reasons he'd never been as talented at Quidditch as James or Scorpius; he just couldn't take the hits.

"Good attitude," Lily commented sarcastically, which made Al smirk a little. Lily had never felt the same pressure as Al had to live up to their parents' legacy, but at least they had both inherited Ginny's dry sense of humor.

Al looked up toward the house just in time to see the rest of his family shuffling through the back door, Ginny crying with relief and James yelling, "Wow! That was quite the runaway back there!" He must have Apparated home just before Al had.

Harry was behind Ginny and James, and as the latter two walked across the field to Al, the former stayed motionless atop the porch, for he knew so much more than the rest of them. Al could feel Harry's eyes piercing his head even as his mother took him in her arms. She must not have known yet; none of them did. James was the most suspicious of the three present Potters, though, looking between Al and Harry in confusion as he tried to piece everything together.

Lily soon picked up on James's notion, since they started whispering to each other as they followed Al and Ginny back to the house. Once they all got there, Ginny pushed Al past Harry and led him into the living room. James and Lily came in next and Harry brought up the rear, his scarred forehead facing the wooden floor that had been worn from years' worth of footprints.

"You hungry?" Ginny asked Al with about as much concern as she could ever show someone. "I can make you some tea."

Before Al could answer, Ginny had already fled to the adjacent kitchen and was busy clambering through cupboards and lighting the stove. She was terrible with most household chores, and that included making tea, so Al figured she was just trying to release some of the tension that was currently so palpable inside the Potter house.

James sensed that same tension, and now Lily was all caught up as well, and both of them turned to Al with crossed arms as they asked in unison, "What's going on?"

Al couldn't answer them. He couldn't answer his brother before, and he couldn't answer him now. His siblings had nothing to do with any of this. They weren't the reason Al had done what he'd done or become whom he'd become. They didn't deserve to be lied to, but the only way Al could answer them was with a lie.

But there was one person from whom everything stemmed. There was one person who deserved to be lied to, because that person had lied to Al all his life. It may have taken Al sixteen years to realize it, but he knew now that he would never be as _special_ as the Chosen One.

That was why Al found himself turning toward his silent father as James and Lily waited for an answer, and asking Harry, "Do you want tell them, or should I?"

Harry looked up at Al slowly and carefully, but Al remained cold. He wouldn't let himself be phased by his father's wilting smile or trickling tears. Al still didn't know how any of this had started, but he did know that it must have come from Harry, because everything that Al had ever done had been for, or had been _because_ of, Harry James Potter.

Al was still as he continued by asking, "Do you want to tell them about the trace?" There was so much that Harry had never told him, but had merely let Al discover for himself, no matter how different or how alone that discovery had made him feel.

"Do you want to tell them about my wand?" asked Al, still looking straight at Harry and ignoring his siblings' questioning eyes and furrowed brows. Neither James nor Lily knew about the Elder Wand, and Harry had even failed to mention its power when he'd made Al duel him for it. Al had learned that secret from Rose, who had seemed more concerned about Al's well-being than Harry ever had.

There was one last question that came to Al's mind then, and he paused for a long moment before giving tonight's mystery away. Eventually, though, he looked around the room to make eye contact with James and Lily before returning to Harry and asking, "Do you want to tell them what I did tonight? Do you want to tell them that tonight I wasn't actually fighting _against_ the Forbidden Flock? Do you want to tell them that I was fighting _with_ them?"

The reactions were not soft or prolonged; they were sharp and sporadic. James was yelling at Al, pointing his long fingers at Al's chest all while holding Lily back. The youngest Potter was pushing and shoving, trying to come at Al from all angles, hoping to literally knock some sense into him. Meanwhile, whatever cup Ginny had been holding in the kitchen had crashed to the floor, and Al's mother was now standing in between the two rooms with a dazed look on her face.

Everybody was waiting for some sort of explanation for what they'd just heard, but Harry and Al barely noticed any of them as their eyes remained locked on each other. When Harry finally spoke, he said to the others, "You should all go to the Weasleys'. They have a lot to deal with right now; they could use their family."

James was the first to try to argue, saying, "But Dad-" before Harry lifted a hand in the air to stop him from continuing.

"No, James," Harry said. "I'll fill you in on everything later, but right now you need to take your sister to the Bird's Nest."

James sighed in frustration but still obeyed, dragging Lily into the fireplace and throwing a handful of Floo Powder over her, causing her to disappear behind a burst of green flames. He then walked over to Ginny, who decided to let Al and Harry speak alone without any interference, and the two of them left the house and Apparated as soon as their shoes touched the snow on the December ground.

Once Al was alone with Harry, he couldn't help but shiver from the silence. Whatever exhaustion he'd been feeling previously had been lost; he was now running on a deadly mixture of adrenaline and anxiety. Al's every nerve was pulsating as he watched Harry begin to rub his forehead while pacing around the room.

Harry was somewhere in between the broom hooks and the magical clock when he stopped pacing and started mumbling, "You need to tell me what's going on, Al. You need to tell me the truth, even if I don't deserve to know it. You need to tell me how this happened so that I can get you out of it."

Al wasn't surprised that Harry thought that his son had been brainwashed. A part of Al himself even believed that he'd somehow been programmed by Astoria to do exactly as she told, but the honest part of him knew that that wasn't true. She'd never used the Imperius curse on him. She'd never even threatened him. Al had joined her on his own accord. He'd joined her because she'd been the only person who'd shown any interest in him after last summer. Whatever had made all the others stop caring was the part Al couldn't figure out, nor was he even sure that he wanted to.

Caught up in these thoughts, Al found himself looking back on a time when just about everyone had cared, most of all his father. "Do you remember when I used to ask you tell me stories about yourself?" he said in his steadiest tone.

Harry tried to interrupt, but Al made him listen by answering for him, "I wanted to know everything, and for a long time I truly thought that you had in fact told me everything. But then you asked me to duel you a few summers ago. Do you remember that?"

Looking up at Harry, Al was pleased to see that he was nodding. "I was so excited to show off for you," Al explained, "That it didn't even occur to me that I shouldn't have been allowed to use magic in the middle of the summer." That had been how Al had taken power of Harry's Elder Wand, by beating him in a duel, but he'd never heard a word from the Ministry regarding his activation of the Trace, a charm placed on underage wizards that could track their magical habits outside of the school-year.

When Harry failed to respond but also didn't seem surprised, Al asked what he'd been itching to know for over a year now. "Was that _why_ you did it? Did you already know that the Trace wouldn't work on me? Was passing down the Elder Wand your way of testing a theory?"

Harry took his glasses off momentarily so that he could wipe the tears from his eyes before taking a deep breath and answering, "Yes. When you were about three years old, you used to take my wand and roll it through your hands like it was a toy. But even by doing just that, you could break a glass or make something fly toward you. The first few times it happened, I waited for some sort of letter from the Ministry, because you were too young to own a wand at the time, but I never heard anything. James got letters almost every summer after he started at Hogwarts because he couldn't stop himself from using magic at home, and I'd always talk to the regulation compartment to get him out of being prosecuted, but they never seemed to know about you."

"Why not?" asked Al. He'd known for some time now that unlike every other underage witch and wizard, he wasn't under the Trace, but he didn't understand why. He didn't understand what made him so different from everybody else.

"I've no idea," said Harry, and Al could tell that he was being honest. "Believe me, I've looked for some sort of reason behind all of this, but I didn't exactly want to go up and tell people. As far as I know, this has never happened before."

Al nodded, because that that was all Harry could tell him. After all, there might not be any legitimate reason for his not being under the Trace. Maybe it just happened, and maybe it didn't mean anything. But what Harry had done to Al, what he had _given_ him... that meant something.

Taking out the Elder Wand from his pocket, Al asked his father, "And this? You could have tested your theory in any way you liked, but you didn't have to make me duel you while using _this_ wand. So, why did you give this to me?" He had asked his father about his wand last summer, soon after Rose had made the connection and had told Al about it. Still, Harry had been very vague with his explanation, and had of course refrained from giving Al any information regarding the wand's history before he found it all out himself.

"It's like I told you before," Harry responded. His voice was soft and desperate-sounding. "I could see the jealousy in your eyes every time I looked at you. I wanted to make you believe in yourself again."

For some reason, Harry's answer struck a soft spot for Al, and he ended up yelling back at his father, "Oh, so you thought that you'd give me the most powerful wand in the world so that _I'_d suddenly feel more talented? Did you think I'd never realize that my new-found talent wasn't actually coming from _me_?" Harry was right that Al had been jealous. He hated James for being so incredible at Quidditch, Lily for being so popular amongst her classmates, and Scorpius for more reasons than he could count. And maybe the wand had made him feel better about himself, but whatever confidence he had gained from it was lost just as soon as Al had found out the truth. That's when Astoria had come along.

"No, you're not seeing clearly!" Harry replied with frustration. "Wands are only as powerful as the wizards who use them. The Elder Wand just happens to be made for wizards who have more power than a regular wand can hold."

"That's rubbish!" Al fired back with complete and abject denial. Harry was always trying to boost his self-esteem where it didn't deserve to be boosted.

"No, Al, it's not," argued Harry, this time looking much surer of himself than he'd been before. "When I decided not to return the wand to Dumbledore's grave, I did some research of my own. Winning a duel isn't all that one needs to do to acquire that wand. Remember, Al, the wand chooses the wizard. The Elder Wand is no exception, I can promise you that."

Al wanted to believe what Harry was telling him, but he just couldn't wrap his head around it. All this talk about him being _special_ – the son of the boy who lived, the underage wizard with no Trace, and now the young man with a killing wand – was supposed to make Al feel like an even stronger version of himself, but it only made him wonder who he really was underneath all the labels.

"That's rubbish," he muttered to Harry, sick of listening to all of the excuses. With Astoria, Al had finally made a decision on his own, and maybe it had been the wrong decision for everybody else, but what if it had been the right one for him? What if this was who he truly was? What if this was why he was so different?

Feeling ready to tell Harry what he wanted to hear, Al said, "I wasn't trying to hurt anybody. I did it because she asked me to. I did it to make people notice."

"People already notice you, Al!" Harry tried to reach out to him, but Albus backed away. "I know that I've been away a lot lately, but I'm here now. I can help you get out of this."

Al didn't want to 'get out of this'. He could do so in a second if he wanted to; he had never fully tied himself to Astoria or to the Forbidden Flock. Everything he'd done had been for him, and so he didn't want to stop doing it. He didn't want to stop feeling like he was finally good at something. He didn't want to stop showing Scorpius how it felt to be betrayed. He didn't want to stop suppressing his guilt, because at least that way, it wouldn't explode just yet.

But Al didn't tell Harry any of this. Instead, he said to his father in the most believable and sincere way that he could, "What if it's too late to get out of it?"

Harry smiled, and Al had to remind himself not to snicker back at him. His father appeared to believe that everything could be solved in a single conversation. He must have really wanted to fix things if he was going to let himself be this naïve. Still, Al tried to pretend that he was interested as Harry said, "Do you remember what I told you at King's Cross station before your first year at Hogwarts?"

Al didn't have to think twice before the memory flooded back to him. It was as clear and as potent as if it had taken place only yesterday, and soon Al realized why. This was the answer to all of his questions – the questions he never thought he'd have an answer to. That day when Harry had knelt down at the train station and Al had asked what would happen if he was sorted into Slytherin, was the day he realized that he was different – not special... different.

"You told me that if it really meant that much to me, I could choose Gryffindor," Al recalled. But, of course, Harry had been wrong. Al hadn't been sorted into Gryffindor. He had been the first and only Potter to ever be put into Slytherin.

"Yeah," Harry smiled. "And you still can choose. It's _never_ too late."

Al walked over to Harry as soon as he'd finished talking and let his father's arms take hold of him. A part of him had wanted to do it, but the larger part of him knew that it would be the perfect camouflage. Al couldn't keep being a spy if Harry knew what he was up to at all times, so he'd have to try to hide his allegiance all over again.

When the father and son broke apart, Harry told Al, "Go get some sleep. I'll talk to your mother and we'll make everything that happened tonight disappear."

"Thanks," Al said without meaning it before he turned around and headed upstairs to his room.

The darkness covered him as soon as he closed his door, but Al lit his wand for a moment and pointed it over his desk, which was covered in various potion recipes and crawling with ingredients, in search of a letter. As it turned out, there wasn't one outside of the pile Al had been growing on the floor. Still, he hadn't exactly expected to hear from Astoria tonight. He had done what she'd needed him to do, and he knew how to find her. Now, it was just up to him to either meet her there or keep running away. It was up to Albus to either stall his guilt a little longer, or let it take hold of him once and for all. By the time he fell asleep, he knew what he was going to do, and he wasn't ashamed of it. That's how he knew that he'd made the right decision, if not for everybody else, then at least for himself.

* * *

By the time Al opened his eyes, it was nearing evening of the next day. He hadn't planned to sleep for so long, and so he quickly realized that he didn't have much time left. After putting on what may or may not have been a clean shirt (black, as usual), he crept past Lily and James's rooms and tip-toed down the stairs.

Before he turned the corner, Al realized that he could hear his parents' voices coming from around the corner, inside the kitchen. Hoping not to be seen, he leaned his back against the wall and kept his breathing quiet as he listened to their conversation.

"And nobody will find out?" Ginny was asking Harry with concern. "Not even that _slimy_ Rita Skeeter?"

"Most definitely not her," Harry answered reassuringly. "Hermione's got the Ministry wired, and Luna's going to report the attack before anyone else gets the chance to. Al won't be mentioned in any of it."

Harry really did know how to make things disappear. It seemed as though he'd already gotten rid of every trace of Al's presence at the attack last night. Nobody would ever know, which was good for the Potters because it kept Harry as the wizarding world's number one symbol of hope, but it was even better for Al. He could go back to Hogwarts and nobody would know a thing. And those who'd been there – the Weasleys and Scorpius – would go on believing that Al had made a mistake, and that now he just wanted to make up for it. Little did they know, that was the last thing that Al wanted to do.

There was silence from the kitchen for a minute or two, but then Ginny spoke again, asking, "And you're sure that Al's okay?" Al would have been more worried of his parents growing suspicious if they hadn't both _wanted_ him to be back on their side so desperately. Loyalty was a powerful thing, though Al would argue that it wasn't nearly as powerful as loneliness.

"He will be," said Harry, adding soon after, "And James will keep an eye on him at school. That's the best place for him to be anyway, now that Astoria's found her way into the Ministry." Astoria had gained the title of Head of the Auror Department from Ron Weasley at the end of last night's battle. Al was surprised that he hadn't thought much about it lately, considering he'd been the one to cast the spell.

Ginny was sighing with disappointment. The Order of the Phoenix had come so far in just a few months since its re-assembly, and now its plans had been squandered in a single handshake. "We had better start getting people underground," she suggested.

"I'm already working on it," Harry promised. "We still have the Aurors on our side, even if she has access to our offices and database. And even if Kingsley can't keep her from taking all that, he's certainly not going to let her infiltrate the Ministry any further."

"Good," said Ginny matter-of-factly. Neither of them said much after that, and Al had already overheard more information than he could have hoped for, so he decided that now was probably the time to try to sneak out.

With no way to get out back without passing right by his parents, Al decided to use the front door. He cast a silencing spell between himself and the kitchen using the _Muffliato_ charm, one that he and Rose had been casting for years without knowing where it had come from, but that Al had recently discovered written in the Half-Blood Prince's potions book. With this, he turned the knob and slipped out of the house before anybody had the chance to notice that he'd left.

He wasn't going to try to Apparate again just yet, for fear of splinching himself more than he did yesterday. Instead, Al left the tiny village of Godric's Hollow by foot, passing the old Potter memorial that sat right beside his house and then the square's second statue, which was an enormous goblin-made monument of Godric Gryffindor and Albus Dumbledore that Harry had put up just before Al was born.

Luckily, Al wasn't headed as far as London today, and actually only needed to walk through a few towns until he found the train tracks that would, according to Astoria at least, lead him the rest of the way. He followed them carefully up a foggy hill that was encompassed in dark gray clouds. The moisture was culminating around Al's feet like early-morning mist, while the sky was filling with rain clouds underneath its setting sun.

The tracks brought Albus to a run-down mill that sat on the bank of a river lined with broken beer bottles and scavenging raccoons. Al steered clear of the nasty little buggers as he crossed the bridge into a suburb made up of narrow alleys and terraced houses, making sure to nod at some of the Muggles as he passed.

The street he was looking for was called Spinner's End, and naturally, it was located toward the edge of the village. He still managed to find it fairly easily, though, and before long Al was casting a silent spell on a locked door that opened to the darkened hallway of the Rookwood house.

Knox was at Al's feet in seconds, for surely he'd seen him coming. He had been Astoria's very first recruit, and for good reason. Al didn't quite understand how far Knox's special talent could reach, but he did know that the tall, dark-haired young man was a Seer. Al had never come across one before, other than Professor Trelawney of course, but it wasn't hard to be fascinated by them. Seers could tell the future, and some could do even more than that, making Knox an invaluable asset to the Forbidden Flock.

"Black Hawk," Knox greeted Al in a serious tone, using his given Patronus nickname. When Al looked up to him questionably, however, Knox broke the act by laughing and saying jovially, "How have you been, mate?"

"Oh, Rookie, you know how it is," Al joked with him as he took off his coat. "Walked in on my brother shagging some slapper before I ran home to Mummy and Daddy and convinced them to trust me again." He was embellishing for effect, but sometimes it felt nice to joke about such serious matters, which Knox had recently taught Al to be a rather good coping mechanism.

"What a bore!" Knox groaned in response as the two walked down the hall and into the drawing room, which was home to a large round table encircled by walls that had been plastered with paper maps. Astoria and Knox had a fetish for maps, since they both came from the department of International Magical Cooperation at the Ministry of Magic. Knox had been Astoria's intern before her 'incident', and she had later convinced Knox to quit his position and join her instead.

Astoria was seated at the table in the furthest chair from the door. Beside her was Wynn Traylor, a middle-aged man in a dark brown cloak whom Al always tried not to stare at for fear of being on the receiving end of one of the wizard's blinding curses, for he was a master of the Dark Arts. Still, it was difficult not to stare at Wynn's flaky white skin and crimson eyes. Each of the core members of the Flock was unique, but Wynn's albinism was truly one of a kind.

Across from Wynn, with her back currently to Al and Knox, was Vega. The eagle of the group, Vega was a Swedish witch who'd graduated from Durmstrang Academy a year or so after Al was born. Astoria had recruited her recently to use as the Flock's head war strategist, though Al wasn't entirely convinced that she was the right choice. It had something to do with her appearance – leggy limbs, pointed jawline, and a nest of dirty blonde hair gave Al the impression that Vega had already lost more battles than she'd won.

It didn't help that she was sitting next to her miniscule counterpart. Ryder Rookwood, Knox's twin sister, was dark-skinned like her brother but even darker at heart. Everything about Ryder reminded Al of weapons, from her eyes that were the size of grenades to her elf-like ears that shot out of her head like daggers.

"Remind me again why we have to meet in this filthy Muggle town," Vega was complaining before she noticed that Al was standing behind her.

"Fewer wizards mean less suspicion," muttered Ryder with annoyance. She was the Flock's secret keeper, in charge of keeping every plan and every member as hidden from the Aurors and other authorities as possible. "My family's been involved in the dark arts for years. They know how to hide themselves."

Al used the topic of conversation as a way to announce himself, jumping in with a warning. "We're going to need to be more hidden than this soon enough," he said as he took a seat next to Vega while Knox sat beside his sister.

"Albus," sneered Astoria. Everything she said came out as a sneer, as if she couldn't help herself. Her words were outstretched and oddly slippery, even when she didn't intend to sound superior. "So glad you made it."

"As am I," Al said with a gestured nod.

The others were silent as they let Al and Astoria speak, the latter asking, "So, do I still have my spy, or must I assign you a new task?" She was referring to Al's deception having been revealed last night. They had both been prepared for the worst, knowing full well that Harry could have easily kept Al from ever contacting Astoria again, or even from returning to Hogwarts. Luckily, Harry had been much too trusting to do any of that.

Al smiled before answering, "You still have your spy."

Everybody was happy to hear that, as there were smiles and snickers all around the room. Astoria, though, looked particularly pleased as she shuffled through a stack of files on the table and said, "In that case, I have some things I'd like to discuss with you."

"I'm listening," Al assured his leader.

He waited anxiously to hear what Astoria had planned, for Al never knew what to expect from her, and so he was surprised when she shook her head and replied, "Not here. What I have to say is strictly Hogwarts business."

Initially, Al was stunned. He had never met with Astoria on Hogwarts grounds, though he'd been doing her dirty work there for months. Now, though, it sounded as if she may be joining him.

Before Al had the chance to reply, however, Ryder whispered weakly, "Pardon me, Astoria, but you can't possibly take such a risk! You'll be discovered!"

"The girl is right," Wynn piped in with a thick, sing-song Welsh accent. "The Order will have even more security on the place than usual after-"

"_Quiet_," Astoria interrupted, causing everyone to obey without further question. "Part of the reason I needed to place such an attack last night was to gain access to the Auror department. Now, I have done that, which means that I am currently in control of all the Order's protective enchantments. I am well aware that they may be replaced in only a matter of weeks, which is why I must act now. It just so happens that the action I am seeking lies at Hogwarts, and Hogwarts _only_."

Al was the only one at the table who knew what Astoria was speaking of. She hadn't even mentioned what she'd be using it for, but Al had stolen the pensieve for her anyway, as a way of pledging his loyalty to her. This must have been what she was seeking at Hogwarts, for Al had stashed it in the Shrieking Shack.

Deciding that it couldn't hurt to show that same loyalty now, Al told Astoria, "I'll be ready for you at Hogwarts as soon as I return."

Astoria smiled at him then, for once showing her maternal side that only snuck up on her when she wasn't paying attention, and said, "I know you will."

From there, the conversation transitioned into army-talk, Astoria and Knox going over the relations they'd formed with foreign countries that might help entice more international witches and wizards to join the Flock, Vega butting in every now and then. Al and Ryder listened in and provided advice when they could, while Wynn merely stared at the table for most of the meeting, his laser eyes searing a hole through its wood.

Al didn't leave Spinner's End until it was completely dark outside, and so he was sure that his family was already fast asleep by the time he made it back to Godric's Hollow, this time walking through the woods behind the yard in hopes of sneaking in the house through the back.

Unfortunately, Al's simple plan was foiled by the same person who'd gotten in his way yesterday. He caught a glimpse of his brother's silhouette sitting on the banister of the back porch, and Al knew all too soon that James had just been waiting for Al to arrive. Apparently, he'd meant what he'd said about not letting Al sneak out anymore.

Al kept quiet as he swung a leg over the banister and sat opposite James. His brother didn't say anything either, so Al decided to cut to the chase by asking, "Are you going to tell them?" He was referring to more than just his cutting curfew. James knew that Al's apology act had all been for show. James knew that Al couldn't be swayed by Harry so easily, not when everything in his life was currently pointing him in a different direction.

James considered Al's question for a while before shaking his head and saying, "No. I'll let you keep lying for as long as you need."

Al couldn't see James very clearly due to the overwhelming darkness, but he could sense the disappointment in his brother's eyes. He'd been able to sense it all his life, because the only time James had ever paid any attention to Al had been when he'd felt the need to pity him.

Still, James only ever did what was best for _him_, so why was he suddenly willing to play Al's game? "Why would you do that?" asked Al.

James took a deep breath of snow-filled air before he said, "Because eventually, you won't be able to handle the guilt. When you do finally explode, you're going to need somebody to pick up the pieces. And I'm not about to let everyone else, everyone that _you_'ve hurt just so that you can keep feeling numb to the rest of the world, feel like they're somehow responsible for all of _your_ wrong choices."

He was talking about their parents and about Lily. He was talking about Scorpius. He was talking about Rose. James was talking about everyone who'd ever loved Al, and as he made Al think of each of them, Al could feel the tingling coming back to him. He could feel the guilt for all that he'd done and all that he was about to do, and so he quickly shut it back out. He breathed in the cold air and he thought of all the things that the rest of them should be guilty for, and suddenly his own guilt faded away.

At least, that was until James finished his speech by saying, "But I'm not going to feel responsible for any of this. I'm _never_ going to let myself feel responsible for your mistakes. So, I'll be here, to pick up the pieces. I'll be here when that bomb goes off."

* * *

_**Note: **Please, by all means, let me know what you thought about the opening act of Part 3 with a review! Did you miss Scorpius (because I do a little), or did you like the fresh perspective? If you're already wondering what will happen next, be sure to check out my new spoiler section on my profile page for a hint of what's to come._

_Also, for those of you who haven't noticed yet, I am in the midst of writing a new story for The Hunger Games. It's a Finnick/Annie fic. titled 'Take Us to the Start', so be sure to check it out if you're a THG fan! Thanks again._

_-Hailey_


	22. The Vanishing Past

_**Note:** I'm back! For those of you who didn't know, I went on hiatus for about a month to get through my exams, but now I am back to writing for the long haul, because it is officially summer for me. I'm so sorry for leaving you hanging, but I assure you that I am now under a strict fan-fiction schedule that covers the whole of Part 3, so I will be updating regularly from this day forward.**  
**_

_Anyway, here is Chapter 22, and I hope you are all still reading, because this one reveals a lot of new information (it's very plot-heavy). Enjoy!_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**22 – The Vanishing Past**

It wasn't all that hard to be invisible. People who wanted to disappear tended to think that it was an impossible thing to do, but it wasn't. Albus could attest to that. For him, vanishing was as easy as flipping a switch. All he had to do was stop caring, say goodbye to anything that tethered him to his world and let go, float away, or turn on the spot.

"On the count of three!" yelled out the instructor to all the sixth years who were already of age or who would be turning seventeen at some point between now and August. "One, two, three!"

There were shouts of surprise and even panic across the Great Hall as the students tried to move from within their wooden circles to the other side of the rims. Bobby Dormer screamed upon realizing that his entire head of hair had been leftover from his Apparition, while Lucy Weasley struggled to keep her balance after landing on one leg. The Ravenclaws performed relatively well in comparison, but even they were no match for the Slytherin students.

Madison Bulstrode and Patty Parkinson each performed admirably, leaving nothing but a few eyelashes behind as they Apparated out of their circles. Al was by far the best of them all, though, since he managed to bring every part of him along for ride, Apparating without a single splinch.

Al smiled for himself as the instructor walked by and said, "Well done, Mr. Potter. You won't need much more practicing at this rate, will you?"

But Al's pride was diminished when he felt cold eyes on him from a few yards to his left. Scorpius was glaring at him through floating ice caps that were about to crack, and though Al had been successfully ignoring him for the past hour, it was getting more and more difficult by the minute.

They had only been back at Hogwarts for a couple of days since winter break, and neither of the boys had said a word to the other. Al had been invisible to Scorpius, or at least he imagined that he was, since really Scorpius and Rose never seemed to stop looking his way. Al would say that he didn't blame them for being so concerned, considering that they were some of the only ones who knew what he'd done on Christmas, but that would be a lie. He _did_ blame them, not for noticing him now, but for having failed to notice him before.

That was why Al refused to be the first to speak. He wasn't going to be the only one to apologize and beg for forgiveness, because he wasn't the only one who had done something wrong. And so what if Scorpius was skeptical of Al's loyalty? Nobody would ever believe his word over Al's, the son of the Chosen One. So, Scorpius could stare as much as he liked, but Al sure wasn't going to do anything about it.

Still, it was unfortunate that the Apparition lesson only included Al and Scorpius. Rose was the youngest of the three and wouldn't be seventeen until next fall, so she wasn't eligible for a lesson until then. It wasn't so much that Al enjoyed the sight of the newly reunited lovebirds holding hands down the hallways, but at least Rose hadn't been so spiteful toward Al.

Though it had all taken place in her own front yard, Rose seemed much less concerned about the past than she was about the future. Al had a feeling that she hadn't been able to let go of her trust in him so quickly, and so when she was present, the air around the trio was slightly warmer than it was with only the boys.

But for now, Al would just have to deal with Scorpius on his own. Luckily, the young Malfoy's focus was fairly limited after wasting so much energy sending questioning glances at Al every chance he got, so Scorpius wasn't faring so well with his Apparitions. He left all sorts of clothing and body parts behind with every turn, and even managed to splinch his shoulder pretty badly when he tried to travel too far.

Scorpius's frustration seemed to grow with every new mistake he made, and Al was secretly enjoying the sight of him by the end of the lesson. He had beads of sweat dripping off his chin as he tried to use magic to subdue the wound on his shoulder, and he looked unbelievably disheveled for a boy whose dress was perpetually pristine.

By the time they were dismissed, Al was ready to jet out of the hall with lightning speed before the hobbling Scorpius could follow him. He was skipping lunch for the day because it was the perfect time to meet with Astoria without anyone around to notice his vanishing act. Still, he had to take his time walking through most of Hogwarts as he waited for everybody to clear from their classes and make their way to the Great Hall.

On his way out of the castle, Al passed by some more familiar faces that weren't so keen on seeing him. Professor Weasley, more commonly known as Al's grandfather Arthur, was busy chatting with Hugo and that Nigel Creevey kid who'd apparently kissed Hugo in front of the entire student body just before Christmas.

Hugo, who'd of course partaken in the battle at the Weasley house, glared at Albus much like Scorpius was always doing, and Arthur and Nigel both had to hold back the little firework from pointing his wand at Al and starting something that Al could surely finish in seconds. But then the three onlookers were gone and Al didn't give them a second thought, because thinking about Hugo was one of the few things that would make Al feel guilty, and he would avoid such a feeling at all costs.

Al nearly made it out home-free until he ran into Rose at the edge of the courtyard that led to the wooden bridge. He stopped upon seeing her, for they were the only two left outside, but Rose stepped toward him until she was only a yard or so away.

Al thought about shoving past her, ignoring her like he'd been doing to Scorpius, but her head was leaning forward and her eyes were scanning him; she wanted to say something, and he knew that he owed it to her to listen.

"How are you?" Rose managed to ask. At first, Al wasn't sure if that was what Rose had intended to say, but he soon realized that it was when she furrowed her eyebrows and looked to him as if awaiting a response.

"I'm fine," Al nodded. "Better." He didn't want her to suspect anything of him, because like Hugo, she was one of the people he'd never meant to hurt. He wanted Rose to forgive him and to believe, like everybody else did, that he had made a mistake that he would never make again. He didn't want to lose her trust just yet.

But Al should never have been so naïve as to think, even for a second, that Rose wouldn't see right through him. They had grown up together; they'd been best friends since birth. There had never been any room for secrets between them, and Rose seemed particularly adamant about such as she shook her head and said to Al, "No, you're not."

No, of course he wasn't fine. He hadn't been _fine_ for quite some time. And this was him lashing out, and somehow Rose had gotten caught in the crossfire of Al's rebellion. Still, he shook the thought aside and brushed past Rose in one smooth step forward, saying back at her, "Look, I've got to go."

"Okay," Rose mumbled as Al disappeared further into the depths of the covered bridge. She caught his attention for one last word, though, when she yelled out, "You can't just shake me off, you know! You're my best friend; you don't get to leave me."

Al turned back to face her as if she had pressed the exact button that would make him listen. In a way, she had, because the words she'd just said were the same words she and Al had promised each other the past summer, when Scorpius had abandoned them both. Of course, Al had already begun to betray Rose by then, claiming to be searching for Scorpius while he really met with Astoria, lying to her for nothing but his own benefit.

Rose needed to understand that, so Al said with a slight shiver from the wintry air, "I'm not leaving you, Rose. I'm leaving myself."

He was proud of her for not crying. Al was proud of Rose when her blue eyes met his green with anger, because she should be angry. They should all be angry, which is why Al added, "And no matter how hard you try to put the pieces back together, nothing will ever be the same again."

Without a moment of pause, Rose retorted, "That's not true. We've all been here, Al. We've all tried to hide ourselves, leave the past behind and just restart. I know that's what you're trying to do now, but it's not as simple as it seems." She had hid herself during all the time she'd spent with Lysander, and Scorpius had done the same by running away last summer. Rose seemed to think that Al was continuing the pattern, and she was right.

"You're right, Rose," said Al, his eyes squinting toward the cracked floorboards of the bridge, through which he could catch glimpses of the icy Black Lake from underneath. "It's not simple, but maybe that's what makes it so exciting."

This time, Al set off and didn't look back, and Rose didn't try to call after him. At this point, there was nothing she could do, for Al needed to make his own decisions. He needed to figure out who he was on his own before he could go back to being Scorpius Malfoy and Rose Weasley's best friend.

The walk across the bridge was slow and cold, two things Al had never been a fan of. Still, he eventually made it to the Whomping Willow, which he looked at with a dreadful grimace before using his wand to levitate a rock and throw it at the knot of the ancient tree. Upon doing so, its branches went limp, allowing Al to walk beneath the still tree and slide himself under its roots, into an old tunnel that James had once told him led to the Shrieking Shack.

The passageway was old and musty, and Al walked through it on tip-toes to avoid being surprised by any sort of lurking creature. He had his hand clasped around the Elder Wand for the entire journey, just in case something leaped at him from beneath the dirt, for Al was far more fearful of what _lived_ in the dark than the darkness itself.

After what felt like forever, Albus arrived at the rundown, haunted house that was known to more than just Hogwarts students as the Shrieking Shack. He climbed multiple stories in order to reach the top floor where Astoria had proposed to meet him, but she wasn't anywhere to be seen within the dusty, blackened room, in the middle of which sat the stolen pensieve.

Al spent a minute looking around for Astoria, but neither she nor her bird self were in eye-shot. Sighing, Al walked over to the pensieve to inspect the object as he waited for Astoria to show. As he approached the goblet, however, he noticed a thin trail of silvery liquid amongst the watery clearness, and then he couldn't seem to look away.

The path of the memory was mesmerizing, swirling through the water like a graceful mermaid and leaving a painting of wind in its wake. Lately, wind was just what Al had been looking for – something that could steer him in a single direction and never allow him to look back.

Soon, that's just what Al was doing, as he lowered his head to get a closer look at the pattern and, upon accidentally brushing his forehead against the liquid, was drawn straight into the goblet like he was being pulled into someone else's Apparition.

He was a flying ghost of a person as he landed on the marble floor of Astoria's past. Just as soon as his feet hit the ground, Al could feel the pressure of walls and ceilings closing around him, as if the Hogwarts castle was being built right before his eyes. Before he knew what had happened, he was standing in the middle of the Great Hall, but it was not a Great Hall that he was familiar with.

It was gray, dreary, and full of sadness, with black banners hanging from thin air and silence sweeping across the hundreds of tearing faces as if they had all been overcome by the same amount of grief, all at the same exact time. And they were all there, all of the students separated by year but not by house, and all of the professors in long, priest-like robes at the front of the hall.

Albus was left in the center of it all, but a small cry from a girl sitting toward the front of the hall gained his attention, for he realized that it must have come from Astoria. After all, he was in her memory, and so he knew that he could only see what _she_ had seen, could only hear what _she _had heard.

Sure enough, Al found a young, black-haired girl with Scorpius's eyes sitting in an aisle chair about five rows back from the front. Al would have guessed by her small hands and childish features that she couldn't be any older than thirteen, but he didn't get the chance to inspect more closely before a different voice was heard that steered Al's eyes to the podium sitting straight ahead of him.

"Happy Halloween," said a somber, long-bearded Albus Dumbledore as he adjusted his spectacles from their place on his pointed noise. It was impossible not to be drawn to him, for Dumbledore's presence was iconic, his voice languid but powerful, and more students than just Al seemed to sense it.

All eyes were on the Headmaster as he continued, "While this day might normally be a cause for celebration, I would like us all to suppress our enthusiasm while we remember the deaths of two people who were tricked, but not treated."

Slowly, the gravity of the event sunk in. Though Al had been confused only moments ago, he now understood that this gathering was in memoriam of a night he himself had been told about many moons ago.

"James and Lily Potter were two of our own," continued Dumbledore, and Al held his breath upon hearing the namesakes of his siblings from the voice of his own. "And their deaths, on a night five years ago today, not only vanquished the Dark Lord, but also marked a new era for the magical world – an era founded on sacrifice and bound by love."

His words were followed by a moment of silence, during which Al tried to take in more of the people involved in the scene. In the row of professors, he recognized younger versions of McGonagall and Flitwick, but it was the sight of an expression-less, greasy-haired Severus Snape that took reign of Al's thoughts.

The late Potions master had black eyes that appeared to have little to no life left in them, and he was as still and cold as a statue made of cracked rocks that were only held together by a few pathetic nails in the ground. He was the most broken person Al had ever laid eyes on, so he couldn't help but wonder how Snape could have possibly been the bravest man his father had ever known.

But just as soon as Al tried to step toward him, the professor disappeared, his presence replaced with a puff of black smoke that took control of the entire hall and transformed it back to the Great Hall that Al was so used to.

Now, all the students were seated at the four long tables that normally filled the hall, and there was a feast of food set across their lengths, pulling the kids into the celebration that they had been waiting for. This time, Al didn't have to look very far to find the young Astoria, for she was sitting at a bench just beside him at the table that was usually lined with Hufflepuffs.

Curious to understand why Astoria wasn't with the other Slytherins, Al nudged himself beside a fourth year who couldn't see or feel him and took a seat next to the girl. It took a minute for Al to get used to the idea that this was really her, Scorpius's mother and the most dangerous witch of her age, when right now she was rosy-cheeked, innocent, and half the size of Al.

His wondering subsided, however, when somebody from the other end of the table started talking. "It's odd that it's been a whole five years, isn't it?" said a boy with an abnormally low voice for his age.

As Astoria nodded beside Al, the latter looked over at the boy who had spoken to see a kid with hair as orange as the candy corn he was popping into his mouth at a nauseating rate. His robes were in terrible condition and his Gryffindor tie was torn and aloof against his stained shirt and freckled skin. There was no mistaking him – the hair and appetite alone were tell-tale signs of a Weasley. Still, Al didn't quite realize that it was his uncle Charlie until he noticed the pin on the boy's left shoulder that was golden in color and shaped like a snitch.

"Yeah, tell me about it," said a female voice coming from Charlie's right. "That was the night my older cousin was sent to Azkaban!"

Once again, Al didn't connect the dots straight away. Though he knew that she must be speaking of Sirius Black, who'd been falsely accused of leading Voldemort to Godric's Hollow on Halloween of 1981 and had subsequently been sent to prison for over a decade, he wasn't sure who the girl was until her hair changed color.

"Teddy," Al found himself whispering upon seeing Tonks's naturally brown pixie cut turn dark and fiery as she spoke of her family. She had the same rare abilities of her future son, a Metamorphmagus.

But nobody heard Al's comment as Tonks continued by saying, "It's ironic, really, since most of my family's quite proud of Sirius now, even though they'd already burnt his face out of the family tree. And at the rate they're going with the dismembering, I'll probably be next." Al remembered Teddy once telling him that his side of the family had been disowned by the rest of the Blacks after Andromeda had married a Muggle-born wizard.

"Oh, well, they shouldn't do that!" squawked Astoria suddenly, sitting up in her seat awkwardly and saying in a high-pitched, self-conscious tone, "It's not _your_ fault that your mother married a Mud-blood."

Her comment caused both Tonks and Charlie to glare at Astoria with disappointment, and as Astoria crouched back down and tried to hide herself from her supposed friends, Al noticed the twinkle of her Slytherin tie slowly widen the gap between her and the other two.

"Didn't we tell you not to use that word?" Tonks asked Astoria pointedly, though Charlie was nudging her from the side. He was shrugging and seemed to be advising Tonks to let it go, but Tonks had no intention of doing so.

As she stared down the oddly powerless Astoria, the latter squeaked, "I'm sorry," before looking back up at Tonks in desperation.

Tonks rolled her eyes but didn't punish Astoria any further, while Charlie sent a smile her way and said, "It doesn't matter. Anyway, we shouldn't have to be reminded of all this danger when we're not living in it ourselves. Honestly, one of these days, I'm going to leave this place just so that I can get a little bit of excitement in my life and stop being sucked into the past."

Al knew exactly how he felt, even though Charlie was seriously misguided about the amount of danger left in the world at the time. Still, Tonks seemed to be on the same page as Charlie, perking up a bit and leaning forward as she whispered, "Speaking of danger, what do you say we take a little trip to the Forbidden Forest? You know, get into the _real_ holiday spirit."

Charlie laughed and nodded, the two troublemakers ready to take flight as they stood from their seats, but Astoria didn't appear to be so enthralled by the idea. That didn't stop her from trying to follow them like a puppy dog, though, as she asked hopefully, "Could I come as well?"

Tonks and Charlie turned back around to see Astoria practically bent over and ready to grovel at their feet, but Tonks wouldn't have any of it. "How about you sit this one out, Story?" she suggested. "You wouldn't want to ruin your chances of becoming the perfect prefect, after all."

At that, Tonks turned around and headed out of the hall, and after apologizing to Astoria, Charlie followed the now pink-haired third year out the double doors and into the night.

Albus was left looking at the lonely Astoria as the scene faded away and he was pulled back to reality. It took a moment for him to catch his balance as his head instinctively lifted itself from inside the pensieve and allowed him to stand upright in the present-day Shrieking Shack.

Once his eyes adjusted to the lack of light in the room, Al found himself staring straight ahead at the golden hawk he knew so well. She was poised and regal as she sat perched atop the same stack of files that Al had noticed on the table in the Rookwood house. Astoria didn't waste much time before flapping her wings to gain some ground and then transforming herself mid-air until she was her usual tall, pale-skinned beauty in ragged clothes but still-smooth hair.

"I see you discovered the real use of the pensieve," she said to Al as she took a few steps toward him.

He had read about it before stealing it from McGonagall's office (using the password Rose had guessed the year before), but he had never used the magical memory box until today. Now, Al was fascinated by it, but he still felt slightly confused. After all, he didn't doubt for a second that Astoria had placed that particular memory in the pensieve for a reason, and that she'd wanted Al to see it. What Al didn't understand was what it was supposed to tell him.

"Why'd you show me this?" he asked, cutting right to the chase.

Astoria took a deep breath as if she needed to think through her reasoning first, but of course she'd already had a speech planned. Her words were obviously rehearsed as she turned back to Al and explained, "I thought it would be good for you to know that you're not the only one who's ever felt like a third wheel."

Al was taken aback by Astoria's statement. She had never spoken directly of Scorpius, let alone him _and_ Rose. At first, Al wondered how she even knew about them, but then he realized that she'd had a spy all of last year as well. She knew far more than she liked to let on.

Albus kept quiet for a moment, but Astoria seemed to have more to say as she came uncomfortably close to Al and looked him straight in the eye and continued, "I also want you to know that if you'd like to be in with me, with _this_, then I won't leave you out of any part of it. But in order for me to do that, you need to be _all_ in."

The Forbidden Flock. He was already a part of it, but of course she'd been sensing Al's hesitance. He had shown a great deal of loyalty by attending the meeting after the attack on the Weasleys, but that wasn't enough. He was meant to be playing both sides, but Astoria needed to know which side he wanted to _win_.

"So, you have a choice to make," said Astoria with little to no threat in her tone. "And I suggest you think long and hard about it, because as soon as you leave the past behind, you can't go back." Her voice cracked slightly as she put her head down and said, almost in a whimper, "No matter how hard you try."

Al understood that Astoria was giving him an out. He could leave now and try to earn forgiveness from Rose and Scorpius, then move on with the same life he'd had before. Alternatively, he could give it up, forget about his friends and his family, and try something new, something complicated, something exciting.

* * *

Astoria had given him a week. It was nearing February by the time decision day rolled around, and Al still hadn't quite made up his mind. He thought the decision had been put in place months ago, but ever since Astoria had ordered him to think things through, Al couldn't be sure what he really wanted.

He had already proven over Christmas that he could betray his family easily enough, but now he was questioning the betrayal of his friends. Every time Scorpius and Rose passed by, Al felt as if his mind jolted straight back to their childhoods, when the two of them had been better siblings to Al than his real brother and sister had ever been. But then he was reminded of what he'd said to Rose recently, that things would never be the same again, and he knew that he was right. Even if he did migrate from the Flock, he and Scorpius wouldn't just go back to the way things were. There was far too much water under that bridge. What made matters worse was that Rose and Scorpius weren't the only people he was worried about leaving behind. There was one other person he knew for certain he never wanted to betray.

An hour or so before he was due to meet with Astoria again, Al was waiting outside the Transfiguration classroom on the first floor of the castle. He had been dismissed early from Potions after successfully brewing a pot of everlasting elixir with twenty minutes to spare and had found himself walking upstairs before he even realized where his feet were headed.

After having some time to himself while waiting, Al leaned forward to watch the seventh years pile out of McGonagall's class like a herd of sheep running from a raging dog. As soon as the doors were open, Al could hear the Headmistress's calls of, "I expect full completion by next class for _all _of you! Your exams are coming sooner than you think!"

Al grimaced at the thought of taking N.E.W.T. level examinations, even though it wouldn't be all that long before he too was a stressed-out seventh year. He hadn't considered the impending future much lately, too concerned about his disappearing past.

Quickly, Al was rather lost in the sea of students, but that didn't stop James from finding him. Al hadn't come to see his brother, though James seemed to think this was the case, as he approached Al in a couple of confident strides, both Lysander Scamander and Mercy Golding in his wake.

"How're you doing, Al?" asked James, ignoring Lysander's impatient tapping feet from behind him. "You haven't perhaps come to tell me anything, have you?"

Al scoffed at his brother before shoving past him and walking away. If Al ever did choose to tell James what he wanted to hear, that he'd actually switched sides and turned back to the Order, once and for all, it sure as hell wouldn't be for, or _because_ of, James and his overbearing attempt at support.

Pushing his way through the crowd, Al wasn't too pleased to catch sight of McGonagall as she was leaving either. Unlike the rest of the school, she didn't seem to have been fooled by the cover-up of Al's presence in the attack at the Weasleys'. McGonagall had always known everything about everyone, which was precisely why she could be so strict and angry. She had most certainly been this way in Al's most recent classes with her, and she was looking at him with those same sentiments now.

Luckily, McGonagall didn't try to approach the middle Potter like James had, so Al was able to move on and spot the person he was actually looking for as she walked over the threshold and into the hallway, the last student to leave the classroom.

Ilana Higgs had her head down and hidden in an old book that Al recognized immediately, her wavy locks kept out of her face by inhibiting feather earrings and cascading down her back like spilt oil. She didn't notice Al standing beside her until she continued walking and he followed her, the sound of his gentle breathing gaining her attention and causing her to walk more slowly as she addressed him.

She rested the Half-Blood Prince's potions book against her chest, sighed, and said, "Potter, I thought we'd stopped with the stalking."

Al chuckled and whispered, "I don't recall making such a promise." He'd met Ilana last year, surprisingly through none other than Rose, and there was something about her that kept pulling him in.

She was shy and didn't talk all that much, which Al appreciated. Sometimes, she was exactly what he needed – just somebody to walk with or sit next to without being obligated to speak or listen. Much like the wind, Ilana was quiet and independent, unpredictably soft or sharp, but always unwilling to compromise.

"What do you want?" she asked, still walking slightly ahead of him as they rounded the corner. She tended to act as though she didn't want anything to do with him, but Al knew that she secretly enjoyed his company. The mysterious aura she tried to keep up was all just part of the chase.

Al stepped in front of her before she reached the staircase that led to the dungeons, barricading her path and pulling her into a small alcove just off the hallway to gain some privacy from the passing sixth years that had finally been let out of Potions. Somewhere in the midst of getting there, Al had pushed Ilana against the wall and now had his arms placed on either side of her to keep his balance.

Ilana stared into Al's eyes questionably before the latter cleared his throat and pulled away, rubbing the eyes that were remarkably similar to hers before he opened them, bit his lip, and said, "I seem to have reached a crossroads."

Shifting away from the wall some, Ilana let out a small chuckle and said, "Be more cryptic; I dare you."

"Just listen; I dare you," Al retorted with wide eyes, making Ilana shut up, a small smirk plastered across her porcelain skin.

"Challenge accepted," she caved just as a speck of light shone across her right cheekbone. "Go on."

Suddenly feeling uncomfortable in his own skin, Al crossed his arms as he said, "Do you think that it's possible to start fresh – leave everything behind and just start anew?" He'd never asked Ilana such a serious question before, and so he hoped that it wouldn't scare her off.

Sure enough, she didn't respond. She just looked at him, blinking to the rhythm of her own heartbeat and studying his expression like he was asking something that meant the opposite of what he'd really said.

"Higgs?" Al asked, trying to bring her back from wherever her mind had gone.

Her eyes regained their focus as soon as she heard Al say her name, and Ilana finally responded with, "It depends, doesn't it? On what you have to lose."

Al nodded, for he agreed with her, but he'd already gone through everything he might lose or gain through pledging his allegiance to Astoria, and he still wasn't sure which future outweighed the other. What Al really wanted to know was whether Ilana would be one of the things he lost or one he gained.

Since this time Al didn't respond straight away, Ilana spoke again by adding, "Personally, I wouldn't recommend branching out if it means you'll lose your roots. It gets quite lonely out there when you can't remember where you came from."

He didn't know what she was referring to, for they'd never exchanged life stories, or much of anything for that matter. Still, the not knowing was exciting, just like the prospect of letting go. Plus, if Ilana had left her past and become one of those lonely branches in the sky, perhaps Al could join her there.

Thinking this, he told her, "Well, it might not be so lonely if there's somebody else there who feels the same way." And without waiting to see her reaction or saying another word, Al stalked off in the same direction from which he'd come, this time getting to leave Ilana wondering what he'd meant.

He was confident as he snuck out of the castle and into the Shrieking Shack, strolling through the empty hallways (for once again, it was lunch time) and open doors before he crossed the bridge in peace and made it through the underground tunnel without witnessing a single rodent. In fact, Albus was so focused on his journey that he failed to notice someone following him all the way to the Whomping Willow.

Al climbed the stairs of the shack to the top floor without looking back once. He was sure of what he wanted now, and so he was ready to let Astoria know of it. "I've made up my mind," he shouted as he reached the floor.

Astoria was standing by the pensieve with her back facing Al, the tip of her wand pointed at her forehead as she literally pulled a memory out from beneath her skin. Al stopped before he ran into her and waited for her to say something.

Without turning around, she said softly, "Wait. There's one more thing I'd like to show you before you make your final decision."

"Oh, but I have an Apparition lesson to get to soon," Al babbled, not exactly thinking before he spoke.

When Astoria turned to face him, her face was as cold as Al had ever seen it, much like the night she'd planted the attack on the Weasley house. Her cheeks were thin and tight, her nostrils flared and eyebrows furrowed, and her eyes were sparkling with tears.

She didn't say anymore as she made room for Al to step forward, opening her arms out and leading him toward the goblet. He followed her path as if hypnotized, then lowered his head into the water willingly until he was once again spinning back in time.

He landed in a smoke-filled King's Cross station, and though he could see the fumes from the train as they circled around him, he couldn't actually taste any of them. Albus was merely a ghost in Astoria's world.

The Hogwarts Express stretched across the platform like a never-ending, narrow road that led far past the horizon. On that road were hordes of children, teenagers, and their families, with a couple of squawking owls, cats, and toads mixed in with the lot. It all looked exactly the same as it did these days, and if Al hadn't known that it was Astoria's memory, he might have thought that it was his own.

"Okay, Astoria, it's time," said a woman who looked to be in her late thirties. Al was standing a few yards away from who he could only assume was Mrs. Greengrass, her light blonde hair pinned atop her head in a neat bun, her expression lifeless and her voice stoic.

"No, Story, don't go," came a whine from toward the floor. Al had to push past a few families and look down at the ground to find the source of the noise, which was another blonde female who was only about three feet tall and must have been Astoria's younger sister. She looked exactly like her mother, and both of them had features that were strikingly similar to Scorpius. Thinking of Scorpius made Al realize that Astoria's sister, the little blonde snot, must have either left or died some time ago now, for Scorpius had never once mentioned an aunt.

Al was pulled out of his reverie when an eleven year-old Astoria finally spoke, putting a hand on her sister's shoulder and saying, "Don't worry, Daphne. You'll be fine on your own. You have nothing to worry about." Her dark hair was the complete opposite of the rest of her family, and so Al couldn't help but see Astoria as the black sheep.

Her consoling didn't work, since Daphne continued to cry as she stuck her thumb in her mouth and clung to her mother's leg. Mrs. Greengrass looked down at her youngest daughter with contempt and tried to shake her off, but Daphne held on for dear life. Eventually, Mrs. Greengrass accepted Daphne's presence and tried to ignore her as she told Astoria, "Write to me as soon as you've been sorted. And remember, don't get caught speaking to any of those _filthy_ Mud-bloods they've got there. That's why you'll need to be in Slytherin."

Astoria nodded as if obeying an order, but still asked nervously, "There aren't any Mud-bloods in Slytherin?" Al had never personally agreed with segregation based on blood status, but he didn't blame Astoria for doing so. That was how she'd been raised.

"Of course not!" said Mrs. Greengrass in a very high pitched voice. "Never have been, and there _never_ will be." She was right. As far as Al knew, there hadn't ever been a Muggle-born sorted into Slytherin, not even following the Battle of Hogwarts. It was one of the few proofs out there that this war wasn't over yet, and that there was still room left to rebel.

Astoria was quiet upon hearing this from her mother. Though Al hadn't noticed before, she had her arms wrapped tightly around a book, and now she was clutching it like it was the only object she owned. That wasn't too far off from the truth either, since behind her there was a single suitcase, newly bought but small, and nothing else.

People were boarding the train now, but Astoria didn't budge anywhere near it. She had something on her mind, and eventually managed to ask her mother, though admittedly with her head down, "What if I'm not sorted into Slytherin?"

Al looked straight down at Astoria as if she had just read into his very soul. He remembered asking his father something so similar when he had been her age, on this very platform before this very train. And though Al had asked Harry in hopes that he _wouldn't_ be put in Slytherin, he could tell by Astoria's shifting eyes that she didn't want to be in that particular house either.

"Oh, you will be," said Mrs. Greengrass confidently, leaning down ever so slightly to adjust Astoria's black robes. "It's your legacy."

And at that, just as the last memory had done, everything disappeared in a bed of black smoke and Al was placed into the memory's second part. Now, he was trying to keep his balance on the moving Hogwarts Express, his feet swaying atop the shifting floor of the main hallway.

Astoria was bouncing along in front of him, dragging her suitcase with her as she peered into one compartment after the next to try to find an empty seat. She didn't seem to know anyone, and of course she hadn't met her future friends yet. But then she and Al came to an open compartment with only two new students inside, and Astoria stopped upon seeing them.

She knocked on the side window sweetly and asked if she could join the ridiculously small Tonks and Charlie, both of whom Al now recognized immediately. They let her in without a word of protest, Charlie even standing up to take Astoria's suitcase and place it on the shelf above the booths, the sight of which made Astoria blush as she took a seat beside the Weasley boy.

"I'm Charlie Weasley," he said, shaking Astoria's hand as she introduced herself. Gesturing to the girl across from him, he added, "And that's Tonks. Just Tonks."

Astoria looked over at the other girl and smiled, but her mouth gaped open when Tonks's hair suddenly turned bright blue in the blink of an eye. "Wotcher, Greengrass! It's cool, eh?"

"Uh, yeah, it is," Astoria muttered shyly, and Al could sense how intimidated she was by the two kids she'd befriended.

"Tonks and I were just talking about which house we want to be in," said Charlie as he looked between Tonks and Astoria. "Anything but Slytherin, I say... can't tarnish the family name, after all." Al scoffed at Charlie's statement, for he hadn't tarnished anything. That family line wouldn't be tarnished for years to come, for it was Al who had broken the Weasley legacy.

"Yeah, same," commented Tonks. "Except that I _would_ be tarnishing it." She and Charlie both laughed at that, and Astoria tried to do the same, looking to them and copying their motions because she didn't yet know when to act by herself.

The laughter subsided eventually, though, and Tonks was the first to notice Astoria's book, turning to her and asking, "What have you got there?"

Caught off guard, Astoria glanced down at the book and loosened her grip on it as she answered, "Oh, it's just a compilation of some stories I've always loved. Maybe you've heard of them? The Tales of Beedle the Bard." She said the title of the book as she showed its cover to Charlie and Tonks.

Charlie nodded and said, "Oh yeah, those are classics! I used to act out 'Babbity Rabbity and the Cackling Stump' with my brother when we were younger."

Tonks didn't seem so familiar with them, but still wanted to know more, saying to Astoria, "So, Story Girl, which one's _your_ favorite?"

Astoria thought long and hard about her answer before responding, "Probably 'The Tale of the Three Brothers'. I've always loved that one."

Al couldn't stop himself before he was saying, "Yeah, me too." Harry had read him that story countless times when he was just a boy, and it had always been the one he'd request for once James and Lily were already asleep. He hadn't thought about the story in quite some time, probably not since he'd left for Hogwarts in his first year, but now he could remember every word of it.

The wand. He remembered a wand in the story – the most powerful wand in the world. It was passed down through killing, through murders, and the Master of Death had carved it for a Peverell brother from an ancient elder tree. And now, somehow, Al had it. It was all real, for the Elder Wand was currently sitting in his pocket. And if Astoria knew of the tale – if she remembered it – did that mean that she knew about Al's wand? Was that why she needed him so badly? Did she only want him for his power?

"My mother always told me that was a dangerous story," said Tonks, though Al was barely listening at this point. "She said it was just for arrogant wizards who wanted more than they deserved. She said that it reminded her of our family, which can't be good."

"Why not?" asked Astoria, confused by Tonks's comment. "What's so bad about them?"

Tonks looked at Astoria like she was insane, because there was no way in the world that Astoria hadn't heard of the Black family and all that they stood for. "They think that blood is the difference between good and bad."

Her cheeks red with shame, Astoria tried to understand Tonks as she asked, "If blood isn't the difference, what is?"

Tonks didn't blink once as her hair turned the same shade of black as Astoria's and she stated simply, "Choice."

The spinning, twisting, and flying came quickly and unexpectedly and Al opened his eyes to the same black he had been facing before. This time, Astoria was looking down at him, for she had heels that made her a few inches taller than Al, and the latter was still speechless from his recent revelation.

"What was all that?" He asked once he managed to catch his breath. He still felt dizzy, but it was different than usual. Normally, the world would spin around him, but now he felt as if _he_ was the one spinning, because the world had stopped.

Astoria was waiting for further context, and so Al provided her with it. He didn't want to bring up the Elder Wand, because he didn't want to tell her more than she knew, but he did need some answers. "All these memories," he said, "You're so willing to let me in, and I suppose I want to know why. Why do you need _me_?"

Astoria laughed, but it was different than usual. Normally, her laugh was sinister and dangerous, but now it was lighthearted and friendly, because she didn't have to scare him anymore. "Isn't it obvious?" she asked rhetorically. "You remind me of myself when I was young – angry, confused, and so desperately wanting to be good when I was never meant to be."

Al couldn't explain what happened next. The hair on his arms stood up and he started shivering, because she was right. She was so right, and he'd been running for such a long time, and it was terrifying to know that he could stop now. Maybe that was why he ran out of the shack without saying anything to Astoria – maybe he needed to run one last time.

He went through the underground tunnel like a zombie, his feet leading him along because his mind couldn't keep up. All too soon, he was crawling out of the hole through the roots of the Whomping Willow and into an overcast sky. The dizziness wouldn't go away as he stood upright and turned his face to the clouds, waiting for the rain to pour over him.

But the rain never came. Instead, Al was hit in the stomach with a giant jolt of pain, all thanks to an enormous, prickly branch of the Whomping Willow. It flew him across the green and slightly down the hill, and Al was panting even before he landed in the dirt. He was too sore to avoid the next branch when it came to knock him in the gut, but just as he winced and closed his eyes, two arms were tugging at his own and pulling him out of the tree's reach.

"Bloody hell!" Al yelled as he turned onto his stomach and spewed blood from his mouth. The same arms that had pulled him away before were now trying to help him up, but he pushed them off adamantly.

He stood up all on his own eventually, only to find Scorpius standing in front of him with his hands in his pockets and concern etched across his forehead. "How'd you even find me out here?" Al asked as he wiped his mouth off. He was still grimacing from the pain in his stomach, and though he knew a hit like that would have been nothing to Scorpius, he didn't bother trying to cover up his low tolerance.

When Scorpius failed to respond, Al looked up at him from his crouched position and said, "You followed me, didn't you?"

Again, Scorpius was silent, and so Al rolled his eyes and hobbled away as quickly as he could manage, yelling, "Piss off!" as he went.

Because Al couldn't move very quickly thanks to his injury, Scorpius didn't have to follow him this time. He stayed where he was, just beside the stone circle that looked over the Whomping Willow on one side and Hagrid's Hut on the other, and shouted toward the bridge where Al was headed, "Why are you doing this?"

Albus stopped upon hearing the question and closed his eyes. He didn't want to get into this with anyone, but he especially didn't want to have this argument with Scorpius. No, he _shouldn't _have to have this argument with Scorpius. He shouldn't have to explain himself to Scorpius, because Scorpius should know why Al was doing all of this. He should know that so much of it was because of him.

Al turned around to fire back at Scorpius when the latter continued, more quietly this time, "This isn't you. You're not a bad person, Al."

Al laughed, and it was a laugh that wasn't very usual for him. It was sinister and dangerous rather than friendly and lighthearted, because he needed to scare Scorpius. "Oh yeah?" he asked with a shrug. "I wouldn't be so sure."

Sick of the self-pity, Scorpius flailed his arms in frustration and said, "Oh please, you're a better man than I'll ever be, and we both bloody well know it!"

"No!" Al yelled back, this time taking a few steps forward so that he could round on Scorpius. His stomach still hurt, everything still hurt, but for once he found himself ignoring the physical pain as his emotional pain took control. "No, I am _not_ a better person than you, Scorpius. If you think I am, than you're far more naïve than I realized."

Scorpius could go on and on about how he'd come from a terrible family and had never been raised right, and how all that had turned him into this pathetic wizard who was stumbling through the magical world as he tried to keep himself together, but he had no idea what he was talking about. He had no idea that Al had stumbled more than he ever had.

"What are you talking about?" Scorpius asked. He wasn't firing back; he wasn't even trying to argue, really. He was just trying to understand.

_Fine, then_, thought Al. If Scorpius really didn't understand, then Al would help. He'd make him see what was in _his_ head all the time. "What am I talking about?" he asked. "Hmm, let me see, do you remember our first day at Hogwarts?"

He had seen Scorpius on the platform at King's Cross, but it was on the train that the two had officially met, and it was later on in the Great Hall that they had been stuck together for the next seven years.

Of course Scorpius remembered, but he waited to hear Al's version of the memory anyway. So, Al continued, asking, "Do you remember when I sat on that stool?" Seeing Astoria with the same worries had brought it all back to Al, and now he couldn't get his own memory out of his head.

"Do you remember when that Sorting Hat yelled out 'SLYTHERIN' practically before it even touched my head?" screamed Al, his voice growing louder with every word. Harry had always told him the same thing Tonks had told Astoria, that choice was the differentiating factor between good and bad, but they'd both been wrong. Al had never been given the choice. The hat had chosen for him, not because Al's thoughts were swimming with wishes to be placed in the serpent house, but because no matter how much he wanted differently, he was meant to be in Slytherin. He was ambitious, driven, and power-hungry. Slytherin was where he belonged.

Al had paused for a moment to reminisce over that day, but now he looked at Scorpius with glossy eyes and asked, "Don't you remember?"

Scorpius walked right up to him and put a hand on each of Al's shoulders as he tried to meet his gaze to say seriously, "Al, that doesn't mean _anything_."

The punch was fast and impressive for a boy smaller and usually slower than Scorpius. It felt good for Al, though – it felt exciting. And it couldn't have been that bad for Scorpius, since he merely staggered back a few feet but didn't fall down or even start bleeding. It did make him listen, though, as Al fumed, "Yeah, says the kid who was nearly put in Gryffindor even after _generations_ of Malfoys in Slytherin!"

Scorpius had been one of those few wizards who'd received a 'hat stall' while being sorted. It was relatively rare that the Sorting Hat would be so indecisive as to vacillate between two houses for an extended period of time, but Al had witnessed two of them in his year: Rose, between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, and Scorpius, between Gryffindor and Slytherin. But it was Scorpius's hat stall that Al always thought of, because he knew that if Scorpius had asked, the hat would have put him in Gryffindor, just like it had for Harry. It would have done so for Scorpius, but not for Al. There was never any question with Al.

That's what made him finally look into Scorpius's blood-shot eyes and say, "I'm not an _idiot_, Scorp. I've never been a good guy; I've only spent the last five and a half years trying to pretend I was! Now, I've finally realized that it's just not worth it."

Then he walked away, fighting through the pain as he made his way back to the castle and into the Great Hall for his Apparition lesson. Scorpius would be following him, he knew, but he didn't care. Anyway, he wouldn't be there for long.

The hall was already filled with other sixth years as Al opened the double doors with a single swing and strutted up to the visiting Apparition instructor. The man was short and had a scruffy beard beneath bug-like spectacles, and he stood still as Al approached him, just waiting to be spoken to by a Potter.

By the time Al opened his mouth, he could hear Scorpius's footsteps from behind him. The Malfoy had finally caught up, but it was too late. He and Al were over, done, because Al had let go. He knew what he was meant to do, _who_ he was meant to be, and now it was time for him to go be it.

"I'd like to be dismissed from this class indefinitely," Al told the instructor. "I already know how to Apparate, and I can promise you that I will be perfectly safe when I do it."

The professor didn't get the chance to reply when Al added, "As a matter of fact, I'll demonstrate now, shall I?" Whenever these lessons took place, McGonagall had to release the protective charms that prevented students from Apparating within school walls, so Al figured that he could stop with the hula-hoop nonsense and try out something real.

He closed his eyes and thought of the Shrieking Shack before turning on the spot, disappearing with quite the exit and reappearing in Astoria's newfound lair.

"I thought you might return," she said to him from the windowsill, where she'd spread out her stack of files so that they circled the room atop the dark oak floorboards.

Albus didn't waste a moment before saying, "I'm all in. There's nothing stopping me now. So long as you keep me involved, I'll do whatever you want me to do." This was it. He wasn't going to feel guilty anymore. He was finally going to embrace the side of him that he'd always kept hidden. He was about to become the person he had been born to be.

"Good," Astoria said with a smile, still not looking up from her files. She had known all along that he would pledge his complete loyalty to her, and that was why she had been so patient. She was the first person who'd ever let him decide what he wanted on his own, without anyone trying to sway him one way or the other.

"Come over here," said Astoria with a hand gesture pointing to the files. "I've something to speak to you about."

Al did as he was told, coming around to Astoria and looking down at her trail of papers. Each file was marked with a name and a picture on the front cover, and Al soon realized that Astoria must have had a file for every witch and wizard in the country. With a glance at the one Astoria was transfixed on, Harry Potter's, Al asked her, "Did these come from the Auror office?" It would explain why she had needed access to the department so badly when she knew she wouldn't gain any real control over the Aurors themselves.

"Yes," Astoria confirmed. "With these, I know the blood status of everyone in England, as well as much more information that I'm sure will prove useful along the way."

She didn't sound very excited about the wealth of information she'd inherited, so Al asked, "What are you missing?"

"The children," she stated. "It seems as though the documents for all _underage_ witches and wizards, even certain ones who are of age but haven't yet graduated, are kept at those young wizards' schools – in this case, Hogwarts."

So, she wasn't just there for him. Astoria always had an ulterior motive, but Al didn't like where this was going. "Look," he said, trying to get out of another spy job before he got caught and was dragged off to Azkaban. "I don't really think breaking into McGonagall's office again is a very good idea. She's already on to me, no doubt thanks to Scorpius."

"Oh, don't worry," Astoria brushed the suggestion aside. "I'm well aware of what risks shan't be repeated. But I don't need to actually acquire the files to have all the statuses. Plus, that would be rather boring, wouldn't it?"

Al was waiting for further explanation, since it had become quite clear that he was to be the main perpetrator of whatever task she wanted done. He was still confused when Astoria knelt down and pushed Harry's file away to reveal one for Hermione Weasley, which she handed Al before saying, "Open it."

After glancing at Astoria momentarily, Albus opened his own aunt's file and found a document describing all of Hermione's physical characteristics, pinned with a photo of what was possibly her most unique marking: the 'Mud-blood' scar that Bellatrix Lestrange had engraved in her, and that Astoria had made Hermione reveal at the recent attack.

"I'm picturing an entire school of scarred Mud-bloods," Astoria said in a rather wistful voice, as if talking through a lavish daydream. "I thought it might be an appropriate task for the _potions master_."

Finally, Al understood. Astoria wanted to mark every last Muggle-born at Hogwarts, brand them all with a scar that would never fade away, not only so that she would know which of them to target, but also to draw attention to her own power. She'd been flying under the radar for the past year, but, much like Al, she was now ready to step out of hiding. And she would so with Al's help, or more specifically, the help of a potion that he would brew. _What_ potion, or _how_ he could possibly make such a thing, neither of them were sure of quite yet.

Still, they discussed the matter for a couple more hours, thinking through when and where it should be done so that it would be easy to administer but also obvious enough for Al to know who was receiving a mark, as well as how they would hide Al's involvement in the plan from McGonagall. They hadn't yet reached a conclusion when darkness engulfed the shack and let Al know that he should get back to the castle.

Before he left, they agreed to start meeting in a different place so as not to be found by Scorpius, deciding on the boathouse beside the Black Lake. Astoria also informed Al that Knox would be joining them starting next week to aid in the marking arrangements. Al was happy to hear it, for he actually enjoyed Rookie's company.

Al felt oddly comfortable about his standing in the Flock as he made his way back to his dormitory, skipping every meal of the day without even realizing it. He felt more like himself than he had in ages, and he wasn't bored anymore. He had things to look forward to, risks that he had yet to take, and it was exciting.

There weren't many students in the castle at this hour, except for a couple of straggler upperclassmen whose curfews hadn't yet passed. Because of this calming silence, Al walked through the Entrance Hall and down the steps to the dungeons in complete and utter peace. He almost expected somebody he didn't want to see leap out from the wings somewhere, just to make things difficult for him again. But no such thing occurred.

Al made it to the Slytherin common room without any interference and entered the room to find it empty but for the one person he was more than okay with seeing. He sat on the forest green couch beside Ilana, facing the sea-filled windows just as the giant squid swam by, and swiftly leaned forward and stole the potions book from out of her lap.

Ilana looked up as soon as it was gone, finding Al smirking from the other side of the sofa. "I need it back," he said with a shrug, but his words seemed to pique her interest.

"What for?" asked Ilana. They both knew Al had the book practically memorized by now, which was why he had felt comfortable loaning it to Ilana in the first place.

"Well," started Al, "I made up my mind, and it turns out that I'm going to need to brew a new potion if I want to stay on the same road."

Nodding, Ilana squinted her eyes and asked, "Moving on from the past?"

"Yeah. I'm ready for something new now."

Ilana looked back at him and let out a small chuckle through her thin smile. She had advised him against moving on, but she seemed to have accepted his decision all the while. Widening her smile, she said, "How exciting."

Intrigued by her comment because she was the only one who'd understood, Al whispered, "Yeah. It is." It was exciting to be living in this new world. It was exciting to disappear. It was exciting to let go, to float away, to turn on the spot. All he'd had to do was flip a switch, and now here he was, flying through the sky with nothing but the wind telling him where to go.

* * *

_**Note: **What did you think? I know that JK Rowling said in an interview once that Astoria is meant to be seven years younger than Harry, but I planned this story before that was revealed, and I made her seven years older for very specific reasons, so I hope you can understand. By all means, let me know what you thought of all the surprises of this chapter in a review!_

_The next chapter should be uploaded around June 12th; check out the spoiler section on my profile page for more information on it. Also, follow me on my new tumblr (fib112358132134), because I will be posting a lot of ff-related stuff. Thanks for reading!  
_

_-Hailey  
_


	23. The Mark Embark

**_Note:_**_ Not much to say about this one, except that it's quite dark and possibly a little disturbing, but the darkness is scattered by some fun moments that I hope you'll enjoy. Let me know what you thought of the chapter after you finish reading! Thanks.**  
**_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**23 – The Mark Embark**

"Do we really need to make a scene out of it?" asked Molly Weasley, this year's Head Girl and awaiting Hogwarts graduate.

Her younger sister looked up at Molly in confusion, asking, "Don't you want it to be exciting?" Lucy was a Hufflepuff prefect, so she was automatically on the graduation committee that was currently in the middle of one of what seemed like a never-ending slew of meetings that always revolved around nonsensical ideas, all of which Al knew would never actually come to fruition.

"I think she just doesn't want to get caught, Lu," said Lorcan Scamander to his long-time girlfriend in a comforting, steady voice. He was Head Boy, and he and Molly were responsible for more than just the meetings.

Every year, the Hogwarts graduation ceremony was a night to remember, and though it was up to the sixth year prefects to plan the event down to each and every millisecond, the blame would fall on Molly and Lorcan if things got out of hand. And with James and Lysander already measuring various parts of the castle to see how large their Portable Swamp needed to be in order to successfully prank the professors, it was understandable that the head students had grown slightly worried.

Being the voice of reason as always, Rose spoke next by telling Lorcan and Molly, "Well, it's _your_ night, after all. Whatever you'd like us to do or not do, we will."

Lorcan and Molly nodded at Rose in thanks, and Rose smiled at her astounding ability to compromise before she sat back in her seat and glanced quickly at Albus. He was sitting on the opposite side of the room next to fellow prefect, Patty Parkinson, but he hadn't said a word through the entire meeting.

His mind was boggled down with things far more important than this pathetic party planning. He was starting to look like the seventh years himself, all of whom were pale-faced and sleep-deprived as they started studying for their NEWT examinations, which would take place earlier than the other exams to make time for the graduation that capped off exam week. It was because, much like the seventh years, Al had very little time to complete an extremely difficult task, and he too needed to make sure that he wouldn't get caught.

Meanwhile, Al's plate was filling quickly with enormous final assignments along with this ridiculous planning that tended to be the reason students wanted to be prefects in the first place. But it wasn't the reason for Al. In fact, he'd only ever wanted the title; he'd never wanted the work that came with it.

After losing track of the conversation in the Transfiguration classroom, Al started listening again when Lorcan suggested, "How about we call it a day and meet up again next week? I know we'll all be even busier then, but Molly and I really need to know that everything's planned before we start our exams and lose all control."

The prefects laughed at this and nodded, but Al just stood up and walked out of the room, passing the cages of rustling ferrets and opening the double doors into a candle-lit hallway. Normally, Al enjoyed being in the castle at night, because it was so much more peaceful when he knew he wouldn't run into old friends, but tonight was not one of those nights, and it didn't take long for him to run into a certain new enemy.

It wasn't Scorpius's presence that bothered Al, though. The former was leaning against the wall opposite the classroom, just underneath a magically floating lantern, and Al would have ignored him had it not been for the girl Scorpius was standing next to.

"Since when are you two friends?" asked Al as he approached Scorpius and Ilana, who was shimmering beneath the light and smiling from cheek to cheek about something Scorpius had just said. Al didn't really think about what he was saying before he'd said it, though, and now he was staring at Scorpius as he tried to keep his eyes averted from Ilana's smile that he'd turned into a frown.

For the past few weeks, Scorpius had been the one avoiding Al for a change. Though Rose would still try to pity Al every chance she got, Scorpius had given up, no doubt realizing that he couldn't help after his recent conversation with Al. Tonight didn't prove to be any different, for Scorpius didn't react at all to Al's snarky question before he nodded goodbye to Ilana and then walked past her and Al to meet Rose.

Albus could hear Scorpius kissing Rose and then whispering in her ear, and it took every nerve in his body to keep him from turning around and watching them leave. It wasn't that he missed them, though. It wasn't even that he longed for all the moments they'd shared together in the past. What made Al so angry when he saw either of them, even more so when he saw the two of them together, was the fact that _they_ missed _him, _and it was impossible for him to move on when they refused to let go.

"Potter, relax," said Ilana suddenly, her hand on Al's face and directing his eyes back to hers.

Al shivered at her touch, blinking rapidly as she dropped her hand back to her side. She had felt cold against his skin, but he assumed that that was only because his blood was still pumping straight to his head. He didn't say anything as he took a few deep breaths to calm his frustration and waited for Ilana to speak once more.

"I found all the ingredients you asked for," she said, explaining why she'd been waiting outside the classroom for Al. He'd gone to her for help with Astoria's potion a few days ago, but had been careful to give her a long list of ingredients that didn't normally go together so that she wouldn't suspect him of brewing something poisonous.

"They're in the Room of Requirement, like you asked," Ilana continued, for Al was still silent.

Nodding, Al finally spoke, but only managed to mumble, "Thanks." He wasn't being the usual, charming self that he was normally with Ilana, but he just wasn't in the mood at the moment. He'd already had too much on his mind during the prefect meeting, and now his head felt even fuller.

Sensing this, Ilana pushed herself off the wall and said, "Right then. I guess I'll be off." But just as she was about to turn her back, she stopped and asked, "I don't suppose you'll be in the stands tomorrow?"

"No, probably not," answered Al, his eyes facing the floor and his hands stuffed in his pockets. Gryffindor was playing Hufflepuff in the latest Quidditch match tomorrow morning, which meant that the castle would be practically empty of both students and professors, offering Al the perfect opportunity to work on the potion he'd been procrastinating.

"Well, maybe I'll see you around, then." Of course, Ilana wouldn't be going to watch the game either. She wasn't a fan of Quidditch; that was one of the few things Al knew about her, because it had been one of the few questions he'd ever asked.

For some reason, Al couldn't get the thought of Scorpius and Ilana out of his mind through his entire journey down to the boathouse. There wasn't another soul in sight as he moved quietly through the castle and into the night, which was most definitely a good thing, because Al had his hand gripped pretty tightly around his wand, ready to point it at whoever addressed him next.

By the time he made it to the water, the fresh air had helped him cool off slightly, but he couldn't completely shake the anger in his bones as he made his way into the darkened shack that students were strictly forbidden from entering.

"_Lumos_," Al whispered just after closing the door. His wand lit at the tip immediately, and it didn't take long for Albus to realize that this was no normal amount of light. It was sharp and incredible, taking up the entire room within seconds, and Al realized that this was one of the few spells that truly showcased the power of the Elder Wand.

"Bloody hell, that's blinding!" came a voice from somewhere in the middle of the wooden hut, but Al couldn't quite see whom it was coming from. "Put it out already!"

Obeying the order, Al said, "_Knox_," and his wand went dark again, only to reveal the presence of Knox Rookwood himself, standing right in front of Al with his own wand already lit. The young man was dark in every sense of the word, from his physical features to his clothing and even demeanor, but it wasn't a frightening kind of darkness. Instead, Knox's darkness was powerful.

"Good to see you again, Rookie," Al smiled up at him, for Knox was about half a foot taller than the Potter boy. His height sometimes reminded Al of James, though Knox was far more impressive than Al's older brother, and so Al had a much easier time respecting him than he did James.

"I would return the gesture, but I'm not sensing such lighthearted vibes from you, Black Hawk," said Knox rather seriously, seemingly implying that he could literally feel Al's frustration filtering through his pores.

Al rolled his eyes at what he could only assume was one of the many special abilities that came with Knox's incredible 'seeing'. Sometimes, he could look at people and see right through them, as if he was reading their very thoughts, or at least their emotions.

When Knox didn't look away and instead sat down in a windowsill and waited for Al to provide him with an explanation, Al sighed and said, "I don't really feel like talking about it."

"I'm sure you don't," Knox said with a shrug. "I never do either. But that's what people are like – they always know what they _want_, but they can't ever tell what it is that they _need_. And then, when they finally figure things out, it's always too late."

By now, Albus was incredibly confused. Knox was clearly thinking about some past experience in his own life, but why was he so pensive now rather than his usual joking self? And even if he was lost in his own thoughts, what did that have to do with Al? But he didn't have time to get the answers to any of his questions before the hawk form of Astoria flew through an open window and transformed right in front of her two disciples.

Without bothering to greet Albus or Knox, Astoria ran a few skeletal fingers through her hair as she asked, "Have you boys had enough chit-chat yet? Because I do believe that it's time we get to work. We have much to discuss, after all."

Al and Knox nodded in unison as Astoria conjured a couple of stools out of thin air, giving herself and Al something to sit on while Knox stayed in the windowsill. She didn't have all her files with her, but she did have a small notepad and a Quick-Quotes Quill floating beside her right ear, ready to record anything that was said by the three of them.

"Knox has been briefed with the upcoming marking ceremony, but I'd like to know what stage you're at regarding the potion, Albus," said Astoria curtly. She may have been the one using phrases like 'marking ceremony' in the most drastically sinister of tones, but Astoria was no wiz with potions, so Al had been on his own in brewing it, which he hadn't exactly started yet.

The ingredient list he had passed on to Ilana had been inspired mostly by a few other potions Al had read about which he thought were similar to the one Astoria needed, for he hadn't actually found a recipe that could create a scarring juice. At this point, he knew that he'd have to develop the potion himself, but he was worried about a certain ingredient that he was fairly certain he'd be needing, and that hadn't been on Ilana's list.

"Yeah, about that," Al started, trying not to face Astoria head-on, "I've collected a bunch of stuff already – asphodel, bulladox powder, flobberworm parts – that, together, should be able to create the permanent scar that you're looking for. It's just that I've got nothing that can make the potion detect the blood of a Muggle-born versus any other witch or wizard."

Though Al had put off the actual brewing of the potion, he had done his research. Ironically, the most similar scenario to what Astoria was hoping for had involved Al's father when he'd been at school. Al had noticed the scars on the back of Harry's hand before, but he hadn't known where they'd come from until he'd read about them and an old Hogwarts professor named Dolores Umbridge. She had owned a rather unique quill that would scar its user with the same words that they wrote with it, but it was the quill's specialized ink that had caught Al's interest.

Astoria thought about Al's words before looking at him and realizing that that wasn't all he needed to tell her and asking him, "What are you suggesting?"

Knox, who'd been sitting silently and bouncing one of his rings between his hands, went still at Astoria's question, leaning forward with curiosity. Now, he and Astoria were looking at Al as if waiting to see if he would pass his latest test, for there was always a wrong answer with them. That was why Al was so hesitant to say, "If I'm not mistaken, the potion itself must fully reflect its purpose." Umbridge's quill had reflected its purpose as well, for the ink was in fact not an ink at all.

When Astoria and Knox still didn't quite understand, Al said clearly, "I'm going to need blood." And because this potion was even more specialized than Umbridge's ink, he added, "And not just any blood. I'll need the blood of a Muggle."

Much like how Al felt about the idea, Knox grimaced slightly at the thought of extracting a Muggle's blood only to make a school full of children unknowingly drink it, but Astoria didn't seem disgusted in the slightest. If anything, she seemed rather inspired by the idea, smiling gaily and saying, "Well, don't worry about that. I'll have your _ingredient_ by sundown tomorrow."

Al nodded at Astoria in thanks, though he wasn't sure if he actually felt all that thankful. In the same way that he had wanted to become a prefect but had never wanted to participate in prefect duties, Al was glad to be playing such an important role in the Forbidden Flock, but he wasn't so keen on carrying out the Flock's true goals. Everything he was doing was for Astoria, because she had believed him to be worth something when no one else had, but talking about things like Muggles and blood made Al realize that his actions had consequences that would affect more than just Astoria.

"How much time will you need to brew it?" asked Astoria, breaking Al's concentration as she moved on to the next task at hand while he struggled not to stay behind.

Thinking about all the ingredients he'd be using, Al realized that none of them took very long to brew at all. "It shouldn't take longer than overnight," he answered, but while Astoria accepted his answer without question, Al wasn't so sure of himself. It all seemed too simple that such a complex potion could be finished in no time at all, or that Al's first true task in the Flock would prove to be so incredibly easy. There had to be a catch.

"Well, that's perfect, then," said Knox as Astoria got up from her stool and began to pace around the room. "We can hold this so-called 'marking ceremony' first thing the day after tomorrow."

Al was still locked in his own head trying to figure out what he was missing when Astoria continued her steady pacing as she addressed Knox and corrected him. "Yes, but we cannot head into that morning without developing a seamless plan beforehand," she said.

"But the plan doesn't have to be so complicated," argued Knox. "Why don't we just sneak the potion into the kitchen's pumpkin juice and make all the students drink it at breakfast? Problem solved."

Astoria sighed, clearly frustrated by Knox's current impotence. "_Yes_," she snarled at him. "But we need to be certain that _everyone_ is there, not to mention the fact that Albus must record the name of each Mud-blood without being seen by any of them. People are already suspicious of him, and I don't want to lose our only Hogwarts spy."

Al couldn't help but smile at Astoria's confession. All he'd ever hoped for was to feel wanted, in whatever form it came. His reassurance of her came with perfect timing as well, as he was suddenly able to jump back into the conversation and say, "Everybody will be there; I can assure you. It's the morning after a Quidditch match, so the winning house will want to gloat, the losing one will want have pity to swim in, and the other two will have money to collect from their bets. If there's ever a time that you can be sure of every student being in the Great Hall, it's the breakfast after a Quidditch match."

Astoria, though at first skeptical of Al, soon nodded in acceptance of his theory. Al didn't blame her for not remembering the importance of Quidditch from her days at Hogwarts, for she herself had surely never been much involved in the sport. Al wished he could say the same about himself, but being a Potter practically ensured that he would never be able to run away from the sport, no matter how hard he tried.

"All right, good," Astoria commented as she sat back down. However, her forehead was still wrinkled with concern as she said with a hardly subtle glance at Knox, "So, now we just need to decide what sort of diversion we should create to keep the eyes off of Albus."

Al instinctively thought of James's cloak when Astoria mentioned that he'd need to avoid being seen. The Invisibility Cloak could come in handy for Al in a myriad of circumstances, but he doubted that he could ever get his hands on it. James protected it with his life, and the only person he'd ever willingly lent it to was Rose. Plus, it was sure to be locked somewhere in his Gryffindor dormitory, and there was no way that Al could break into that common room without being caught in the act.

Albus was busy trying to think of alternative disappearance magic when Knox, who'd been locked in a staring contest with Astoria, stepped up with a sigh that almost sounded like a grunt and said, "I'll do it."

"Do what?" Al asked, both confused and concerned. Knox had already done enough of Astoria's dirty work and was one of the few members of the Flock currently wanted for arrest at the Ministry. He'd be sent to Azkaban in a second, no trial necessary, if anybody got so close as to even touch him.

"I'll be your diversion," answered Knox, though he was looking to Astoria rather than Al. She didn't seem all that shocked at the risk he was willing to take as he took a step toward her and explained further, "Black Hawk can open a window into the kitchen for me, and I'll fly in as an Animagus. I can perch myself on one of the ceiling beams in the Great Hall, so that even if somebody sees me, they'll just think I got in through the owl opening. Then I'll transform once the frenzy starts and run from the castle as a human. The hall's close enough to the door that I should be able to make it outside without too much trouble, and I can fend off any followers or even transform again once I'm in the courtyard."

Astoria almost looked proud of Knox, as if he had just said what she'd been willing him to say, as she held out her hand to shake his. Their agreement was set in stone before Al even had the chance to speak up again, but he tried to nonetheless.

"But even if you manage to escape," he started, breaking Astoria's eye contact with Knox by urging her to look to him. "What are we supposed to do next? Even in your Animagus form, McGonagall will know that you've infiltrated Hogwarts grounds. She'll have a search party looking for you _and_ Astoria within seconds, and she might not wait any longer to try out whatever new protective charms they've surely been planning since the Weasley attack. How are all of those consequences worth one measly solution that might not even work in the first place?"

Al wasn't completely sure why he was so concerned about their hiding place being discovered or Astoria and Knox being banished from Hogwarts, but he thought perhaps it was because he'd rather sacrifice his place at the school if it meant being able to stay in their circle. He had a purpose so long as part of the Flock was there, but if they left, what would he do with himself?

Astoria didn't share the same concern, as she answered Al without a moment's pause, "If we have to leave, then we'll leave. You can send us the list of names by owl if you have to. In any case, Knox and I have further business to attend to, elsewhere."

As much as he wanted to know what Astoria was referring to, Al knew his place with her. Her stiff body language and stance far above Al told him that he shouldn't pry any further. If she needed him, then she'd let him know, and if she didn't let him know, then whatever she was doing was not of his concern. After all, Al was all in, but Astoria was still the one who was dealing the cards.

When the leader was sure that Al wasn't going to press further, she asked both him and Knox, "Is everything understood, then? The ceremony will take place the morning after next, and Albus is responsible for the list of names while Knox creates a diversion."

Al and Knox responded in unison, "Understood."

"Good," said Astoria without so much as a smile as she put away her Quick Quotes Quill. "I'll send the minutes back to Ryder. As for you, Albus, you can have the boathouse to yourself tomorrow if you need somewhere to work. I'll meet you in the afternoon with the required ingredient."

Scowling at the thought yet again, Al had to make himself nod in response. Then Astoria was off just as quickly as she'd come, transfiguring and then flying through the still-open window at the back of the boathouse. Knox did the same, turning into a scruffy rook and winking at Al as he left.

After his run-in with Scorpius a few weeks back, Al was careful to keep an eye out for followers as he exited the boathouse and began the endless climb back to the castle. He was looking for Hagrid in particular, for the giant was known to roam the grounds at night, or even that assistant of his, Colin Creevey. Neither of them would pose any threat to Al even if they saw him, but he still wasn't all that keen on making up some sort of excuse on the fly.

But as luck would have it, Albus did run into somebody, though it was not anyone he had expected to see. The person came out of nowhere, walking right up to him as he reached the top of the hill and stopping him just before his feet touched the marble floor of the front courtyard.

Jumping back slightly at the sight of two relatively small feet surrounded by darkness, Al looked up at the person with wide eyes of shock. Calming down upon seeing the straight red hair and kind brown eyes of his mother, Al sighed and said, "Lily. What are you doing out here?"

"I might ask you the same question!" she spat at Al, crossing her arms in defiance and pouting her lips like she was speaking to one of her fourth year followers.

Reverting back to the old days of sibling rivalry, Al crossed his own arms and retorted, "Well, I asked you first."

With a roll of her eyes, Lily turned around and started walking away, but Al made sure to keep on his sister's tail. "You do realize that it's hours past the underclassmen curfew, don't you?" he asked as he was running to catch up with her. Only fifth, sixth, and seventh years were allowed to even be out of their common rooms past nightfall, let alone wandering around the grounds. That was technically against the rules for all Hogwarts students, regardless of their age, though it was strictly enforced for those under fifteen.

"Of course I realize that, you dim-wit!" Lily replied harshly. Though she normally got along with her brothers much better than they did with each other, the older she grew, the snappier she became, which wasn't exactly a redeeming quality from Al's perspective.

Still waiting for an explanation as to why she was out of bed, Albus took hold of Lily's arm to make her stop walking and face him. Since he was stronger than her, if only slightly, she had no choice but to oblige, and seemed to understand what he was waiting for when she looked back at him.

With a deep breath, Lily finally answered with a shrug of her shoulders, "I like going out at night – you know, walking around underneath the stars. I've just needed to get away lately, that's all."

"Get away from what?" asked Al. He wasn't usually so concerned for Lily's well-being, but he knew that she'd been going through a rough time this year, after everything that happened between her and Scorpius, and Al figured she could use someone to talk to. Of course, he hadn't been willing to do so with Knox, so he had his doubts that Lily would be at all open with him.

Taking a step toward Al and adjusting her focus to see him through the dark, Lily said, "You know what from, Al... from everything. I mean, isn't that why you did what you did on Christmas? Isn't that why you were in the boathouse just now? You and I both know what being a Potter can feel like. You know that sometimes we just need to escape."

Hearing what Lily had to say, Al let go of her arm and walked her back to the castle without asking any more questions. He knew exactly how she felt, so regardless of _how_ Lily was coping with whatever form of dejection this was, at least it was safer than what Al was doing.

However, thinking about what he was doing and what Lily had admitted to seeing, Al asked just before they were about to sneak through the still-open double doors to the castle, "So, you saw me just now? Coming from the boathouse, I mean."

Lily didn't bother confirming before laughing and saying, "Don't worry. I'm not going to report back to James. Whatever it is that you're going through right now, or whatever it is that you're hoping to find from all of this, I know that you're doing it for _you_, so I'm not about to try to concern myself with it."

Al was relieved to hear that Lily hadn't been filled with James's theories or delusions that he could somehow fix Al. Still, he wasn't too thrilled to hear how little help she was willing to extend to her own brother. After all, Al was currently going to great risks and sacrifice to aid a woman who, only last year, had been a stranger to him, yet Lily didn't even want to try to help her own brother? Or was it possible that Lily knew that it was too late, and that Al was far past the point of saving?

Wrinkling his forehead and licking his lips in thought, Al stopped at the hallway of the moving staircases and lied to Lily by saying, "You do know that I'm not working with Astoria anymore, right?" He was fairly certain that Lily didn't suspect him of returning to the Forbidden Flock, for surely she'd have told the whole school by now if she did, but Al wanted to make sure that he hadn't accidentally pulled her onto his side, because just like she had said, this was his own battle to fight. The last thing he wanted was to drag others into the mess he'd made for himself.

"Yeah, I know," answered Lily without a second's hesitation. She wasn't the best liar, so Al knew immediately that she was telling him the truth. His confidence was only cemented further when she added, "I've spent this whole year searching for something that I thought I wanted, like I'd been missing it before. And I was right, because I _was_ missing something; it just didn't turn out to be the thing I wanted. You did the same with the Forbidden Flock."

If Lily's theory hadn't been largely flawed, she'd be coming across as quite the sage at the moment. Al couldn't help but wonder when she'd grown so wise for her years, but he didn't dwell on it after what she told him next.

Just as she was ascending the first of many staircases that could take her back to her common room, Lily looked back at Al and said, "One of these days, I'm going to find my own secret to keep, so that I won't have to go looking for everybody else's. And as much as I'm sure I'll regret saying this tomorrow when I yell at you for not coming to my Quidditch match, I hope that you'll find what you're missing, Al."

And then she was gone, leaving Al to walk through the empty castle and down to the dungeons on his own, the whole time knowing that Lily was right. He had the same feeling about his potion back at the boathouse, and though he wasn't sure whether it had to do with the potion or something much bigger than that, Al knew that he was missing something. He needed to find it, possibly even before he finished that potion, because unlike Lily, he couldn't just escape from it all. He'd already done that; he'd already run away. At this point, there was nowhere left for him to run.

* * *

The next morning, Albus was woken up earlier than he would have liked to be by a loud banging in the hallway just outside his dormitory. His roommates, with the exception of Scorpius (who seemed to have already left), heard the noise at the precise moment that Al did. All four of them jumped out of bed as if woken by the military to perform their morning drills and ran over to the door without bothering to put shirts on.

Al was the first off the threshold and was met with an enormous crowd of people in the hallway, all of whom appeared to be centered around yet another shirtless boy who was writhing across the black floor.

"If you want to leave, _leave!" _came a yell from the other side of the hall, which was home to the girls' dormitories. Al didn't recognize the voice right away, but after a second glance at the boy on the floor, he could guess whom it had come from.

James had just managed to stand himself up as a pile of clothing flew at his chest from inside the doorway of the seventh year girls' room. He caught his jeans and shirt and then ran up to the door as it was about to slam shut, sliding his foot inside to keep it open as he yelled back at Mercy, "Please, I only said that I have a game to get to!"

Mercy, who must have had her back against the door as she tried to close it on James's foot, opened it wide upon hearing his grovelling and snarled at him, "But _then_ you started talking about your _stupid_ contract with the Magpies this summer, proceeding to comment that you couldn't wait to rejoin the team and that you won't let yourself have _any_ distractions while you're on it."

James was confused as he nodded and tried to understand what he'd done wrong, while Mercy was still fuming as she widened her eyes and added, "Including _me!_"

This time, the slam was completed and James was thrown straight back into the hallway, where a slew of sighs came from the audience that surrounded him. Everyone in the vicinity now knew what he'd apparently told Mercy and how incredibly idiotic it had been of him, though Al couldn't care less about the blow-up. All he was thinking about as he stared at the clothing in his brother's hands was the fact that James wasn't holding the Invisibility Cloak that he had surely used to get inside the night before, and that therefore it must be back in Mercy's dorm.

Luckily, James didn't realize that he was missing the cloak as he started the frantic run out of the hallway and through the Slytherin common room. Just about everyone followed him to the entryway, where he turned back at them, looking toward Al as he addressed everyone and said, "You didn't see me. I was _never_ here. Got it?"

Everyone nodded, for they were all terrified of James. Even Al went along with it, telling his brother, "Got it," so that James would leave and allow Al the opportunity to look for the cloak.

Once James was gone, the crowd dissipated back into their dorms to get ready for the day's Quidditch match, but Al was too impatient to wait for them to fade out. Instead, he went straight back to Mercy's door just as a pair of doe-eyed girls were opening it. They walked right past Al without even noticing his presence, so he took the chance to stop the door from closing, cracking it open just enough so that he could peer through and try to find Mercy's bed.

But it must have been around the corner, because of course, Mercy wasn't anywhere near Al's line of vision. Sighing at the difficulties this mission was already posing for him, Al was about to give up and let the door close when somebody walked in front of the bed closest to him.

Ilana had just come out of the shower, and though a towel was wrapped tightly around her chest, her shoulders were bare and her back was still shining with drops of water. Al's view of it was bettered when Ilana pointed a wand at her wavy hair and made it dry instantly before twirling it into a messy knot and pinning it atop her head. Now, Al had a clear view of the nape of her neck, only a few ringlets of hair protruding his vision.

He was breathing slowly so that he wouldn't be heard by anyone as he watched Ilana, but he could feel his heartbeat growing faster. His pulse was racing so quickly, his blood pumping against his skin so loudly, that Ilana seemed to hear it as well, since before long, she turned her head suddenly and locked eyes with Al.

He kept eye contact with her longer that he realized before blinking and making himself leave, retreating back to his own dormitory where he could put some more clothes on. She didn't come after him or even yell in his direction before he was gone, but he couldn't get the sight of her out of his head even afterward.

Hoping to avoid an awkward run-in with Ilana, however, Al rushed out of the common room just as soon as he was dressed and ran to the one place in the castle where he could be sure no one would find him, at least for a couple of hours. He didn't even stop at the Great Hall for breakfast or to wish Lily luck before the game, as he was far too focused on getting to the fifth floor. In fact, he was so focused that he completely forgot about James's cloak, not even considering to attempt to steal it a second time.

Al had never actually been to the Prefects' bathroom before, though it had been open to him for half a year now. He hadn't been very keen on walking in to find a fellow prefect or Quidditch captain busy bathing themselves, but today they'd all be out watching the game. Just in case Hufflepuff was obliterated with an hour and Lorcan came to the bathroom to sulk, though, Al still put a binding curse on the door, which was the fourth to the left of a statue of Boris the Bewildered.

Immediately upon seeing the lavatory, Al was impressed. Though the toilet stalls on one side were nothing to rave about, the rest of the room was filled with the largest tub Al had ever seen. It was the size of a Muggle swimming pool and was surrounded with taps connected to transparent pipes that held water in all different colors. All Al had to do was press a single button on the edge of the tub, and suddenly a rainbow of water was filling the bath at an uncanny rate.

It only took a few minutes for the tub to fill completely, a fluffy layer of bubbles on the water's surface, and Al was glad to have found some peace and quiet. After quickly undressing and jumping into the water, he sat back against some jets in the tub wall and closed his eyes, letting his thoughts roam wherever they pleased.

For the next ten minutes or so, Al silently ran through the list of ingredients he'd gathered for the potion, pushing aside the images of Ilana's naked back that were invading his mind at every opportunity. He couldn't shake the feeling that there was something missing, or that something about this potion was going to go wrong. Still, he couldn't for the life of him find a solution.

"My, oh my, don't you look stressed!" The taunting, sing-song voice came from Al's left side, and its source couldn't be more than a few feet away.

Opening his eyes and turning to the voice as he jumped from beneath the water and instinctively moved in the opposite direction, Al asked, "Who are you? What are you doing in here?" before he even had the chance to take in the person he was looking toward – or, more precisely, looking _through_.

The ghost of a young girl was staring straight at him with bug eyes hidden behind round spectacles. Her long hair was tied up in two pigtails and she had bangs that covered her forehead and got caught in her glasses, so she was perpetually twitching her head to flick the hair away. She also happened to be wearing Ravenclaw robes that looked about as old as McGonagall, dusty and torn but also much too long for the girl's small arms.

"I'm _Moaning_ Myrtle, of course," said the ghost as she inched toward Al, not even trying to hide her obvious peering at him through the bubbles. "Now, don't tell me you've never heard of me!"

He had heard of her, though Al couldn't remember where from. Either Harry or Rose must have told him about this ghost before, but he found it odd that he'd never run into her when she clearly wasn't all that shy.

Choosing to ignore Myrtle's question, Al moved further from her again as he asked, "Don't take this personally or anything, but do you think you could, er, go away?"

At that, Myrtle flew from Al and up toward the ceiling, only to circle back around and come straight at him, her face swelling with anger as she pointed and yelled, "AND WHY SHOULD I?"

Leaning back and over the edge of the tub, for Myrtle's face was inches away from his now, Al put his hands up in surrender and said, "Woah, woah, I just meant that I wanted to be alone, that's all."

"Well, if you wanted to be alone, why were you sitting here mumbling to yourself about a scarring potion?" retorted Myrtle, her mouth opening incredibly wide every time a word came out of it.

Al was going to say that he wasn't mumbling about anything before he realized that she knew what his ingredients were being used for. After all, even if he had been listing them aloud without meaning to, he most definitely hadn't mentioned the type of potion he was planning to brew with them, yet Myrtle had made the connection without any further clues.

Thinking this, Al changed his response just in time to ask, "How did you know what those ingredients were for?"

Myrtle pulled away then, floating backward into the center of the tub, where she shrugged her shoulders and batted her eyelashes like a little girl at a Gilderoy Lockhart signing and said innocently, "Oh, well, it was just a lucky guess, I suppose. I mean, I'm only fourteen."

Al's confusion from Myrtle's body language vanquished, however, when her face went from naïve and sweet to aged and ugly as she flew back to him and yelled even more loudly than before, "WHO DO YOU THINK I AM, _ALBUS? _Does it look like I died _yesterday?_"

Al was shaking his head, too numb to ask how it was that she knew his name, as she continued, "For your information, I've been _dead_ for quite some time now, and I've seen potions in the pipes of this castle that you'll never even _dream_ of, so if I were you, I wouldn't walk around believing that nobody will ever guess what you're up to."

Myrtle had Al's full attention by the time she mentioned seeing potions that he'd never even dream of, so he barely heard the threat of her last sentence. "Do you know what I'm trying to brew?" he asked her as soon as her mouth had shut. Agitatedly, he added, "Do you know what I'm missing?"

She tried to smile and hint that she knew what he was talking about, but Myrtle didn't fool Al. He could tell just from her lack of response that she didn't know what he was missing after all; she was far too chatty to play hard to get.

Sighing, Al waited for Myrtle to look away guiltily before he jumped out of the tub and threw his pants back on while mumbling, "Never mind."

Al had the tub draining and the door open by the time Myrtle finally spoke up again, this time saying quietly from behind him, "Have you looked in the restricted section?" He'd been to the library about a hundred times over the past few weeks, but he hadn't had permission to check something out of the restricted section, so he hadn't tried to. But today, Madam Pince was most likely at the Quidditch pitch with the rest of the professors, so it might just be the perfect time to give it a shot.

"Thank you," Al said genuinely as he turned back to Myrtle, running out of the bathroom as the ghost flew down a toilet bowl.

Sure enough, Al didn't pass a single person on his way down to the library, for there was nobody left in the whole of the castle. Knowing this, he ran through the halls without worrying about being scolded for going so fast and was out of breath by the time he broke into the closed library.

The windows made it so that the enormous room was still light and lively even without the desk lamps on or the studying students walking around and whispering to each other. Al almost liked it better like this, he thought as he power-walked his way to the back of the hall, where the restricted section was located and tied off with nothing but a measly rope.

Because he didn't know where the potions books were in this section, he perused each shelf by scanning the titles of one book after the next. He was in the middle of the second row when Ilana snuck up on him from behind and asked, "What are you looking for?"

Al didn't even flinch upon hearing her name, almost as if he'd expected her to be there. Still, he wasn't sure that he could act like nothing had happened between them that morning, so he tried not to look at her as he said, "What do you think? I need help on that potion I'm brewing."

Nodding and moving slightly to let Al pass by so that he could keep reading the bindings, Ilana asked, "Well, did you look for the antidote? Because sometimes that's where I like to start."

Failing to think before he spoke, Al responded, "This potion doesn't have an antidote, Higgs." He regretted saying it right away, but was soon distracted by a book on the top shelf that said something about potions and the dark arts.

"Everything has an antidote," Ilana said confidently, but Al was no longer listening. He had his wand out and was summoning the book he'd seen, which was soon flying straight into his arms and causing him to swerve backward as he lost his balance.

He caught himself before Ilana had to and then walked out of the restricted section and into the study area of main library, where there was more light. Ilana followed him there and watched as Al dropped the book onto a desk – the same desk she'd been using before to write a letter on – and started flipping through it as if his life depended on finding something within the next two minutes.

Not understanding why any of this was so important to Al, Ilana asked again, "Potter, what are you even looking for?"

Al was breathing deeply and his forehead was sweaty. He felt almost like he was about to pass out, but he didn't understand this any more than Ilana did, which is why he shouted at her, "I DON'T KNOW!"

Just as he didn't flinch before, Ilana didn't flinch now. She did, however, step away from Al to give him some air as she said, "I'm sorry; I shouldn't have bothered you. I'll leave."

Closing his eyes as she left, Al cursed himself for pushing her away, something he seemed to be doing to Ilana a lot lately. Trying to pull himself back together, he closed the book and took it in his arms as he ran after her and yelled, "Wait!"

Ilana was beside Madam Pince's desk when Al caught up to her, and she stopped walking just in time for him to put his hand on her arm and say, "Don't leave. I will." And then he went, picking up the ingredients from the Room of Requirement before bringing them and the book down to the boathouse, just hoping that he had what he needed to make this potion work.

For the next few hours, Al delved into work-mode, never once losing focus as he cut, crumbled, and poured various ingredients into a cauldron of boiling water, all in a very specific order. Whenever he had time to take pause, he'd flip through the book to look for things, but once again, there was no specific recipe for what he was trying to do. Still, the book proved useful enough just from its chapter on general scarring potions, which helped immensely with the timing of the brew.

It was almost dark when Astoria showed up, and neither she nor Al said anything as she handed him a small vial of thick, crimson liquid that made him even queasier than he'd felt all day.

The blood was the final component that needed to be added to the potion before it spent the night setting itself in a mild boil. As Al poured it into the pot, Astoria asked him, "Is that it, then? That's everything you need?"

"Yeah. That's everything," answered Al, but he still felt like he was lying.

* * *

A mere twelve hours later, Albus was back at the boathouse after a terribly short sleep. He was no more confident today than he'd been yesterday, but he had no choice but to follow Astoria's plan for her marking ceremony. He knew that whatever consequence his gut was anticipating couldn't possibly be as bad as the one he would receive if he didn't go through with Astoria's wishes in the first place.

After pouring the potion in magically made containers and packing it all into a bag with an undetectable extension charm, Al made his way up to the castle just in time to see the sun rise over the horizon line of the Black Lake.

It was still too early for most students to be up yet, so Al was able to sneak into the kitchens beneath the Great Hall without anyone seeing him. After making sure that there were no Hufflepuff students lingering outside their common room, Al tickled the pear of a mural-sized portrait of fruit, turning it into a green doorknob that allowed him to enter the room.

The kitchens were the size of the Great Hall itself, long and narrow with rows of short counters against stone walls, and a cornucopia of brass pots and silverware hanging from the low ceiling. And unlike the rest of the castle, the kitchens were bustling with noise, for hundreds of house-elves were running up and down the hall in frenzy as they worked as a team to prepare the first meal of the day. These elves were all well-paid to be working, though, since Hermione Weasley had long since passed a law on the unfair abuse of the elves. Only those who had wanted to remain at Hogwarts had done so, and they'd received a considerable raise in return.

Before any of the elves noticed the intruder, Al pointed his wand at the center of the room and whispered, "_Confundus." _It was a spell that caused the victim to become light-headed and confused, and Al only had to use it once for it to act on all of the elves, thanks to the power of the Elder Wand. This way, they'd continue working (if at a slower pace), but they wouldn't question Al as he mixed his potion with the morning pumpkin juice.

Once the elves were looking up at him and smiling like he was a long-lost friend, Al felt confident about the charm and moved on to the task at hand. The first thing he did was open the window at the very top of the ceiling on the right wall of the room, allowing the awaiting Knox to fly inside and transfigure beside one of the two fireplaces.

"You ready, Black Hawk?" asked Knox as he brushed off some light snow left on his black robes, which had been deemed the official uniform for the Forbidden Flock.

Al was busy pulling the potions out of his pack as he replied, "Does it matter?"

Knox considered the question for a moment before answering, "Good point. Oh, and thanks."

"For what?" asked Al, the containers of the potion now lined up atop a counter.

"For not asking if _I_ was ready too," said Knox, chuckling sadly to himself.

Al could sense Knox's fear even without looking at him, and he didn't blame Rookie for being scared. With so many people who would surely chase after him, Knox had a high probability of being caught and shipped off to prison, and Al was immensely grateful to Knox for taking the risk that should have been his.

Not knowing what else to say, Al told Knox, "Ah, you'll be fine."

Failing to believe Al, Knox decided to change the subject by saying, "Right, well, we'd better get on with it."

At that, Al gave Knox a couple of instructions on how much potion to add to each goblet of juice, and then the two went to work. They were both careful to only use a few drops of the thick, clear liquid, for Albus had read that it should be quite strong and he didn't want anyone to be able to smell or taste it from within the juice.

They purposefully finished with a single vial of potion left over, which Knox put in his pocket as proof of being the one to have used it in case he was caught. Then they lined all the goblets up along the counters where the elves would make them disappear and resurface on the four tables in the Great Hall.

It was nearing the time that most students would head to breakfast on a normal weekend when Knox transfigured back into a rook and snuck through an opening in the ceiling of the kitchens to get into the Great Hall. As soon as Knox was out of sight, Al left the kitchens the same way he'd come in, sneaking through the opening of the portrait hole and trying to blend in with the Hufflepuff students who had since appeared, but weren't observant enough to notice him.

On the way upstairs, Al noted that most of the kids he was surrounded by were long-faced and quiet, so he thought it safe to assume that Gryffindor had won yesterday's match. That wasn't very surprising, either, since Gryffindor had been on quite the winning streak this season. Slytherin was close behind, as always, but Al wasn't sure by how many points. He hadn't thought about the Quidditch House Cup in ages, and he realized now that he really hadn't missed it.

The Great Hall was packed with students by the time Al walked inside, though the tables had yet to be filled with food. That would all come once when every student was seated, for it was easier to accommodate everyone that way. It was for that same reason that Al sat at his normal spot at the Slytherin table and awaited the appearance of his breakfast, for he didn't want to stand out by lurking suspiciously in the corner and watching everybody eat.

Luckily, the Slytherin table was at the far left side of the hall, and Al was sitting so that his back faced the wall, allowing him a decent view of all the other houses. Keeping an eye out for incoming students, he adjusted himself on the stool so that he was comfortable and slyly reached into his pant pocket and pulled out a notepad and quill that he could use to write all the Muggle-born names on. He figured this part of his task shouldn't be too difficult, since the scarring would be obvious on anyone. Plus, even if he missed a few, they'd be taken to the hospital wing straight away, and he could check his list there if needed.

Al's part of the table, which had been fairly empty when he'd sat down, was filling quickly now. Most of the Quidditch players came in together, even including Mercy, since she hadn't seemed to have forgiven James just yet. They sat at the end of the table by the double doors, while a gaggle of first years ran off to the opposite end. Scorpius came in just after his team, his arm wrapped around Rose as he followed her to the Gryffindor table and sat beside a celebratory James.

Ilana was the very last student to walk into the hall, and she ignored Al as she sat down a few feet away from him on the other side of the table, her face buried in the book Al had returned to the restricted section last night. He wanted to go up and to talk to her, so much so that it hurt to stay still, but he knew that now wasn't the time.

As soon as Ilana took her seat amongst the rest of the school, the food and drinks finally appeared, a plate of eggs and a goblet of pumpkin juice for each and every student. People dug in quickly as if nothing was wrong, for of course to them nothing was, but Al was having a difficult time acting like everything was normal as he stared down at his potion.

After reminding himself that nothing would happen to him once _he_ drank it and after glancing to the ceiling to make sure that Knox was ready and waiting in the beams, Al took hold of his goblet and sipped. He drank about half a glass before putting it down, and was relieved to find that he couldn't taste the potion and that nothing was happening anywhere on his skin.

His appetite barely existent, Al pushed his food aside as he scanned the hall and waited for the first Muggle-born to receive their scar. It came with a scream from the Gryffindor table, and Al already knew the person to whom it belonged.

The boy's name was Bobby Dormer, and he was Rose's fellow prefect. He'd mentioned in a few classes before that he had Muggle parents, but Al was quick to write down his name before he forgot as he watched Bobby stand up from his bench and back up toward the wall. He was gaping down at his arm, and all Al could see from across the hall was a trail of blood dripping off of Bobby's fingernails and onto the marble floor.

There was a crowd around him quickly, with Rose inspecting Bobby's wound as it seeped into his skin. "Somebody call the nurse!" she yelled into the hall at anybody who would listen.

But Bobby was just the beginning. Roddy Matheson, a fourth year from Hufflepuff, was next, and he fainted and fell off the bench before he had a chance to scream like Bobby had. A couple of other Hufflepuffs followed suit, then came two second year girls from Ravenclaw, and soon there were cries and screams from all over the three tables.

The only area of the hall that wasn't drowning in the blood of Muggle-borns was by the Slytherin table, though many of the students had still run off to help the others. Al stood up as well, but only to get a better view of the kids who were now being escorted out of the hall and to the hospital wing by their closest friends.

On his way to the doorway, however, Al noticed that Ilana had disappeared. He hadn't seen her leave the table before, and surely she didn't have any friends from other houses to attend to, so Al was instantly concerned, spinning his head around to try to see where she'd jetted off to.

He was still looking for Ilana when one of the remaining students in the hall, an older boy from Ravenclaw, yelled, "It's the juice! Somebody's tampered with it!"

By the time Al swirled around to see who'd spoken, Scorpius and Rose had found Knox in a corner of the ceiling. They were pointing up at the bird and yelling back at James, "It's him! It's Rookwood!"

Upon hearing his name, Knox took off from the beam and flew for the entryway, which Lysander Scamander was running to in attempt to close the doors and trap Knox inside, but Knox made it out before Lysander even came close.

Al snuck out the entryway just behind Knox, but stayed beside the doors as the latter transfigured into his human form and waited to be followed. It didn't take long for Lysander, James, and Scorpius to come running after him in the Entrance Hall and follow him all the way outside and into the courtyard.

At this point, the professors that hadn't been called to the hospital wing were on Knox's tail as well. McGonagall was at their head, yelling something at Scorpius that Al couldn't make out, and Arthur Weasley and Neville Longbottom weren't far behind her.

Once they were all outside and the only people left in the Entrance Hall were the Slytherins and a few others who hadn't retreated yet, Al pushed his way through the crowd so that he could get outside. He knew that he should be leaving before anyone saw him, but he needed to know that Knox was safe before he could save himself.

When Al couldn't see any sign of black robes still on the ground and once he noticed that Knox's followers were no longer running, he looked up at the sky and saw that Knox was already flying away. Granted, he had Scorpius, James, and Lysander flying on brooms and shooting spells from behind him, but he seemed to have gained a head start. Al was only reassured of Knox's chances of escape when he heard McGonagall sigh and tell Arthur and Neville, "They'll never catch him."

Upon hearing this, the two professors ran off toward the Black Lake, Neville yelling at Hagrid to use his magical megaphone to tell the Quidditch captains to head back while Arthur took out an old camera and tried to snap some photos of Knox that he'd surely be sending to the Ministry within the next hour or so.

Telling himself that it had worked, and that everything was fine, Al turned around to get away from the on-lookers just as McGonagall noticed that he was there, her eyes pinned on the notepad that was still locked in his right hand. She didn't say anything to him, though, so he broke her glare by running off like he should have before.

There was a bounty of students all still wide-mouthed and gaping in the Entrance Hall, and as Al passed by the open doors to the Great Hall, his eyes caught the last person left in the pool of the blood. It was Rose, standing in the middle of the hall, her hair the same color as the puddles on the floor, and her cheeks glistening with fresh streaks of tears.

Rose had always felt eternally connected to her peers, and what she hated more than anything in the world was seeing innocent people suffer. Al had never fully understood that about her until this very moment, for it was the first time in his life that he could see her from an outsider's perspective. Now, it didn't matter how many people Rose felt eternally connected to, because after what he'd just done, Al knew that he was no longer one of them.

It took all his might for Al to walk away from Rose, but he did just that, fleeing down the staircase and into the dungeons until he was inside the familiar Slytherin common room. As was expected, there wasn't anyone there. Even though nobody in Slytherin had received a 'Mud-blood' scar themselves, Al doubted that anyone would have gone back to their room after seeing such an event take place, no matter how little they themselves were involved.

Walking to his dormitory in complete silence, Al gripped his notepad tightly and tried to relive the marking ceremony in his mind. Regardless of his worries leading up to today, everything had gone according to plan. Knox had escaped, Al had recorded the names of every Muggle-born in the school, and, most surprisingly, the potion had worked. But as he stowed the notepad deep in his suitcase, Al realized that he still felt worried.

He still felt like was something was missing, that needed something, or that something had gone wrong without him realizing it. Stashing his suitcase back under his bed and then standing back up, Al closed his eyes and wiped his forehead, trying to figure out where all of these thoughts were coming from.

Knowing that it was futile but not coming up with a better idea, Al tried to relax like he had in the Prefects' bathroom, clearing his mind in order to think of only what he needed to fill this newfound hole in himself. Much to his surprise, however, the technique worked, because Al was soon only thinking of one thing that he'd been longing for, that he'd been waiting for, that he'd been searching for. And he knew that if he finally found it, he'd be able to listen to himself again, because this hole wasn't just in his head. It was in his heart, and there was only one thing in this world that had ever been able to get his heart beating.

He couldn't explain how he knew where she'd be, but before long, Al was knocking on the door to the seventh year girls' dormitory, waiting for Ilana to open it so that he could apologize for the way he'd been acting and so that he could tell her why he'd ever acted that way in the first place.

Al's instinct turned out to be correct, for after a few knocks, the door did open, and a straight-faced Ilana let him inside without any questions asked. She was wearing jeans and a baggy sweater that was especially large around her arms, an unusual outfit for someone who tended to dress in vintage specialty items. Still, Al didn't think much of it as he faced her and prepared himself for what he was about to say.

She was still silent, her eyes dark and distant as she crossed her arms and waited, but Al was too enamored by the memories of her flawless skin to notice her cold body language as he said, "I'm sorry."

Ilana looked as if she was about to interrupt, but Al stopped her by stepping closer to her and continuing, "I've been walking around this past week feeling lost, and thinking that I've been missing something, that there was something I needed to find."

He had her full attention now, and Ilana had un-crossed her arms but still had her hands clasped together by her stomach. She wasn't letting Al touch her, even though he was now close enough to as he said, "And I think I finally found it."

Al's voice was surer than it had been in months, which Ilana seemed to sense, since she looked straight into his eyes before he confirmed what she knew he was about to say. And as Al looked back at her, he wondered how he had ever failed to notice her before last year. He wondered what had made him so oblivious or closed off to the person he now felt lost without. He wondered how he could have possibly existed before she'd become his reason to exist.

"It's you, Higgs," he said, his voice just as sure and steady as before. "You're what I've been missing. You're what I've been looking for. You're what I need."

Now, it was Al's turn to wait for Ilana to say something. He watched her closely as she parted her lips and darted her eyes away from him before stepping back a foot or so and saying to the ground, "No, Potter. I'm what you _want_. But I'm not what you need."

Confused, Al didn't respond right away as he tried to comprehend Ilana's words, but his silence gave her the perfect opportunity to walk away from him, jolting out of her own dormitory and disappearing from Al's view all over again.

For a while, Al stayed where he was, too dumbfounded to move. But then, when Ilana's words became too painful to think about, he decided that he needed a distraction. This realization put him on his feet once more, and he found himself crossing the hallway and entering his own dormitory, where he searched through his hidden suitcase all over again, this time hoping to extract the notepad rather than hide it.

As he was rummaging through his things, however, he noticed that one of his most prized possessions – the bezoar that Rose had given him a couple of Christmases ago – was gone. Just to be sure that he wasn't imagining things, Al emptied his suitcase completely, but the stone-like antidote was nowhere to be found.

With yet another thing he didn't want to think about, Al whistled to his spotted gray owl, Witherwings, and waited for the bird to perch itself on his shoulder before he set off again, the notepad now stuffed in his pocket.

He didn't need to go all the way to the boathouse to know that Astoria and Knox had left for good, but he found himself walking there anyway. All of the students must have been corralled outside for the day, because the castle was fairly empty and the Great Hall was completely closed off. Sure enough, there were groups of kids scattered around the grounds, making it difficult for Al to go unnoticed. But rather than trying to hide from them, he decided to just keep going without hesitation. If McGonagall was secretly watching him, so be it.

But Al didn't get caught as he stopped outside the boathouse, gave Witherwings his note and told her to fly it to Astoria, and then broke into the shed on his own. He didn't know what he was looking for until he found a note about the size of the one he'd just sent away, pinned to an oar on the wall by the window Knox had been sitting in the other night.

Al took the slip of paper that had been written on in Knox's perfect cursive handwriting and read, '_Off to raise the army. See you when the grass turns green.'_

Albus ripped up the note after reading it, letting the bits scatter across the wooden floor. He tried to convince himself that he was okay, because everything had worked out the way they'd planned, but he wouldn't believe it. He knew what he was missing now, but somehow, the knowing was worse than the not knowing. Before, he'd had a reason to hope for finding what he needed. Now, he needed what he couldn't have, and Al knew better than anyone what that felt like. It felt like he was trapped. It felt like there was no escape, because there was nowhere left for him to run.

* * *

_**Note:** Thanks for reading, and by all means, leave a review if you can! (Btw, what do you all think of Ilana so far? I'm curious to know your theories about what she must be hiding.) I've decided to bump up the upload date for the next chapter, so expect to see it around **June 22nd** (soon, huh?). And as always, check out my spoiler section or my tumblr for more info._

_Also, I am officially a beta reader, open for business. If you're looking for one, check out my profile and/or PM me, 'cause I'd really love to help out. Thanks again!  
_

_-Hailey  
_


	24. Astoria's Army

_**Note:** This chapter starts in a similar way to chapters 4 and 14, since I have an obsession with patterns. ;) I won't spoil any more of it for you, though. I hope you enjoy!**  
**_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**24 – Astoria's Army**

"What are you waiting for?" asked the smooth, silky voice of Astoria. In her signature snarl, she added, "You have an army to lead, Albus. Now _lead it._"

Her command seemed to be more than just a command as Al heard it. He followed it willingly, without any question or choice. He just put his head down and did as he was told, under Astoria's complete control and without any of his own say in the matter. It was almost like he was under her Imperius Curse, fulfilling every last wish of the evil witch and taking the consequences on his own shoulders. But unlike Vincent Goyle, Al's shoulders were hardly broad enough to carry such weight, and it was only a matter of time until he crumbled to his knees.

For now, though, he was staying strong as he walked across the Hogwarts grounds, an army marching behind him. He was headed in a straight line from the shore of a frozen Black Lake to the center of a snowy Quidditch pitch, where a giant tent was barely standing, its tarp torn to pieces and its edges chiseled from fire. Beneath it laid a crowd of well-dressed witches and wizards assembled in one long line, and every pair of eyes was pointed at Al.

He was only a matter of yards away from the enemy now, and Vega and Wynn were on each of his sides as they chortled with excitement. Behind them was a horde of men whom Al felt no connection to, and then there were the giants, spiders, and dementors. But that wasn't the half of it, for the entire Forbidden Flock was the size of a measly ant in comparison to the roaring black dragon that flew steadily above them.

The creature intimidated some in the enemy group, though Al was surprisingly not intimidated at all. This confused him, because he had always been squeamish around all sorts of magical creatures, and he would have assumed that he'd fear dragons most of all. But he did not fear this dragon, and in fact almost felt attached to it, which was evident when Al stopped in his tracks to face the awaiting line-up and the dragon followed his exact movements, hovering above him until he slowly flew to the ground and landed just beside Albus with a giant thump.

The dragon's presence caused a slight stirring amongst the line facing Al, but the group of witches and wizards closest to him didn't even flinch at the sight of the beast. They all just looked at Al, waiting for either him or their own commander to say something. For a while, though, Al was silent, for he needed time to take in the sight of his adversaries.

The Order of the Phoenix was at least as large as the Forbidden Flock, and the group that was at its center made up the core alliance. The Creeveys were on one far side, their sons peeking above their shoulders from behind, while a gorgeously white Luna was holding hands with a rather dapper Neville from the other side. Beside the Creeveys were the Weasleys, Hugo hidden behind a furious Ron and somber Hermione, who was standing next to Draco Malfoy. Across from them was Teddy Lupin, but it was the presence of Mercy Golding that Al didn't quite understand. She was lodged in between Teddy and James, clearly an integral part of the alliance, and though Al's body didn't bat an eyelash upon seeing her, his mind wasn't quite sure why she was there. But even such curiosity couldn't hold his attention for long, since across from James was Ginny and Harry, and the latter's gaze was daring his son to look back at him. Still, Al didn't take the dare, for his gaze was already locked on somebody else.

Scorpius was standing a few steps ahead of the others in the very middle, only a yard or so away from where Al was positioned. The young Malfoy looked sharp as usual, with dress pants, a collared shirt, and a blazer. Everything he wore was as white as his hair, the perfect contrast to Albus, whose clothes also matched his own hair color. But while they may have been differentiated by their clothing, they currently had much more in common than they realized.

It wasn't until Al noticed the tears that streaked Scorpius's cheek that he realized Rose was nowhere to be found. Glancing back at Ron, Al now understood why his uncle seemed so profusely angry. Still, Scorpius's expression was worse, because Al's former best friend and new leader of the Order of the Phoenix already looked beaten when the war hadn't even started yet.

And as Al grew more aware of the weakening beat emanating from Scorpius's fractured heart, the hole in his own became wider and more prominent. He hadn't comprehended the gravity of his own pain before because he'd been used to it then. The hole in his heart had always been there, because he'd always been missing something, but now it felt different. Now, it was heavy instead of hollow, aching instead of waiting, loveless instead of lonesome. It was as if he had found what he'd been missing and held onto it… onto _her._ He had found Ilana and she'd filled the hole in his heart, but then she'd disappeared and had ripped what was left of him into shreds. Because like Rose with Scorpius, Ilana wasn't by Al's side, nor was she anywhere in the opposing crowd, and the thought that he'd somehow managed to find her but had just as hastily let her go was enough restore the anger in the Al. That was enough to finally make him speak.

"Today, we end this," he stated fiercely, extending his right hand for Scorpius to shake.

Scorpius took it without a word, grasping Al's skin feebly before letting go and taking out his wand. As soon as he did so, the army behind him all clasped their own weapons, and soon the Flock did so as well. This was also the first moment that Al spotted the Order's own dark creatures, for they had somehow managed to win over the giants, who were pounding out of the Forbidden Forest in perfect unison, their stomping steps sending vibrations across the entire Quidditch pitch.

With the sight of a sizeable opponent, Al's dragon flew back into the air and headed for the giants, leading a slew of relatives that had just arrived after soaring across the Black Lake. Beneath them, Al was breathing deeply to prepare himself for imminent battle, and there were three particular wizards whom he had his sights set on.

As soon as he made his plans clear, it was as if the rest of the two armies disappeared. Now, it was just Albus, standing on one edge of a square that had been formed by himself, James, Harry, and Scorpius. Al was about to face the three people he'd always envied more than any others, the three people who had hurt him the most, the three people he'd betrayed. And as he faced them, he couldn't help but laugh at the irony of the situation. After all, this was the first time in his life that Al himself wasn't part of a trio. He wasn't one of three Potter children, he wasn't working beside Astoria and Knox, and he wasn't one of three best friends. What made it all so funny was that it had taken him _this_ long – it wasn't until _this_ moment, after it was far too late to go back – that Al realized just how lonely it was to be on the outside looking in.

Albus opened his eyes just before a spell struck him, and it took him a moment to accept that it had all been a dream when it had felt so real. Yet here he was, half of his face buried into a pillow that sat on the bed in his dormitory, and his one open ear tuned into the synchronized snoring of his Slytherin roommates. But one of those roommates – the only one who never snored – wasn't in the bed beside Al's where he normally slept.

Scorpius was avoiding Al even more now than he had been before. Ever since he'd reunited with Rose, he'd been sneaking out of the dorm fairly often to meet her in the Gryffindor Tower, but following the recent marking ceremony, it seemed as though Scorpius never even dropped by to change his clothes. He must have known that Al had played a part in the ceremony, and Scorpius was most likely blaming himself for Al's involvement. Scorpius was like that; he blamed himself for everything because he'd always been responsible for more than he could keep track of. His leadership for the Order of the Phoenix was just the tip of an already leaning iceberg, and running into Al outside of class would surely push him over the edge.

After listening to the snoring for a while longer, Al decided that there was no way he was going to fall back asleep. After all, it wasn't the complete middle of the night; he could see a few rays of sunlight shining through the water outside his dormitory window. So, Al stepped out of his bed and put his uniform on without bothering to check if his tie was crooked, and then sneaked outside quietly and headed for the common room, where he hoped Ilana would be.

Much like Scorpius, Ilana hadn't spoken to Al since the marking ceremony. It had been almost a month since then, though, and Al was starting to feel like he hadn't spoken to anyone at all recently. Not that talking to anybody else would do him any good; it was her he wanted. But for now, at least, fate wasn't so kind to him, for Ilana was not sitting in the common room like Al hoped she'd be.

Instead, Al stumbled upon Aaron Goodall and Salem Keyes, two of his old Quidditch mates who'd played Chaser with him, polishing their brooms on the couches as they got ready for what was surely an early morning practice. Figuring it would seem odd if he ignored them, Al turned to the seventh years and said, "Hey. Long time, no see. Scorpius has got you two pretty whipped, hasn't he?"

"Yeah, tell me about it," sneered Salem, the darker-looking of the two. "We have _major_ exams to study for, so of course we have morning practices all _bloody _week."

NEWT's were only a week away now for the seventh years, so all of them were highly stressed. These exams would ultimately determine which jobs they could qualify for, effectively deciding their life path in one shot. The only students who had a right to feel remotely comfortable about their futures were ones who already had spots on a Quidditch team, and as far as Al knew, James was the only one with such luck.

Of course, that might just be the reasoning behind Scorpius's tight schedule. Aaron and Salem had been on the Slytherin team for years, both of them longing to play professionally one day. Neither of them was talented enough yet, but scouts would be coming to the two final games in May, which would be the boys' last opportunity to earn even a sub spot on a team, and the only way they'd be considered would be if they got enough training in over the few weeks beforehand.

This theory was confirmed when Aaron said to Salem, "Oh, pipe down, mate. Malfoy's just doing what he can to get us a job once we're done with this place. Plus, some people have way more exams than we do." Aaron had always been more of a gentleman than Salem, similar to how Scorpius had always been in comparison to Al.

"Yeah, well, we can't all be as perfect as _Mercy Golding_, can we?" snorted Salem. This piqued Al's interest slightly, because nobody at Hogwarts disliked Mercy more than he did, so naturally he wanted to know all of her secrets.

"What's so perfect about her?" Al asked, trying not to seem _too_ curious. With a laugh, he added, "I mean, other than the obvious." Mercy was, after all, a gorgeous blonde with legs as long as Al was tall, so he couldn't very well deny that she was attractive. Still, that didn't mean that she was anywhere near his type.

Salem grunted with envy as Aaron answered, "She's got more exams than anyone in our year. The girl's no ditz, believe it or not. Mercy's the only one of us who even stands a chance at qualifying for Auror training."

If Al had had a drink in his mouth, he would have spit it out then and there, he was chortling so hard. "_Mercy _wants to be an _Auror?" _No wonder she was dating James; he had all the connections she'd ever need.

With a heavily annoyed sigh, Salem commented, "Just one of the many reasons she gets away with boycotting all the practices that _we_ are required to attend."

"Speaking of which, we should probably get going," suggested Aaron. At that, the two left Al while berating him of his decision to quit the team, to which he failed to listen, his mind already filled with more important thoughts.

Running into the seventh years had reminded Al that it was pointless to search for Ilana in the common room or even her dormitory. At this time of the year, most of the upperclassmen lived in the library from dawn until dusk, and for once, Ilana was most probably no exception to such a rule.

Still with plenty of time to spare before breakfast, let alone before his first class, Al ran out the door just after Aaron and Salem and headed upstairs to the library. He himself hadn't been all that worried about his impending exams, since sixth year finals were a breeze in comparison to OWL's and NEWT's. For this reason, he hadn't had any need to visit the library recently, and once he arrived there, he was thankful he hadn't come looking for his own peace and quiet.

The place was utterly packed, fifth and seventh years piled across the desks and chairs and roaming the hallways with sweat already running down their necks. Al had never realized there were so many people up this early, even the Ravenclaws. But of course, he'd had no way of knowing when they'd all been hiding out in the part of the castle that Al was least familiar with.

It took him quite some time to sort through the crowd and find Ilana, but eventually he did. Naturally, she was curled up in a large chair beside the Potions stacks, a pile of books sitting on the floor in front of her. So consumed in her reading, she didn't even notice when Al added a book to the pile.

Trying to gain her attention, he kicked at the leg of her chair, nodded his head toward the Half-Blood Prince's book that he'd just returned to her, and said, "To help you study."

Ilana didn't even look him in the eye as she replied, "Thanks, but I don't need any help."

Al laughed, because he wasn't about to give up that easily. Pressing further, he asked, "Well, then, what about some company?" and then leaned against the armrest of Ilana's chair.

However, she too wasn't willing to back down. Slamming her book shut and finally meeting Al's gaze, she said pointedly, "Look, Potter, I'm kind of busy right now, so I'd really appreciate it if you could just sod off, all right?"

"And why should I?" Al responded instinctively. "Why do you get to make all the decisions? How is it that you get to know what's right for me better than I do?" He was referring to their last conversation, when she'd pushed him away by shooting down his own desires and telling him that she wasn't what he needed after all.

"Blimey, don't you get it?" she shot back at him, raising her voice so much that she gained the attention of a few snooping students. Realizing this, she added more quietly, but still putting emphasis on every word, "We can't be together, and you just want what you can't have."

Al tried to take in her words for a moment. He tried to understand what she wanted him to hear, but nothing made any sense. How is it that he could feel this way about a person he wasn't supposed to be with? Even just now, as he was sitting beside her in the middle of an argument, all he wanted to do was reach out and touch her hair. He wanted to run his fingers over her black waves, brush his lips over her pale cheeks, whisper things in her ear that he'd never say to anybody else.

Thinking this, he shook his head stubbornly, then turned back to Ilana and cupped her cheek in his hand. Pulling her toward him with a slight roughness in his touch, he whispered with a clenched jaw, "No, Higgs. There are _hundreds _of things that I can't have, but I still want _you_."

She held his gaze for a minute or two, but then took a deep breath and turned away, slapping his hand off her cheek with a sharp jerk of her head. No longer able to look at him, she fought through her own temptation as she said, "I told you, Potter – I'm busy right now."  
Al would have stayed and argued further had the bell not rung at that exact moment. He didn't mind missing class, but he was still under surveillance from his parents, so he couldn't exactly afford a letter home to Mum and Dad for skipping Transfiguration, which happened to be taught by the Headmistress herself. So, he left Ilana and set off for his least favorite class on a day that already didn't feel like it could get any worse.

Because that had just been the warning bell and the Transfiguration classroom happened to be on the same floor as the library, Al ended up being early to class. When he arrived, most of the room was filled with its usual animal cages rather than students, with only a few overachievers sitting at their desks with their books already open. Unsurprisingly, Rose was one of them.

At first, Albus didn't think anything of her presence toward the front of the room, and he was about to take his regular seat in the very back row when he had the sudden urge to talk with his cousin. After all, she was the one person he always went to when he needed to talk, and so now, after suffering through a disturbing dream and then Ilana's rejection, Rose was the only person who might be able to make him feel better. Of course, he was disregarding the fact that they too hadn't spoken all month, hoping that maybe she'd be as forgiving with him now as she'd been back in January.

Taking Scorpius's seat beside her, Al caught Rose off her guard when he said, "Hey."

As soon as Rose looked back at him, Al knew he'd made a mistake in talking to her. There were few occasions over the years that he'd ever seen Rose look angry, but each one was etched in his memory thanks to the expression it invoked on her. Normally so calm and collected, Rose's eyes would pierce like bullets of hail and her freckles would singe like burning coal whenever her frustration overruled her tolerance.

She didn't wait for Al to explain his presence before she asked him simply, "Did you have anything to do with the 'Mud-blood' scars?"

Al didn't answer, but he didn't have to. He knew before he could stop himself that his silence said all that his words couldn't. Rose, of all people, had a right to feel personally victimized by Astoria's marking ceremony, since it had been inspired by a scar branded in the skin of Rose's own mother. And of course she would assume that Al had had something to do with it, since he'd never denied to her that he was still working with the Flock.

Rose was sighing with disappointment when Al tried to change the subject by saying, "I just wanted to talk." She didn't back down, though, and all too soon the rest of the sixth years were barging in, and so Al moved returned to his seat before Scorpius saw him with Rose and finally found a reason to scorn him.

Al made it to the back just before Scorpius ran in, followed closely by a still guilty McGonagall. She too was suffering from the repercussions of the marking ceremony, since it was her all the Muggle-borns' parents were writing to with questions about the school's safety and security.

Today, McGonagall was especially self-conscious as she welcomed Bobby Dormer back to class. The Muggle-borns who'd received scars had either been held captive in the hospital wing while the nurses tried to find a cure or had returned home for a few weeks to gain support from their families. Bobby had been of the former group, and the nurses had just now come to terms with the fact that nothing more could be done; the scars were permanent.

Seeing Bobby wasn't exactly what Al had been hoping for either. He couldn't explain how he felt upon witnessing the normally loquacious boy act so silently as he checked his sleeves with every spell he cast, making sure that nobody could see the word he'd been branded with. It wasn't guilt that Al felt so much as fear, though. Bobby wasn't at all suspicious of Al, but McGonagall most definitely was.

She'd already suspected him of something after the Weasley attack, but now she looked at Al with less inquiry and more determination. He had to be careful over these last few weeks of school, because she was watching him just as closely as Astoria always was. He felt like both of them were constantly waiting for him to make the wrong move, and it was getting more and more difficult to decide which move was right.

But for now, McGonagall had no proof of Al's involvement in anything pertaining to the Forbidden Flock, and so he put his head down and made it through the class without drawing any more attention than he already had. After he was dismissed, he was off to Defense Against the Dark Arts, a class in which he really didn't mind all the attention that he earned so easily.

This time rushing in to get his seat up front, Al was surprised but excited to see that the desks in the classroom had all been pushed aside, stacked against the two long walls and leaving a narrow expanse of floorboard in the center of the room. Students were whispering about the new formation as soon as they walked in, for all sixth years knew about the heavily anticipated DADA lesson that was rumored to take place toward the end of the year. It was a special class that was by no means on the syllabus, but that offered the perfect segue into the countless number of applied lessons they'd be participating in come seventh year.

"As I'm sure some of you may have guessed, it is time for the annual Sixth Year Dueling Tournament," announced Professor Smethley as she descended the staircase from her office. With her confirmation came even more whispering, but it silenced when the petite professor walked into the center of the circle of students and began to explain the rules of the traditional game.

"The tournament is simple," she started. "We'll begin with a pair of you to duel in the center of the room so that everyone else may watch. As we must abide by the niceties, the two students will bow before casting any spells. Those spells may include anything that you have learned in this classroom over the past six years, though I will not tolerate Unforgivable Curses or other spells that may cause insurmountable damage upon your audience or your opponent."

Al looked directly at Scorpius as soon as he heard Smethley's final word, and he wasn't particularly shocked to see that Scorpius was looking back at him. But the two didn't have much time to continue sending each other threatening glares before Smethley continued, "Of course, I would advise you all to use as many silent spells as possible, both for your own defense as well as your success in the duel. Remember, this _will_ be graded."

There were a few eye-rolls at this, but most of the students would still rather be assessed based off actual skill than the written exam that would be coming in a matter of weeks. Listening intently, they all accepted the marking scheme as Smethley went on, "And there is one thing about the tournament that makes it especially difficult. You see, rather than hosting a bounty of pairs, then having the winners of each pair take on each other, and so on and so forth, there will only be one duel to start with. The _loser_ of that duel, which will be determined when one of the students is put into a compromised position against the opponent, will receive an ally. Together with their friend, they will compete once again against the winner of the previous duel. If the previous winner loses against the _group_ of opponents, then we will start over with a fresh pair. However, if the previous winner gains victory once again, the pattern will continue with an ally added to the losing group until the entire class must face the single remaining witch or wizard."

Al liked this idea. He had a clear advantage because of the Elder Wand, but that wasn't the true reason he appreciated the rules of the tournament. He appreciated it because it was much more like the real world than a regular duel would be. After all, when faced with an attacker, there was almost always more than one, and a brilliant wizard needed to be prepared to take down as many as dared to face him. In the real world, that was the only way to ensure one's survival, and if there was one thing that Al had always been good at, it was surviving.

"Now, bear in mind that I have never seen a true victor arise from this tournament," Smethley continued, breaking Al's concentration. Quickly going from serious to eager herself, she asked her students, "So, who's ready to change that trend?"

At that, everyone clapped and cheered, and soon there were over ten hands raised in the air as all they all attempted to volunteer for the first round. Pranav Patil was the first chosen, but lost his duel against Patty Parkinson. After gaining an ally from Hufflepuff, together they took Patty down and ended the round. For the second turn, Smethley was more creative with her choosing, and ended up selecting a pair of wizards that were not only well matched against each other, but who would also provide some serious entertainment to their classmates.

Al and Scorpius faced each other head-on, and though they were required to bow as a sign of respect, it was clear from their eyes that neither of them currently respected the other in the slightest. If Rose had been angry, it was nothing compared to Scorpius's rage. He knew without a shadow of doubt that Al was to blame for the recent bloodshed, finally reciprocating the anger Al had been aiming at him.

When their duel began, Al was the first to attack, pointing the Elder Wand at Scorpius and shouting, "_Stupefy!"_ He thought he'd start with something small, but the curse didn't even hit Scorpius; he was better at defending himself than he liked to let on.

Scorpius came at Al next, sending a silent spell his way, the effects of which Al didn't get a chance to see as he dodged behind a desk in the corner. By now, the rest of the class was riveted by the duel taking place before their eyes, none more so than Rose. She had to make way for Al when he ran to the corner, but he caught a glimpse of her in time to see the worry written all over her face. She knew better than anyone how much Al and Scorpius had been waiting to take their anger out on each other, and Rose hated having to stand by and let it happen.

But any concern Al may have had for Rose vanished when Scorpius shot another spell Al's way, this time voicing the command aloud since he wasn't practiced enough to say it silently. "_Incarcerous!"_

"_Protego!"_ Al produced a protective shield just in time to save himself from being wrapped up in ropes produced by Scorpius's wand.

When Al looked up to see Scorpius focused on another spell that he seemed to be casting on himself, however, Al took the opportunity to disarm him, flicking his wand nonchalantly and saying the magic word, _Expelliarmus_, in the back of his mind.

Scorpius's wand immediately flew across the room only to be caught by Rose, whose Keeper instincts always came in handy at unexpected times. But without his wand to fight back, Scorpius was named the loser of the duel, making Al smile with pride for his victory.

"All right, all right," Smethley came between the two boys, trying to pipe down the other students who were itching to join Scorpius in his second attempt to take down Al. But instead of choosing one of them, Smethley turned to Scorpius and said, "Pick a partner, Mr. Malfoy."

Al didn't need to wait to hear Scorpius say without any hesitation, "Rose." He saw that coming from a mile away, because of course the two would gang up on him. It was what they always did. What Al hadn't expected, however, was to see the ending of this morning's dream play out right before his eyes.

Though Rose joined Scorpius with much more reluctance than she'd shown to Al before, the latter couldn't help but feel as though this next duel was the perfect way of illustrating their broken trio. It was only fitting that Al would finally get the chance to stand up for his third wheel status.

The others in the room seemed to sense this as well, as there wasn't a single person who dared to make a sound that might distract the old friends from their current conflict. And after bowing and facing each other in a triangle, Rose and Scorpius slightly closer together as they had always been, everything around them disappeared.

Just like in his dream, Al's thoughts were glued to his opponents only, and all three of them were condemned to the world of frustrations they all felt toward each other. Al and Scorpius were determined to make those frustrations known, firing spells upon curses and running in every possible direction to avoid the blasts. Rose, on the other hand, tried to sidestep the conflict and focus on defensive spells, but eventually she too yearned to use the duel as a gateway for her anger.

Now with both Scorpius and Rose to fend off, Al started to get more serious with his spells. He was done with simple hexes and counter-curses; he needed to pull out the spells that could overthrow multiple wizards in one take if he wanted to beat the lovebirds once and for all.

"_Petrificus Totalus!"_ he shouted to Rose just as she attempted to disarm him for the third time. Unfortunately, Scorpius threw a protective wall in front of his girlfriend just before she was struck.

Now feeling vengeful, Scorpius ran toward Al but pointed at the desks by the walls and said, "_Reducto!"_

Suddenly, the pile of wood exploded from all sides, most of the debris flying toward Al since he'd been closest to the stack. However, the fire spread across the classroom, causing Smethley and the rest of the students to run around in frenzy. Still, Al and his adversaries were too focused on their duel to hear Smethley's screams for them to surrender.

It was Al's turn to fire back, and he did just that with the first spell that came to mind, one he'd seen in his potions book a thousand times but had never tried out. Aiming at Scorpius because he didn't actually want to harm Rose if it came down to it, Al shouted, "_Sectumsempra!"_

But the curse, which fired a line of green sparks from Al's wand, didn't manage to hit Scorpius, since he whispered, "_Evanesco,"_ to himself before his entire body vanished and he ran from Al's range.

"That's _ENOUGH!_" yelled Professor Smethley, making the rest of the world suddenly reappear. Scorpius silently came out from the Invisibility Cloak he'd created for himself, stopping dead in his tracks next to Rose as Al tried to subdue his adrenaline rush.

Adjusting to the sight of the classroom and his peers, Al saw that the fire had been put out but that the students were still shell-shocked by the chaos created by the most recent duel. "I told you before," Smethley directed mainly at Al and Scorpius, "I didn't want _any_ insurmountable damage. Since you three seemed to have ignored such instruction, I'll have to ask that you serve a detention."

When Rose attempted to protest, since she was the only one of the three who'd never been given a detention before, Smethley turned around to her and added, "To _all_ of you. No excuses."

Then the three of them sighed in unison, because none of them could bear the thought of interacting any further, what with all the fire that raged between them and that they only seemed to be adding fuel to as of late. Al's sigh was met with a small laugh, though, since he never should have thought that this day couldn't get any worse, because it just did.

* * *

The trio's detention took place on the following Friday, when the three of them were asked to meet Hagrid down at his hut at sunset. They didn't yet know what their task would be, but Al was already not looking forward to it. After all, it was fairly late by the time he got down to meet them, and he hadn't been sleeping well thanks to his recurring nightmare.

The dream kept flooding his mind whenever he closed his eyes, and it always presented itself in the same way, though he barely understood any of it, and he didn't know what he could do to make it go away. Was his sub-conscious telling him that he needed to take a leadership role in the Flock even with Astoria and Knox off on their mission? Was the dream meant to act as a reminder of how he felt about Ilana? Or, worst of all, was it possibly saying that something was going to happen to Rose, and that it would be his fault? And no matter which was true, what was Al supposed to do about it? This detention alone made it pretty clear that he already had enough problems to deal with; he couldn't afford to take on any more.

Of all people, Hagrid was especially attuned to Al's exhaustion when the latter was the first of the trio to arrive at the giant's ridiculously small abode. "It's abou' time yeh came 'round fer a visit!" he complained from his stool that was currently placed in the middle of his wilted pumpkin patch. "Even if I had ter use a detention to get yeh here."

Not needing to fake his guilt this time, Al put his hands in his pockets and said, "Sorry about that, Hagrid. I know I've been a bit absent lately." Even after his falling out with Scorpius that fall, Al had continued to visit Hagrid for tea on his own, but he hadn't found the time to stop by since before Christmas.

But Hagrid seemed much less gullible tonight than he normally was, responding back to Al, "Don' try ter fool me, Al. I know there's somethin' goin' on with yeh three, and I'm gonna' sort it out tonigh'; don' yeh worry." He was pointing a bulging finger at Al now, though Al didn't have the chance to ask Hagrid what his big plans were before Rose and Scorpius showed up.

The pair came strolling down the hill hand in hand, though neither of them looked particularly gleeful as they approached the hut. Rose was still feeling sour about earning the detention in the first place, and Scorpius seemed to be frightened to address Hagrid, who crossed his arms upon seeing the boy and tried to hide the tears of betrayal that were forming in the corners of his eyes.

"Well, now that yer all here, lemme get yeh started," he grunted awkwardly. It was funny how just about every part of this evening felt out of sync for the four of them, even after they'd spent countless hours together in complete harmony. But as Al was beginning to understand, that was the past, and the present was a whole new ball-game.

Hagrid motioned for them all to sit down at that, so Al took a seat beside a rotting pumpkin while Rose and Scorpius stayed clinging to each other on Hagrid's other side. The only part of this arrangement that was at all normal was the presence of Hagrid's dog, Saber, who found his way to Al before lying down and resting his head in Al's lap.

This managed to gain a smile from Rose as she noticed the dog's position, for Al had always detested the boarhound just as much as it adored him. But their momentary connection was broken when Hagrid cleared his throat and said, "Think of tonigh' as a sor' o' therapy session."

Confused, Al leaned forward as Hagrid continued with, "Now, I dunno what's goin' on with the three of yeh', but I know that 's not right. Yeh're no' actin' like yerselves lately, gettin' in detention for no good reason. An' I'm gonna' fix yeh up whether yeh like it er not."

"And how do you suppose you're going to do that?" Al asked before he could stop himself. He didn't mean to slight Hagrid in any way, but he also didn't believe for a second that Hagrid had any idea what was going on between the old friends.

Rose seemed curious to hear what Hagrid was planning as well, though Scorpius still had his head down as if he'd already done something wrong, and it was him Hagrid looked to when he said, "I'm goin' ter split yeh up and 'ave yeh look fer some unicorn hair. I'm always lookin' ter use it for me bandages and things, and I could use the help in tryin' to find all the shed patches of it in the forest."

Al's stomach twisted itself into a knot when he heard the word 'forest'. He'd been careful to never step foot in the Forbidden Forest during his time at Hogwarts, for he had absolutely no interest in heading into a place he could very well never return from. But it wasn't the idea of exploring the forest that seemed to wake up Scorpius.

His attention had been drawn to something else Hagrid had mentioned, for he suddenly broke his silence and asked, "You're going to split us up?"

"Thas' right," Hagrid said. Looking between Scorpius and Al, he explained, "When the two of yeh's parents were in their firs' year here, they weren' gettin' along very well. So, when they got a detention of their own, I made 'em werk together."

"My dad and Draco?" Al asked, now curious for the same reasons Scorpius had been. "Working together?"

"Thas' righ'," answered Hagrid with an incredible nod. "It brought 'em closer, it did."

Al and Scorpius were both too dumbfounded to ask any more questions as Hagrid stood from his stool and handed them each a large canvas bag and said, "Yeh two will take the eas' side with Saber, and Rose and me will stay wes'. I 'spect ter meet yeh back here in an hour; are we clear?"

Al was too busy scoffing to reply, but Scorpius took the empty sack and said, "Yeah. We're clear." He then gave Rose a kiss on the cheek and whispered something in her ear before setting off toward the forest's east-side border, not bothering to wait for Al to follow him.

But Hagrid did wait, staring down at Al until he stalked off in the direction Scorpius had gone, not seeing any way out of the predicament that the neighborhood's friendly giant had placed them in.

"Oi!" Al called out as he ran after Scorpius, "Wait up!" He was already inside the forest now, and Al was just reaching its edge.

Even so, Scorpius didn't oblige by Albus's request. Instead, he let Al sweat a little with fear of the forest as he called back, "Like hell I'm waiting for you! I've _waited_ long enough. I'm not fooling myself anymore; I know now that there's no point in waiting. My best mate's never going to come back."

That hit Al hard, and the only comeback he could come up with quickly enough was, "Says the guy who didn't say a word to _his_ best mate all summer long!" He knew as soon as he'd said it that it wasn't fair, though. There were only so many times Al could use Scorpius's absence that summer as an excuse for his latest betrayal.

Scorpius agreed with Al's thoughts, as all of the sudden he was standing a few feet in front of Al, having apparently come out of nowhere, and was spitting back at him, "Don't you _dare_ try that with me again! I'm done apologizing for doing what I thought was right at the time. I'm done apologizing to you, _period_."

Then Scorpius turned around and continued walking, but this time Al was able to keep up with him. They both had their wands lit as they strode down a muddy hill, and after a minute or two of silence, Al thought about Scorpius's statement and couldn't help but shake his head at it. It may have taken him until now to ascertain the source of Al's own frustration with Scorpius, but the latter's last statement made it all suddenly come to light.

Stopping in his tracks, Al mumbled to the forest floor, "But you never did."

Though Scorpius could barely hear him, he told himself to keep walking as he asked, "I never did what?"

Speaking up, Al practically shouted, "You never apologized!" He and Scorpius had fought and argued all year, to the point where they'd practically gone from eternal best friends to mortal enemies. All they ever did was blame each other for their own mistakes, since neither one of them had actually admitted to them.

Letting the statement sink in, Scorpius stood still for a moment before he turned around to face Al once more. He had his mouth open and was about to say something when his eyes flicked from Al to the space just behind him. Wrinkling his forehead, Scorpius took a few steps forward and chose to ignore Al's comment as he pointed to thing his eyes were locked on and asked, "What's that?"

"What's what?" asked Al as he turned around to look where Scorpius was pointing and saw nothing there.

"That horse thing," muttered Scorpius as he inched ever forward, transfixed by this creature that apparently only he could see. He was staring into an empty enclave between two tall trees that were swaying in the wind as he added, "I think they're thestrals."

"Oh, so now are there are multiples of them?" Al asked with a chuckle, though he was secretly terrified of whatever Scorpius might be seeing.

Sighing, Scorpius kept his gaze on the enclosure but turned his focus back to Al as he said, "Don't you remember? Rose saw one last year, and Hagrid's told us about them before. It's believed that they can only be seen by those who have seen death."

The memories flooded back to Al in one fail swoop just as soon as Scorpius reminded him of them. Rose had been in a flustered mood that day in October of last year, when she'd come to them almost in tears after seeing one of the skeletal horses for the first time. It had been just after she'd discovered Filch's dead body with Lysander, and it had taken all of Al and Scorpius's support to help her cope with the trauma.

"Rose, right," Al mumbled, more to himself than to Scorpius. To him, Al added thoughtfully, "Rose was always the glue that held us together, wasn't she?"

Scorpius thought about this for a while before turning around to face Al directly and stating, "No. Rose may have helped calm the air between us a couple of times, but she wasn't the one who held the three of us together. That was all you."

Then Scorpius started walking again, leaving the thestrals behind to head off in the same direction he'd been going before. With one last glance at the horses that he couldn't see, Al fled after him, letting Scorpius act as the leader that he'd so recently become.

Al decided not to comment on what Scorpius had said about him being the one to hold their friendship together. He wasn't completely sure if he agreed with the statement, and he was sick of arguing with Scorpius. He was sick of arguing with anyone, _period._

Instead, Al tried to have an actual conversation with Scorpius as they continued to trek through the forest that seemed to grow darker with every step they took. "You can see the thestrals because of your grandmother," he said questionably from behind Scorpius.

"Yeah," Scorpius replied, a hint of sadness in his voice. If there was anyone who understood how close he'd been to Narcissa, it was Al. If there was anyone who understood even a speck of his childhood, it was Al. It would always be Al.

But Scorpius couldn't help but feel as if that Albus was gone, even if pieces of him still revealed themselves when he least expected them to, like right now. Those pieces just weren't enough, not after all the pieces he'd seen disappear before his very eyes. That was why Scorpius had to reply to Al with as snarky a comment as he could muster as he said, "Don't worry. At the rate you're going, you'll be seeing plenty of thestrals in no time."

Al knew what Scorpius meant. He knew what the Malfoy was getting at. He knew that if he stayed aligned with the Flock, innocent people would die, and he would see it happen. He'd known that a long time ago, and so for once, he didn't fight back against Scorpius. He just let the statement pile atop his shoulders with all the rest of his buried guilt, because that was the only way he knew how to handle it without making Scorpius his first real target.

Scorpius seemed surprised by Al's lack of response, though, and so he took full advantage of Al's newfound composure as he asked, "What are you getting out of all this anyway, Al?"

Al didn't exactly want to answer Scorpius's question, because he felt like he'd be giving away too much of himself, but he'd also been longing to have someone to talk to lately. He never meant for that person to be Scorpius, but for now, he'd take what he could get. "I guess it just feels good to be a part of something, even if it isn't something I ever thought I'd agree with."

"That doesn't make it okay," Scorpius replied almost instantaneously. Al could tell that he'd been waiting to say that, and in an odd way, it also happened to be what Al had been waiting to hear.

"I know it doesn't," Al said, both of them having stopped walking yet again, "But what choice do I have? Astoria's the only one who wants me anymore, Scorp. And anyway, it's too late to turn back now." For some reason, it felt like everything Al admitted to tonight was off the record. Tonight was a clean slate, because it was just the two of them alone in a forest, and the forest was so much bigger than them. Everything was, and so whatever they said here didn't really matter in the end. This conversation would soon be lost amongst the trees, so they both knew that neither of them would ever be able to find it again.

"It's never too late," retorted Scorpius adamantly.

Rolling his eyes, Al asked, "Did James tell you to say that?" His brother and Scorpius had never been very close, but Al didn't doubt for a second that James was rallying all the troops he could find to try to talk some sense into Al.

Confused by the assumption, though, Scorpius said honestly, "No. No, _I'm_ saying that. And it didn't come from James. If anything, I learned that from Rose."

When Scorpius paused before saying any more, Al urged him to continue by telling him, "I'm listening."

Putting his thoughts in order, Scorpius took a deep breath and said, "I tried to give up on her. I convinced myself that it was too late, that she'd never forgive me. But it's never too late to apologize, Al."

Realizing that the conversation had taken a turn, Al asked, "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that I'm sorry," Scorpius said with a shrug. "I'm sorry that I never wrote you this summer. I'm sorry that I ever left you out just so that I could be on my own, or so that I could be with Rose. And I'm sorry that I gave up on you so quickly when Rose never did. I shouldn't have ever fought with you or blamed you for betraying me. I should have just listened."

Feeling uncomfortable by the serious talk, Al tried to lighten the mood by saying, "Well, it's not as if I was all that chatty."

"That's true," Scorpius laughed. "But I was the one to stop speaking first."

Al let his head fall to his chest then. He wanted so desperately to take his best mate back and to be a part of the trio that he'd grown up with again. But things were different now. He and Scorpius had both changed over the past year, as had Rose. And even with Scorpius's apology, Al still couldn't shake his anger or his feeling of loneliness. He would always resent Scorpius for one reason or another, and he still had a large amount of respect for and gratitude toward Astoria for taking him in when no one else did. He couldn't turn his back on that now.

Thinking this, Al tried to be as honest with Scorpius as he was being with Al as the latter said, "I can't just forgive you, you know."

"Yeah, I know," Scorpius nodded. "I can't forgive you either. But, just so you know, you can do whatever you want with your own secrets. I might like to think that everything in this world is either black or white, but you've always been the first to tell me that life isn't a game of chess, because there's always going to be somebody who tries to play both sides."

Those were the last words they shared. Al didn't respond and Scorpius didn't press any further. Instead, they just walked through the forest, collecting any patches of shed unicorn hair that they managed to stumble across before making their way back to Hagrid's hut. Once there, they went their separate ways, Scorpius taking off with Rose while Al stayed behind for a minute to say goodbye to Hagrid.

"Thanks for doing this," Al said genuinely from the doorstep of the hut. He wasn't sure that Hagrid's plan had worked the way he'd intended it to, but for some reason, Al felt like it had helped him – like it had helped all of them.

With a smile about as wide as his stomach, Hagrid blushed and said, "Don' mention it. Yeh know I'm always 'ere fer yeh'."

Letting Hagrid hug him, Al lost himself in the giant's scruffy beard as he muttered, "Yeah. I know."

* * *

The next week passed far more quickly than the last, though Al's dreams seemed to be sticking around for the long haul. He tried to forget about the dragons and giants during the day, but they always managed to sneak up on him come nightfall. Meanwhile, Al had reverted back to stalking Ilana from the sidelines, since he just couldn't seem to accept defeat.

Plus, the seventh years had nearly gotten through their NEWT's by now. At least, James most definitely had, since he was sending celebratory fireworks into the sky of the courtyard just about afternoon. Al was thankful for the distraction James was providing their parents, though, since his impending graduation seemed to be keeping Harry and Ginny from reprimanding Al for his latest indiscretion, which McGonagall had surely written them about.

But it was Ilana who consumed the majority of Al's thoughts. He felt as if he thought about her during every moment of every day, but meals were the worst, because those were the times that he was closest to her. Now just so happened to be one of those times, as Al was currently sitting in the middle of the Slytherin table eating his supper as he glanced every so often at the girl who was only half a table away.

Al was so focused on the mystery girl that he found himself jumping off his bench in surprise when Rose unexpectedly sat down beside him. Taking a page from his book, she laughed at his reaction and said, "Hey."

"Hi," he replied after settling himself back into his seat. "Where's Scorpius?" It was the first question that came to mind, since Rose was hardly ever seen without her other half these days.

"He has a meeting with McGonagall," Rose answered, deciding not to try to dance around the subject because they both knew Al could see right through her.

Al hadn't yet heard of Scorpius's meetings, but he didn't ask Rose about them, since he could tell that there was something else on her mind, Sure enough, she eventually worked up the courage to say, "But he told me about your conversation in the forest. I just wanted you to know that I'm really glad you heard each other out, and that I'm sorry for accosting you in Transfiguration last week."

Shaking his head, Al said, "Rose, it's really not a big deal." He didn't blame her for anything, especially not for being angry with him when she had plenty of reason to be.

"Well, still, I felt bad about it after it happened," Rose continued, "And I hope you know that I'll always care about you. There's nothing you can do to change that."

Al knew that Rose meant what she was saying, though he had no idea _how _she could mean it. How was it that she was so willing to forgive when Al never was? Still, he wasn't about to contradict her as she added, "I miss you, Al. And while I might not agree with all of the decisions you're making, I'll always be here to lift some of that weight off your shoulders."

"Thanks, Rose. I miss you, too," Al said as Rose excused herself for a late-night Quidditch practice. She promised him that they'd talk soon, about whatever he'd been hoping to tell her the last time he'd tried, and he said that he was looking forward to it.

But as soon as she was gone, Al found himself running their short conversation through his head as if there was more to it than he'd realized. Then, upon rewinding Rose's last words, Al finally made the connection he'd been waiting to make for the past two weeks.

Maybe that was it. Maybe Rose and Scorpius were right. Maybe Al was carrying too much weight on his shoulders, and maybe that was the point of his dream. Maybe it was time for Al to pass along one of the secrets he'd been keeping and let somebody else decide what to do with it. Maybe it was time for him to start playing both sides.

Trying to relive his dream so that he might pick up on more of its clues, Albus found that the part he kept thinking back on had to with the two armies raging war against each other. It was the Forbidden Flock against the Order of the Phoenix just as he would expect it to be, but what he wouldn't expect was all the extra recruits from _both_ sides of the battle.

Right now, possibly at this very moment, Astoria was off with Knox negotiating deals and alliances with all manner of dark creatures, but for some reason, Al's dream had shown the giants siding with Scorpius rather than Astoria. Surely she was after them now, so how was it that the Order could ever gain their company before the Flock did?

It was this thought that led Al back to Hagrid's hut, because if there was anybody who could raise support of the giants, it was the son of one of their own. Knocking furiously at his door just as the sun was beginning to fall, Al waited impatiently for Hagrid to open up. During this short time, he wondered if what he was doing was what he was supposed to do. It didn't feel completely right, but then again, not much had lately. And like he had said to Scorpius, Al wasn't working with Astoria because he shared her beliefs about magical blood statuses. He wanted to be a part of something, but he didn't want to be the one to blame for a whole race of deaths. He didn't want to start seeing thestrals like Rose and Scorpius. After all, he already detested the magical creatures that were cute and cuddly like pygmy puffs and unicorns. He didn't want to run into any skeletal horses.

By the time Hagrid finally opened the door, Al was confident in his decision. Still, his anxiety took control as he babbled to Hagrid in hopes that the giant would listen, "You need to leave now. You need to find the giants before Astoria does, and you need to make sure they're on _your _side. You won't win without them."

Acting groggily as if he'd just woken up from a nap, Hagrid scratched his beard and asked, "Al, whas' all this abou'?"

"Astoria's after the dragons, Hagrid!" Al practically yelled at him. He wanted this to be done and over with so that he could try to go to sleep and see if it worked in making his dreams disappear, but he needed Hagrid to pay Al his full attention before Al could leave. "She's after the dragons and the spiders and the dementors, and you're the only one who can get to the giants before she does!"

"How do yeh know all of this?" Hagrid asked as he poured himself a cup of tea and then offered Al one.

Al declined and answered, "Never mind how I know about this. That's not important. What is important is getting those giants on your side. Now, I know you couldn't do it the last time, but please believe me when I say that you'll find a way to now." Al knew plenty about the wizarding war his father had once won, including the fact that Hagrid had tried and failed to convince the giants to fight with them, but that didn't matter. If Al's dream was somehow a premonition regarding the upcoming war, then it was already decided that Hagrid would win over the giants, because he most certainly had in the dream.

But when Hagrid still looked skeptical, Al put a hand on his arm, looked him straight in his big round eyes, and said, "What are you waiting for? You have an army to raise, Hagrid. Now _raise_ _it_."

* * *

_**Note: **Thanks for reading, and what did you think? Do you think Al's duplicity will last__?_ Just so you know, there is a ton of foreshadowing in the dream Al had, so be on the look-out for that! I also feel like I'm finally getting used to Al's POV, so I hope all of you are as well. (Let me know in a review.)

_The next chapter should be up around **July 2nd** (I'm going to try to update every ten days this summer, and hopefully I can continue to stick to the schedule). It's going to be packed with adult characters visiting Hogwarts for the seventh years' graduation, which I'm really excited to write about since it was an event we never got to see in the original books. Hopefully that will sustain your interest until the chapter's up, but feel free to ask for more spoilers in a review.  
_

_-Hailey  
_


	25. An Excess of Them

_**Note:** Part 3 has been filled to the brim with plot-heavy chapters so far, but this one offers a bit of a break from that, with more focus on character development and only a few hints of plot-related mystery. I hope you enjoy it!**  
**_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**25 – An Excess of Them**

Albus had never believed in soul mates. He'd never truly considered that there was someone out there for everyone, let alone that there might be _one_ person meant for him. People, like his father or Teddy or Rose, used to tell him that he'd understand one day, and that the only reason he didn't then was because he hadn't fallen in love yet. But he'd always known that that wasn't the reason, because there were plenty of people, like his ex-girlfriend or Lysander or Lily, who were so desperate to find their soul mates that they'd convince themselves of being in love with the wrong person. They understood something that they'd never felt before, so much so that they longed to find it, but Al couldn't ever say the same.

And to make matters worse, Al wasn't even sure that he understood love at all. He'd seen so much of it, or at least what people claimed it to be, but he couldn't help but notice that it held no true pattern or rule. Some people fell in love with their best friend, others with their arch enemy. Some people fell in love with an alternate version of themselves, others with their polar opposites. Some people fell in love with the person who brought out the best in them, others with the person who brought out the worst. And sometimes, love could go unnoticed for years, whereas other times it was impossible to ignore.

Al may have been young, but he'd seen it all. Still, there was one kind of love that he'd never seen – the kind of love that turned strangers into friends and then strangers again; the kind that wasn't based on similarities or differences because it was built on a foundation of mystery and intrigue; the kind that didn't bring out the best or the worst in people, but instead brought out _every_ part of them. He'd never seen the kind of love that came out of nowhere and turned two people who had never believed in soul mates into two people who couldn't live without each other. He'd never seen it before, but from where he was standing now, he could have sworn that it was staring straight at him.

"Why don't you just talk to her?" asked Rose suddenly, pulling Al out from his reverie. She had just walked up to the table he was meant to be setting magically, an array of non-wax candles floating in a trail from the tip of her wand.

Rose had kept her promise to talk to Al about Ilana, and their conversation had felt incredibly normal, just like everything used to with Rose. Now, they were on prefect duty in the Great Hall, setting up for the upcoming graduation reception at the same time that Molly and Lorcan were holding a special rehearsal for the actual ceremony with the seventh years. At first, Al hadn't been all that thrilled to be spending the morning after his final exam hauled up inside the castle doing chores for James and his friends, but when James hadn't even shown up and Ilana had, Al had decided that being here wasn't so bad after all.

Still, he knew that he shouldn't allow himself to stalk her so much, especially since nothing had changed between them over the past week. Explaining this to Rose as he helped her set the candles down, he said, "Because she said that we can't be together, remember?"

"Yeah, well, Scorpius said the same thing to me this summer, but I didn't listen," replied Rose as she crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows at Al. Mocking him, she added, "_Remember_?"

Sighing, Al tried to argue back with, "But this is different. Scorpius was trying to protect _you,_ so you had reason to keep going after him, because that was _your_ decision to make. But with Higgs..." His train of thought got lost within the fog in his head before he finally put those thoughts into words and said, "Whatever reason she has, I just don't think it's to protect _me_."

"So, you think she's trying to protect herself?" Rose asked, quickly settling into her beloved detective mode – a mode she and Al used to jump into together whenever there was a mystery that needed to be solved. He missed seeing Rose like that, because he knew that she only ever showed that side of herself when she was with him, but it also made him feel guilty for toying with their friendship when he knew that she shouldn't trust him anymore.

Deciding to play along to make her happy, and even in a way to make himself happy, Al answered, "Maybe. Or maybe that person she's always writing letters to." But then, not thinking about his Auror ways and instead just trying to be honest for once, he added, "Though either way, I doubt she'd ever tell me. And I'm not even sure that I want to know _why_ she thinks we can't be together."

Confused, Rose leaned against the beautifully set table (which was complete with place cards that would recognize the person whose name they held as soon as they sat down and would kick the person out of his or her chair if this was not their reserved seat) and asked quietly, "Then what _do_ you want?"

After a moment to think about his answer, during which time he glanced back toward Ilana as she was called to reserve her fake diploma in a long line of awaiting graduates, Al finally said, "I want her to keep thinking that we can't be together, but to decide to be with me anyway." He wanted this girl who seemed so safe and private to take a risk and reveal herself to him – not all of her secrets necessarily, but just her. He didn't need to know her; he just wanted to _see _her.

Trying to be pragmatic because Al clearly wasn't, Rose said, "But she's leaving tomorrow morning, Al. How do you expect to win her over like that if you might not ever see her again?"

Al hadn't considered this until Rose brought it up, but she was completely right. He didn't know where Ilana lived, and even if he did, he couldn't just show up at her doorstep and kidnap her from her own house. Although, the thought did make him smile slightly, because he wouldn't mind trying it out.

Still, he wasn't Scorpius, so he wasn't going to plan some elaborate surprise for Ilana to sweep her off her feet like Scorpius always did for Rose. Plus, Al doubted that Ilana would ever go for such a thing. Not knowing what else he could do, though, Al said to Rose, "I have no idea," and to himself, he wondered if maybe all he should plan was how he might say goodbye.

But he didn't have much time to wonder, since only a moment later, Molly turned away from the rehearsal and saw Al and Rose chatting rather than working. After scolding them and making Rose turn bright red with guilt, Molly turned back to her own task, but Rose refused to talk to Al afterward for fear that she might be reprimanded again.

It took another hour for the prefects to turn the already elegant Great Hall into a reception fit for a queen's wedding, but eventually they were dismissed to get themselves ready for tonight's ceremony. Only sixth year prefects and close family members of the graduates were allowed to attend, and since Al was both, he'd be especially busy starting that afternoon.

He practically raced out of the hall so that he'd have enough time to get dressed before his family arrived and had to be escorted to the Quidditch pitch where the ceremony was taking place. But upon running into the Entrance Hall, Al paused as he saw Scorpius standing by the open doors to the courtyard, chatting and laughing with Hugo and Nigel.

Scorpius had been rather gloomy as of late, for Gryffindor had come through in the final match against Ravenclaw and had ended up winning the Quidditch House Cup. Now, though, Scorpius seemed to have accepted the defeat, for he was patting a beaming Nigel on the back in congratulations as the latter tried to show him something.

It was a small, narrow piece of wood that looked something like a wand, and Al stepped a few feet toward them to see if he could overhear their conversation. After getting closer, he could just barely make out Nigel's squeaky voice as he said, "It's the first one that's actually seemed to work well, but it's still really specific."

"Why?" Scorpius asked with extreme interest, his eyes still on the wand that he was holding gingerly like it could snap in half at any second. "Who did it work for?"

"You're looking at him," answered Hugo with a smirk that matched Nigel's red ears. "They always work for me," he added nonchalantly.

Laughing, Scorpius joked, "Of course they do." To Nigel, he said more seriously, "Keep working on them. Maybe the generic ones will come once you actually try to make one when Hugo's _not_ around."

"Never going to happen," Hugo mumbled as he put an arm around Nigel's shoulder. Al felt his heart race slightly as the two touched playfully, though he wasn't sure why. After all, he was much less interested in Hugo and Nigel's honeymoon period than he was with the wand that Nigel had apparently made himself.

Tuning back into their conversation as he wondered why Nigel was making these wands or what they could possibly have to do with Scorpius, Al heard Nigel tell Scorpius as he ignored Hugo's display of affection, "I will. But I want to be able to show you them if I manage to get the hang of things. You think I'll see you around at all this summer?"

"I certainly hope so," answered Scorpius. "I'll be staying at the Bird's Nest, after all."

Al didn't quite know how he felt about the idea of very possibly seeing Scorpius during a family visit to Ottery St. Catchpole, and he didn't have the chance to discern his feelings before he saw Rose sneak up on Scorpius from behind, putting her hands on his shoulders and kissing him on the cheek upon seeing him after walking out of the Great Hall.

Once Scorpius and Rose's sudden infatuation with each other wore off slightly, Nigel smiled at the two of them and said, "That's perfect, then. Hugo happens to have a 'meet the parents' dinner already scheduled for me, so hopefully I can show you something then."

Al was about to turn away just to save himself from witnessing anymore bliss and glee when he heard James's familiar mocking voice in his ear asking, "How are _you_ planning to spend the summer, Ally McNally?"

Rolling his eyes, Al started walking toward the staircase as he replied, "Hopefully as far away from _you_ as possible. Oh, and you missed your own graduation rehearsal, by the way."

"Yeah, I figured rehearsing would just take all the fun out of it," said James as he put his hands in his pockets and ran after Al. "And you really shouldn't speak to me that way. After all, I'm a Hogwarts graduate, which means that I have years more authority over you than you do me."

"One," Al spat back. "_One_ year. Plus, you haven't actually graduated yet." Since he'd arrived at the staircase now, he turned around to face James and said with shrugged shoulders and raised arms, "And after missing the rehearsal, you might never know how to!" Then he ran down the stairs and left James where he was, because he knew that his brother wasn't actually going to pry any further to get information from Al today. Today, like most days for James, was all about him, and the only reason he'd even wanted to chat with Al at all had been to flaunt his ever expanding importance.

As Al reached the bottom of the staircase and started walking through the dungeons, he found himself passing the Potions cupboard near Professor Pontner's classroom and was reminded of this time last year, when he and Rose had first met Ilana and had used her help to brew a pot of Veritaserum to prove Scorpius's innocence. It felt like a lifetime ago, though in the moment, these twelve months had felt like they were going by faster than any before. But time was funny that way; the faster it went, the further it seemed to distance itself from wherever it started.

What Al also remembered upon passing his favorite classroom and upon thinking of Ilana again, was that she still had his book. It was hard to keep track of the Half-Blood Prince, since she was always borrowing him before Al always stole him back, but he was fairly certain that he was currently in Ilana's possession. After all, he'd searched through the book to see if it could help him brew Astoria's marking potion, but he'd given it back to her after finding nothing. He supposed he didn't really need it anymore, now that he was headed into his seventh year, but there was something about that book, or maybe the person who wrote it, that he felt undeniably attached to.

So, after changing into his dress robes, which he felt incredibly uncomfortable in, Albus decided to venture to the seventh year girls' dormitory. There weren't many students inside today, the only exception being a few of the seventh years who were also getting ready for their big day, and of course, Ilana was one of them. She opened the door to her dorm seconds after Al knocked on it, though it appeared as though she was the only one inside. She stared wide-eyed at Al upon seeing him there, and he couldn't help but stare back at her.

She was wearing a green dress that was the same exact shade as her eyes – _their_ eyes – and was sequined from the waist up and silky from the waist down. It was tradition for Hogwarts grads to wear their house colors beneath their provided robes, since that's what they'd be wearing at the reception, but for Ilana, it didn't seem like she was just wearing the color to represent Slytherin. For her, it was the kind of color that would make just about anyone wonder why she'd ever wear anything different.

"Potter?" she asked suddenly after they'd both been silent for a while. He'd been busy looking at her naturally curled hair that was so soft it was actually shining, before he'd noticed that she had her arms wrapped tightly against her chest as if she was trying to hold up the dress because it wasn't zipped yet. He was wondering how easy it would be to make the dress fall to the ground when she spoke up and caught his attention.

Closing his eyes and shaking his head, Al stumbled to reply, "Oh, er, I was just going to ask if you could give me my book back."

She didn't reply as she opened the door for him to step inside before turning around and walking toward her four-poster bed. Al felt odd being in the girls' dormitory for the first time, almost like how he'd felt last week in the Forbidden Forest. He wasn't familiar with this environment, even less so with the creatures that dwelled here.

Ilana, still holding up her dress, which was indeed open at the back, found Al's book fairly quickly. All of her other things appeared to be already packed into a single suitcase that sat beside her bed, but the book had been left out to sit on her bedside table, as if it had just been waiting for Al to reclaim it, or possibly because she'd been reading it every night.

"Here," she said as she handed it over to Al with an extension of her left arm. There was no apology for keeping it from him, no gratitude for him letting her borrow it, nothing. There was only a single word spoken and the slightest touch shared between their equally cold hands.

Al took the book and held it up with a nod before he turned around to walk away. He wanted desperately to stay here, skip this insidious ceremony and reception and just be with her before she left him forever, but it wasn't his turn. He had tried to tell her how he felt but she'd rejected him, and so the ball was now in her court.

That was why Al's eyes lit up when he heard Ilana take a breath from behind and say, "Wait." He turned around instantly and was ready to step toward her and kiss her right then and there, but he stopped himself upon seeing her still distant eyes and listened as she added, "Do you mind zipping me up?"

He did mind. He minded very much. He minded because he knew just how little self-control he had. His fuse was shorter than anyone he'd ever met, which was one of the reasons he could go from kind to cruel, cheerful to furious, excited to fearful, with the flip of a switch. It was also what he liked so much about Ilana, because she was constantly changing too, which meant that when she and Al were together, it was extremely rare for the two of them to be on the same wavelength as each other. Their emotions were heightened but fleeting, and when they did happen to coincide, there was nothing quite like it.

That's what happened next. As Ilana turned around to let her bare back face Al, pulling her loose hair out of the way with her hand, Al took a few steps forward and let his fingers graze the golden zipper of her dress. And as he slowly pulled it up her back, the tips of his knuckles pushed against the skin of her spinal cord, and he knew in that moment that they were feeling the same thing. It was something that neither of them found very often, but Al was sure of the feeling as it shot through his finger, up his arm, and all across his body like firewhiskey. It was warmth.

But like everything else in Al's life, the feeling vanished just as soon as he was aware that it was there. The zipper reached the top of Ilana's back, the spot just below her neck that Al had been so fascinated by before, and then his hand was dropping back to his own side and he couldn't feel anything anymore.

Ilana turned back around to face him and looked just as disappointed as he did when she parted her lips as if about to speak. To save himself from any more anguish, Al put up his hand and said for her, "Don't worry; I know. We can't be together." And as the anguish she once placed upon him cascaded onto her, he walked away like he always did, not letting himself look back on what he'd left because it hurt too much to face it.

He practically had to run back upstairs to make it outside in time for the first of the arriving seventh year families. He made it to the courtyard where the horseless carriages were pulling up just as Rose was welcoming what must have been the Golding family, for there was a tall man, a surprisingly young but gorgeous woman, and three pre-teen boys who were all just as blonde and beautiful as Mercy. Rose greeted them in an effortlessly polite manner as she twirled adorably in her white sundress (prefects were donned in black or white only, so as not to be confused with the colorful graduates) and then led them off the courtyard and down a flowered path to the Quidditch pitch.

As Al settled into his place just behind Patty Parkinson in the line-up of prefects, he finally noticed how beautiful the day was. He'd been held hostage inside all morning, but now that he was standing in the open courtyard, everything was bright and blue. There were students all over as well, some of them hidden around the courtyard to spy on the arrivals, others no doubt sprawled across the grounds enjoying their penultimate day at school.

After Lucy found her own parents, Percy and Audrey, and went off with them, followed by a lonely Luna Lovegood Scamander who skipped down the familiar path with an almost frightened Patty just trying to keep up in her wake, the Potters finally arrived. Al was the last prefect standing when their carriage pulled up, and he was at first caught off guard to see five people huddled together rather than the mere two or three he'd expected.

Teddy and Victoire were the first to step out of the carriage, a squeamish Remy clutched to Victoire's side. Though Al was hesitant to shake his brother's hand, for they hadn't seen each other since before the attack on the Weasleys, Teddy quickly pulled him into a rough hug that made Al realize that Harry hadn't told him about Al's involvement with the Flock. Once that worry faded away, Al was happy to greet Victoire and Remy with a kiss each, pleased to see them out of their house for once.

By the time Al had cooed at Remy for a minute, Harry and Ginny were already out of the carriage and were helping the fifth person Al had seen onto the stony floor. Al couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Dominique, for she too had been hiding herself away in Teddy and Victoire's house to help them raise the baby. At least, that's what everybody claimed she was doing, but upon seeing her unruly waves of blonde hair and sunken eyes that used to look like water tinted with lines of white-caps but now only reflected a stormy sea, Al remembered the real story.

Dominique's heart had been broken soon after Teddy and Victoire's wedding, when the boy she'd been with all through school had mysteriously left her, along with the house they'd recently moved into together. Al couldn't quite remember who that boy had been, for he hadn't seen much of them at the wedding, though he could have sworn that the face he could barely recall was immensely familiar.

"It's so good to see you, Al," said Ginny as she wrapped her arms around Al and distracted him from his focus on the perpetually silent Dominique. As his mother let him out of her grasp once more, she asked, "Is your sister around?"

"She should be down at the pitch with James," answered Al. Lily and other younger siblings who didn't happen to be prefects would still be able to attend the graduation with their families, but all attendees were under strict orders to wait at the pitch for the ceremony to begin.

Telling Ginny this made them all start walking to the pitch in excitement, Al feeling useless in his leading because of course they all knew the way. Still, he kept looking at Dominique the whole way down the hill, trying to trigger a better memory of the outgoing, rebellious girl she used to be in hopes that he could draw the connection he seemed to have to her ex-boyfriend. But his focus was once again distracted, this time by a concerned Harry who was walking beside Al with his hand on his son's shoulder.

"How have you been, Al?" asked Harry as soon as Ginny had gone her own way to talk with Victoire about Remy.

Al loathed talking to his father. Every time he saw Harry, he hoped that his newfound detestation for him might be replaced with his old feelings of admiration for his father, but they never were. He didn't like talking to Harry because he didn't trust him, and it was because he didn't trust his own father that he had made an effort to squander the trust any of his friends had ever had in him.

Trying not to let Harry in on any of the truth, though, Al replied steadily, "I'm fine. Good, actually. Maybe even better."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Harry, though Al wasn't sure that his father was completely convinced. "Rose and Scorpius aren't still angry with you, I hope?"

"No, no," Al answered quickly. If he was lucky, Harry might oversee him talking with Rose as if they were the best of friends again at some point during the ceremony, and he shouldn't need to worry about Scorpius, since he wouldn't be attending any part of the graduation. Trying to make the point even more clear, Al added, "They've both been really supportive, actually."

Harry didn't reply, but rather just smiled to hear that his son wasn't on his own. It was incredible how gullible a trained Auror could become when the suspect was his own flesh and blood. Not much could get past Harry thanks to all of his experiences with dark wizards, but he could never accept familial betrayal. He was far too loyal to ever believe that someone could do such a thing, and though Al had inherited his impressive denial from his father, he'd never been able to hold on to Harry's same sense of loyalty. After all, loyalty stemmed from purpose, and while Harry might have had that purpose from the day he'd been born, Al had only just found his.

Finally, the Potters arrived at the beautifully decorated Quidditch pitch. The normal house banners that hung from the stands had been replaced with signs of congratulations and moving pictures of some of the graduates' best moments through their seven years at Hogwarts, from their eleven year-old selves being sorted underneath a terrifying hat, to their fully grown selves screaming for joy upon finishing their last NEWT exam.

The grads themselves were standing in the middle of the pitch where their seats would soon appear, chatting away and receiving congratulations from their parents and siblings. James and Lily were in the middle of the crowd, a red-suited James hauling a black-dressed Lily onto his shoulders as he marched toward Harry and Ginny. On the outskirts of the crowd, Luna had one hand on Lorcan's cheek and the other on Lysander's, and for a moment Al thought that he'd never seen the twins look so alike or more peaceful as they kissed their mother's hands and embraced her like they'd been apart for a decade. A few yards away from them was Ilana, but for whatever reason, she seemed to be the only seventh year without a family in sight.

But Al's wondering about Ilana didn't last long, for Victoire grabbed back his attention when she whispered to Teddy, "Oh, no. She thinks it's Knox."

As soon as he heard the name, Al spun himself around to find Dominique wandering off the pitch toward a lonely tree halfway to the forest, where a relatively large crow was perched and squawking back at her. Victoire was handing Remy over to Teddy and was about to follow her sister when Al stopped her and said, "Wait. Let me talk to her."

Victoire seemed hesitant, but Al paid her no mind as he ran after Dom and caught up to her once she'd come within a few feet of the bird, which did in fact bear a remarkable resemblance to Knox's Animagus form. By now, Al had also made the connection back to Rookie, though he couldn't believe, after all the time he'd spent with the boy, that he hadn't put the pieces together before. No wonder Knox sometimes said things in that pained voice of his; he was just as heartbroken as Dominique was.

But that begged the question, what had torn them apart? Had it been Astoria's fault, since surely Knox had already met her through his internship at the Ministry? Or had it been Knox's decision, solely based on his own confusion about his family legacy and how Dominique could possibly fit into it?

Wondering all of this, Al was about to ask Dom what had happened between her and Knox when he looked at her and noticed a tear trickling down her pale cheek. He couldn't manage to get the words out once he realized how much pain she was in – the girl he remembered from childhood as being his toughest female cousin. Whatever had come between the lovers, it had left them both more than broken. It had left them empty.

Now just hoping to comfort her, Al followed Dominique's expression and stared up at the crow as he asked, "Do you miss him? Knox."

Dom thought about her response for a while, the whole time never taking her eyes off the bird, and eventually said solemnly, "You know, in French, the way you say you miss somebody is, '_tu me manques'._ But it doesn't literally mean, 'I miss you'. It means, 'you are missing from me'."

At this point, Al broke his gaze toward the crow and looked to Dominique, though her eyes still refused to meet his as she continued, "Missing somebody you love is the same as missing a part of yourself, and there's no fixing that. There's no replacing that piece of who you are." Finally, she looked to Al as another tear slipped from her eye to finish with, "So, to answer your question... no. I don't miss him. _Il me manque._ He's missing from me."

The crow took flight as soon as Dominique's mouth closed, and then she and Al were slowly making their way back to the Quidditch pitch together, Dom no calmer or more alive than she'd been before, and Albus beginning to question almost all the things he'd ever believed in. He couldn't help it, because everything about Knox reminded him of himself, and talking to Dominique was like seeing into his own future. Would he feel like that two years down the line if he let Ilana just leave him? Would he feel, as he thought he'd felt only a month ago now, that a part of him was missing? Because he didn't want to feel that way forever. He'd felt that way long enough already.

The ceremony was about to begin when Al and Dom finally stepped back onto the pitch, though Al noticed that Harry seemed to be in a deep conversation with Scorpius just outside of it. Trying not to let his powerful jealousy overtake him, Al continued walking until he came to Teddy and Victoire, the latter of whom shot a disappointed look at Al as she turned to comfort her younger sister. Hoping to make up for his failure to aid Dominique, Al offered to take a sobbing and screaming Remy from her tired parents, to which Teddy was obliged.

Al carried Remy into the stands to take their seats, the whole time not noticing that Ilana was watching them from below, her eyes locked on the little girl who was now laughing in her uncle's arms. Al had always been good with kids, a trait he himself didn't quite understand. Still, he was thankful for it, because it brought out a whole other side of him that he seldom had the chance to show. When he was around children, he was playful and open-minded instead of brooding and judgmental, generous and caring instead of selfish and self-absorbed, relaxed and confident instead of tense and confused. He could be a better version of himself when he was with kids, because he had no fear that they would betray him. When he was with kids, they saw him and appreciated him instead of forgetting that he was there and taking advantage of his friendship.

The ceremony started as soon as Al and the rest of his family sat down. The Potters were lodged between Percy and Audrey on one side and Luna on the other, and somehow the stands seemed full with people, even though Al knew that there weren't nearly enough family members to fill them. The center of the pitch was full as well, with rows upon rows of seventh years, all of whom were now wearing their traditional graduation robes and were seated by house.

As the professors began the procession through the graduates and toward the front of the pitch where a small stage had been magically constructed, Flitwick led the assembled school choir in the Hogwarts song. Most of the crowd joined in once they recognized it, for almost all of them were alumni. But when the song finished, everyone quieted immediately, allowing Professor McGonagall to take her place at the head of the stage and address the audience with the help of Hagrid's old megaphone.

"Welcome professors, family, and friends," she called, "And most of all, welcome to the Class of 2023!" The seventh years all cheered at that, happy to be representing their year and confident that no other class could overthrow them for having had the best Hogwarts experience anyone could ever hope for.

McGonagall's speech continued for a few more minutes, and it was filled with her reminiscing over Hogwarts graduates that had gone on to do remarkable things, all while looking back at where they'd all started. She used nearly all of the professors, who were sitting in a line of chairs behind her, as examples of brilliant minds that had been nourished on this very soil. The teachers all blushed in response, though Al was quick to notice that Hagrid was missing from the group. Smiling to himself, he hoped that the giant was faring well with recruiting his ancestors like Al had told him to.

Once McGonagall was finished speaking, Lorcan and Molly were called to the stage to address their classmates together. Their speech was long and boring, though it had some lighthearted moments when students from the crowd, most likely James and Lysander, sent their flash cards flying into the air in hopes of making the Head pair more nervous than they already were. Still, they managed to get through their final administrative task for the school, and Luna and Percy watched on with exceptional amounts of pride in their smiling eyes.

Next came time for the diplomas to be handed out, starting with Gryffindor and ending with Slytherin. For each student that was called to the stage to shake hands with their Head of House, a few words were said about their overall Hogwarts experience. Soon after Caitlin Finnigan was called the mother lioness of Gryffindor, James bounced up to the stage as the audience laughed at the recounting of his troublesome ways and then applauded to hear that he was the one and only graduate to already have a paying job in his immediate future. Watching him from the stands, Ginny gave the loudest scream Al had ever heard and Lily clutched Harry's side and smiled into his shoulder.

The cheer continued as Lorcan was called onto the stage, followed by Lysander and then Molly, and finally Mercy and Ilana. Al listened intently as Professor Smethley stated about Ilana, "Miss Higgs entered Hogwarts with a quiet and timid temperament, surprising many when she was sorted into Slytherin house after receiving one of the longest ever hat stalls with Hufflepuff. But over the years, her determination and drive, particularly in the field of potion-brewing, have proved Slytherin to be the house in which she has always belonged."

When Ilana took the diploma from Pontner, she received the quietest round of applause of any of her peers. Noticing this, Al didn't even let himself think before screaming out for her, his lungs exhibiting similar capacity to those of his mother. His cheers caught Ilana's attention, for she looked up to the stands on her way back to her seat to meet Al's gaze, making Al's heart flutter when he saw that she was smiling.

Only a few more students, including Aaron and Salem, were spoken about before the ceremony ended. That was when the trouble really started, as the graduates threw more than just their colored hats into the air in celebration. There were fireworks of roaring dragons and dancing trolls, Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes products like decoy detonators and Peruvian darkness powder, along with fiery sparks and blasts of water emitted from nearly every wand. The pitch was thrown into complete chaos, but the effects of it all were rather stunning.

The sky turned from a pure blue into a mixed rainbow, with all of the substances combining together to form a sort of misty snowfall beneath the early summer sun. It reminded Al of the sunsets that came from extreme pollution; it was something beautiful created by a multitude of disasters. It was a handful of imperfect things, like two people who were completely wrong for each other, combining to make something more perfect and more right than anything the world had ever seen.

But as soon as the sky regained its color, the attendees were corralled together and told to make their way back to the castle and into the Great Hall for the reception dinner. Al followed behind the rest of his family, Remy now trying to walk alongside him but making for a slow trip, and finally arrived in the Great Hall only to be met with an array of appetizers and blasting music around an empty dance floor.

"Everybody, please help yourselves to the food at the back, provided by our wonderful staff of house-elves here at Hogwarts," said Rose from the front of the hall, where she and Lucy were standing on top of a stool to make sure everyone could see them.

"And as is tradition," Lucy added, swiping the megaphone from Rose, "Our Head Boy and Girl, Lorcan Scamander and Molly Weasley, shall be the first to take to the floor. But if I might ask, please keep the music up-tempo; I don't want to see these two getting too close." She was joking, of course, in the sweet tone that Lucy's voice always seemed to possess, and most everybody laughed, since it was impossible not to know that the younger Weasley was Lorcan's actual girlfriend.

Rolling their eyes, Molly and Lorcan followed Lucy's orders and were soon sweeping across the marble floor. Before long, other couples were joining in, including Neville and Luna, Teddy and Victoire, and Aaron Goodall and Caitlin Finnigan. Though Lucy kept Rose company for a while, her jealousy grew too strong after the first song ended, forcing her to cut off her sister so that she could dance with Lorcan herself.

For the next hour or so, Al stood in the corner and observed the festivities from afar. The whole hall was brilliantly decorated, with its usual floating candles amongst puffy clouds and the last few rays of today's sunlight shining through the west-side stained glass windows. Everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves as well, eating, dancing, or talking with people they hadn't seen in years. James and Lysander spiked the punch bowl, Neville and Luna whirled around the hall with alien dance moves, and Harry even had a long conversation with his old roommate, Seamus Finnigan.

But when Seamus burnt half of his face to bits while trying to turn his water into rum, Caitlin had to escort her father to the hospital wing, momentarily leaving Harry without anyone to talk to. What made Al so interested in this was that as soon as Seamus was gone, Mercy approached Harry out of nowhere, quickly introducing herself before starting a conversation.

Al was too far away to hear the first half of their discussion, though eventually he grew within ear-shot. At that point, he realized that Mercy hadn't made Harry aware that she and James were taking time off, for Harry kept mentioning how great it would be to 'see her around this summer'.

"Oh, please," Mercy replied. "I'm the one who should be grateful. It's an honor just to be meeting you; any time in the summer would be an enormous bonus." Ironically, this was the first time Al actually thought Mercy sounded genuine, though he wondered how that could possibly be the case, especially when James interrupted the two of them.

He looked just as confused as Al was to see Harry and Mercy talking together, quickly deciding to do whatever it took to break up the little arrangement as he asked Mercy to dance with him. As luck would have it, a slow song came on McGonagall's old, giant speaker system as they made their way to the floor, turning an already awkward situation even more bittersweet.

Al had a hard time spying on his brother and Mercy as they moved around the hall, but based on their similarly saddened expressions, he had a feeling that James was ending his year-long relationship with the golden girl. Sure enough, the two parted ways once the song ended and James came strolling over to where Al was now standing with Teddy and Lysander.

"Did you just end it?" asked Lysander in a tone that almost sounded as if he was annoyed. Come to think of it, he probably was. After all, Lysander hadn't had any action at all for the entire year, yet James seemed to be under the impression that he deserved more than the most sought-after girl in school.

"Yeah, it was time," James replied with hunched shoulders and a grim smirk, over-dramatizing something he didn't seem to care that much about. Of course, it was always hard to tell what James did or didn't care about, for he never could tell himself until the thing was already gone. He was like the sun when it started to snow; he only knew he loved someone after he let them go.

Shaking away whatever speck of remorse he may have felt, James took a swig of Lysander's butter beer and said, "Anyway, it was amicable."

"_Amicable_?" asked Teddy mockingly, since he'd never heard James use the word before. "Really?"

Al and Lysander had similar reactions as Teddy, but James looked to them all with a sense of fake pain as he said, "What? I'm a Hogwarts graduate now." This seemed to be his new favorite phrase, making Al shake his head and sigh. "It seems only fair that I flaunt my impressive education, starting with a sophisticatedly extensive vocabulary."

This got everybody laughing, Lysander practically keeling over as he patted James on the shoulder and said, "Mate, you are _so _wasted." The two of them then proceeded to go for more punch, since according to them, the night was still young.

After talking with Teddy for a few minutes, Al watched him leave with Victoire, Remy, and Dominique, since none of them wanted to stay out very late. Most of the other families were still around, though, making Ilana's lack of company all the more disconcerting.

As usual, Al had been keeping an eye on her for the majority of the evening, standing in a corner opposite the one she was lurking in, and though he may have been slightly tipsy, he was fairly certain that she grew more beautiful by the minute.

Rose came up to him in the same manner she had that morning, no doubt noticing his failure to either confront or stay away from Ilana. "This is getting pretty pathetic," she commented as she leaned against the wall by Al's side.

Not bothering to defend himself, Al merely stated, "I'm aware. But I just don't know what I'm supposed to do about it."

Facing Al head-on, something she had been wary of doing even after promising to be there for him when he needed to talk, Rose said, "Can I perhaps offer a word of advice? Just something I've learned from my own experiences."

"You and Scorpius are different, Rose," Al shot at her before she could continue. He was glad that she was there for him again, but he didn't enjoy being talked to as if he had all the wrong answers and she had all the right ones. Rose talked that way to a lot of people, but Al had never let her do so to him.

But Rose was adamant to get her point across, so she retorted without losing a speck of confidence, "I'm not saying that this is the same situation, Al. I know that it's not. But the advice that I have isn't about Scorpius; it isn't even about me."

Listening now, Al turned to face Rose as she continued with furrowed eyebrows, "I see the way you look at her, Al. It's not exactly that hard to notice, considering that you're staring at her just about every second of every day. But I've _never_ seen you look at anybody like that before."

"Like what?" asked Al. He was entranced by Rose's words, and he asked the question hoping to hear a specific answer, though he wasn't consciously aware yet of what that answer was.

With a smile wider than the tear stains on Dominique's cheeks, Rose said, "Like she's the prey and you're the predator. Like she's a dare that you have to take. Like she's a challenge that's killing you to pass up, and like you have only a matter of hours to make sure that you don't."

Chuckling to himself because Rose hardly ever spoke so bluntly, Al asked her, "So, what, are _you_ daring me?"

Rose was now laughing as well, but more out of embarrassment than entertainment. Shaking her head, she responded, "I don't have to. _She _already has." And when Al looked back and forth between a wide-eyed Rose and a lonely Ilana in confusion, the former added in a whisper, "Why do you think she told you to stay away? _I_ think she just wanted to see if you'd give up that easily."

Though Al's head wasn't completely convinced by Rose's theory, his body most definitely was. A part of him knew that Ilana had been serious when she'd told him that they couldn't be together, but a larger part of him didn't care what she was so afraid of, because in a couple of hours, she'd be gone. And more than anything, Al wanted them to part on _his_ terms, because he knew that it would make them both feel better than if they parted on hers.

Not saying any more to Rose, Al handed her his drink and set off for the opposite corner of the hall. Walking through the groups of people and dancing couples was like pushing through a stampede in slow motion; everything around him that should have been frantically fast and penetratingly loud was suddenly slow and quiet, because Al wasn't paying attention to any of it. All he could see was Ilana, standing there staring at him from across the hall, just waiting for him to chase after her.

But as he grew closer to the girl in the green dress, he started to take in the true meaning behind her expression. She was, in fact, looking back at him, but it was not with her usual irresistible eyes or curled smile of hidden temptation. She was instead staring at him with hollow eyes that were being tortured just by meeting his and pursed lips that begged him not to come after her again. She'd been serious all the times she'd sent him away before. This wasn't another one of their dares. She wasn't going to give in to him.

Realizing all of this, Al slowly steadied his pace into a still stance, stuck in the middle of the hall and wondering what he'd been thinking. But he didn't need to think for much longer, since just then, there was an announcement from the front that sounded as if it was coming from the timidly brave voice of Neville Longbottom.

"Ahem. Sorry to disturb you all," said Neville as Al reluctantly broke his gaze with Ilana and turned toward the Herbology professor and family friend. Looking quite nervous, Neville continued, "I don't mean to tear any of you away from your evening, but since so many of you have played a huge part in mine and Luna's life, I'd like to include you all in what I'm about to say to her."

Everybody started whispering at that, making Al feel somewhat dizzy, since he was standing right in the middle of it all. But once Neville turned to a rather dazed-looking Luna, which wasn't exactly a rare expression for her, the onlookers piped down so that they could hear what Neville had to say.

He took Luna's hands in his as he spoke in the smoothest voice he could manage to say, "Luna, it's been a long time coming, but I remember the first day we met like it was yesterday. We were riding up to this very castle in the carriages before our fifth year, and you were reading a copy of the _Quibbler_ upside-down, wearing the same radish earrings you have on now."

A few of the parents from within the crowd, including Harry, Ginny, and the newly burn-free Seamus, were laughing at some of the things Neville said, though Al didn't quite know him well enough to understand all of it. Still, he tried to take it all in as Neville told Luna, "I was terrified of you. You were so different from anyone I'd ever met, almost as different as I had always felt, but you were confident about it. You didn't care what anybody else thought on a level that I never quite understood, and I was so immensely jealous of you for that."

Al could feel Ilana's eyes on him then, almost as if Neville's words struck a chord with her. They did for Al, anyway, because Ilana was just like Neville had described Luna: different from anyone he'd ever met, but terrifying in her ability to ignore the opinions anyone might have of her. It was as if she'd been born feeling sure of who she was, whereas Al had spent his entire life trying to live up to the legacies of other people, because he didn't know how to follow his own path.

"I must have found my confidence somewhere along the way," said Neville, bringing Al back to the professor's proclamation. "I mean, I did slice off the head of a snake in the Battle of Hogwarts." Even Al laughed at that, because that what was one story that every witch and wizard across England had heard of.

"But for whatever reason, gaining the confidence in myself still wasn't enough for me to realize that it had been inspired by you. Plus, I think that I needed to fall in love with somebody who could handle all of my insanity before I fell for the person who was just as insane as I was."

Al didn't know much about Hannah Abbott, Neville's wife who had died quite some time ago. It was interesting to hear even a smidgen about her, though, and Neville's comment about levels of insanity spoke to Al in more than ways than one. After all, he hadn't realized just how different he was from his family and friends before they'd spelled it out for him in their own distance, which had been around the same time that Astoria had accepted him for whoever he'd wanted to be. And with Ilana, things always seemed so complicated because _they_ were both so complicated. They shared the same level of insanity.

"When Hannah died, I felt like I would never find anybody who would accept me and my daughter the way that she had. I cut myself off from the rest of the world because it was the only way to handle my grief, but then I saw you at the Weasleys', and you were grieving just as much as I was. It was like we'd been broken at the same time and in the same way, and all we wanted was to be ourselves again – if not for us, then at least for our kids."

Whatever Ilana was hiding – wherever her mysterious words of wisdom always came from – she understood how it felt to have an unexplainable past. She didn't ever want to talk about it, but Al didn't care. He didn't ever want to talk about his either.

"And now here we are, a year after we found each other again and twenty-eight after we first officially met, and I'm still just as terrified of you now as I was then. The only difference now is that, like you, I don't care. I'm okay with being different and I'm okay with being scared, because that's what makes life exciting. I mean, why read a magazine right-side up when you can challenge yourself and read it upside down?"

Now, Neville was dropping to the floor and onto one knee, his hands still wrapped around Luna's, and he was fiddling through the pocket of his blazer, searching for something that he'd long since stashed inside of it. And just as every female in the room started swooning over the sight, Neville pulled out a radish-shaped ring of red and green, looked up into Luna's shocked expression – a face that _was_ rare on her – and asked, "Luna Lovegood Scamander, do you think that you could possibly add one more word to that long name of yours by marrying me?"

Luna didn't say anything, but nodded her head profusely as Neville slipped the ring onto her finger. And as he stood back upright, Al caught sight of Harry pointing his wand at the ceiling above the couple, silently growing a bushel of mistletoe from the bewitched sky. As Neville and Luna looked up at it in amazement, Luna leaned toward Neville to kiss him, but Neville stopped her as he muttered, "Careful. There might be Nargles in it."

Smiling dreamily, Luna said, "I don't mind. They can steal anything they want to. I don't need any of it but you." Then she broke the miniscule gap between them and embraced Neville thoroughly and completely.

Everyone left in the room looked on in cheer, and soon every other couple was sharing the happiness by kissing their own loved ones: Harry and Ginny, Lucy and Lorcan, Aaron and Caitlin, all of them. And all Al could think of as he watched the couples from the middle of this spinning room was how much he hated them for feeling something that he might never feel again. He knew that he didn't deserve all the happiness that they did, because they were all such purely good people and he was too damn flawed, but he couldn't help it. He hated them. He hated them all.

And as his feelings suddenly switched from excited determination to raging jealousy the way his emotions always seemed to push and pull from different angles, Al ran from the room and into the emptiness of the darkened castle. He didn't want to be anywhere near Ilana anymore, especially if she wouldn't even let him say goodbye to her. As far as he was concerned, whatever they'd had or hadn't had was over, and he needed to be on his own so that he could figure out an anger-free way to deal with it.

Luckily, it wasn't quite late enough for any of the upperclassmen to be ready for bed, so Al made it through the Slytherin common room and into his dormitory without being disturbed. He tried to calm himself with deep breaths as he leaned against the banister at the end of his bed, but all he could think about was the gut-wrenching idea that he might be in love with his soul mate, but that he wasn't ever going to see her again.

That was until he heard the handle of his door turn itself and then creak open, before the door shut back smoothly and was locked with a silent spell, before he could hear the zipper of Ilana's dress rubbing against that door like nails on a chalkboard – a sound that for most sent a chill down one's spine, but for Al had always given off a wave of warmth.

Closing his eyes and refusing to give in to her because she hadn't given in to him, Al said with his back still to Ilana, "I thought you said we couldn't be together."

Practically before he'd finished his sentence, he could hear Ilana sighing and saying exhaustedly, "Oh, shut it; I know what I said."

In one swift motion, Albus turned around, walked straight toward her, took her jaw in his hands, and kissed her. It was fast and loud, which was perfect because they were always slow and quiet, and it was the best thing that Al had ever felt in his entire life. It was better than the stories his father had read to him as a child. It was better than the power of the Elder Wand. It was even better than the sunsets that came from extreme pollution. He and Ilana were two people who were completely wrong for each other, combining to make something more perfect and more right than anything the world had ever seen.

Not wanting this feeling to fade away like they always did, Al tried to show Ilana that he wanted more. Soon, he was pushing her against the door, but she wasn't fazed in the slightest. She regained control without any difficulty, turning Al around so that _she_ was the one pushing him against the door as she started to unbutton his shirt. Letting her focus, he took his lips off of hers and began to kiss her neck in the exact spot that had caught his attention time and time again.

Meanwhile, the fact that his lips were now touching her neck made it easier for Al to let his hands off of it. That way, he could retrace that familiar path from Ilana's neckline to the very top of her dress, fumbling through her black curls, which were just as soft as he'd hoped they'd be, until his fingers found her zipper. And in a matter of moments that were somehow spliced together, he learned just how easy it was to let her dress fall to the ground.

Then they were moving, their arms brushing against each other and pieces of their clothing scattering across the floor as they danced to Al's bed like they should have been dancing all night. Then they were falling onto the mattress together as if they were one person, and soon they were. Then they were immersed in the unknown, where everything was rough and complicated, which was perfect because they were always rough and complicated. They were always in the unknown.

* * *

They were still lying in Al's bed two hours later, a half an hour before midnight. They hadn't spoken a word since Ilana had ordered Al to be quiet, and they didn't need to. There weren't any words that could explain how they felt in this moment, or in any of the ones that had preceded it.

Al did have a lot of questions for her, though. What had made her change her mind? What had she been so worried about in the first place? Was this her way of saying goodbye, or would they see each other again? He had a lot of questions, but he always did with her. That was what being with Ilana was like; you had to get used to never getting any answers.

But Al had a feeling that they would see each other again. After all, she'd finally given in to him, and what had come from her doing so had been irresistible. She couldn't possibly go without that all over again. Still, he was never given any confirmation of such, and soon she was sitting up and getting ready to leave, and he was helping her go.

Once she was back in her green dress and he had found a pair of jeans and a shirt to put on, he carried her single suitcase up from the dungeons to the Entrance Hall. They didn't hold hands as they walked through the silent corridors, though Al noticed Ilana looking toward the Potions classroom almost longingly as the passed it. This could very well be the last time she ever stepped foot in the castle, a feeling Al could hardly imagine.

When they reached the main floor, all of the people from the reception in the Great Hall were starting to file out, headed in the same direction as Al and Ilana. Lost in the crowd of drunken graduates and equally oblivious family members, the two of them trudged across the wooden bridge and down the rolling hills until they reached the boathouse at the edge of the Black Lake.

There was an array of small, prosaic rowboats lining the rocky shore of the lake, all of them illuminated with familiar floating candles that made the dull brown of the boats come alive beneath a romantic half-moon. It was tradition for Hogwarts graduates to leave the school in the same way they'd arrived, crossing the waters of the Black Lake in the exact boats that had brought them here before returning to Hogsmeade and Apparating home alongside their families.

Completely unaware of where his brother might be and not caring in the slightest, Al dropped off Ilana's suitcase in the pile of luggage that would be magically transported across the lake before walking down to the beach with her. He then watched her step into a boat beside Mercy and counted down the seconds until midnight, when she would float away from him.

And when the time came, he stood closer to the water than any of the smiling families, his green eyes locked on that green dress and still thinking about the zipper that seemed to have changed everything he'd ever believed in. He was staring straight at the kind of girl he'd never seen before – the kind of girl who'd been a stranger and then a friend and then a stranger again; the kind whom he didn't share any similarities or differences with, because everything about her was mysterious and intriguing; the kind of girl who didn't bring out the best or the worst in him, but instead brought out _every_ part of him. Ilana was the kind of girl who came out of nowhere and turned a boy who had never believed in soul mates into a boy who couldn't live without his.

* * *

_**Note: **Ahh! I hope that ending was as exciting for you to read as it was for me to write! :P Anyway, send me a review and let me know what you thought of the chapter! (I tried to include a lot of throwbacks with Neville, Luna, and Seamus, so I'd love to hear if you caught some of them.)_

_The next chapter should be uploaded on **July 12th**, although it could very well be a little late due to an upload date I have for one of my other stories around the same time (just so that you all know). I'll try my best to stick to it, though. Thanks for reading!  
_

_-Hailey  
_


	26. The Passing of the Days

_**Note:** So, this is a day late, thanks to a one-shot that kept me busy writing a few days ago (it's a Katniss/Peeta story, so check it out if you're interested). I know I warned you guys that that might happen, but I still feel kind of bad about not meeting the deadline I set, so I actually came up with a way to make it up to you, but you'll have to read the chapter to find out what the surprise is. ;)**  
**_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**26 – The Passing of the Days**

Sometimes, Albus just needed to get away. He was already two weeks into the summer, and his home in Godric's Hollow was always filled with either convoluted drama or ignorant bliss. Everything about his family life, from Lily's fifteenth birthday party that ended with her crying herself to sleep from feeling suddenly insignificant, to James's apartment hunting that consisted of him begging their parents for more money every night, seemed utterly fake to Al. These days, his family's problems just distracted him from the one thing he ever _wanted_ to think about. Luckily, though, those same problems also provided enough distraction to Harry and Ginny for Al to sneak out of the house fairly regularly without being seen.

Today had offered him the perfect opportunity to do just that. Lily had been begging to go to one of James's boring Quidditch practices with the Magpies all summer, and this morning, Harry and Ginny had finally done enough work for the Order that they felt comfortable in taking the day off. Al had casually refrained from joining his family in their outing, making some excuse about wanting to see Rose and Scorpius, and since Lily was too preoccupied by the prospect of meeting all of James's hunky teammates, she hadn't bothered to rat Al out for lying. So, as soon as they'd all left, the trace-less Al had Apparated into the city, and now he had taken to the streets and was on his way to Grimmauld Place.

At the moment, Al was attempting to walk slyly and slowly past the Ministry of Magic, hoping that he might overhear some secret conversation on his way. He hadn't heard from Hagrid since the giant had left to recruit his ancestors, and Al hadn't received any more letters from Astoria or Knox either. Harry and Ginny had been fairly careful to keep Order talk to a minimum around Al so as not to get him worked up like at Christmas, so Al was itching to find out anything he could about what was going on in the warfront.

Hiding himself behind a statue that bordered the stairway to the working wizard entrance that was far easier to find than the telephone booth used by visitors, Al waited about five minutes to watch the witches and wizards go by. Just as he was about to accept defeat and move on so as not to be late to his real destination, though, Al got lucky and saw none other than his grandfather, Arthur Weasley, hopping up the steps with his face buried in the latest issue of the _Daily Prophet_.

Things only got better for Albus when his Aunt Hermione spotted Arthur and ran to catch up with him. Keeping quiet so that neither would see him, Al listened as the two struck up a conversation.

"Dad!" Hermione said to call Arthur's attention. She had always been very close with her father-in-law, just as Harry was. He and Hermione hadn't needed much time to adjust to their new set of parents after their respective marriages to the youngest Weasleys, and had just filled the already large family with even more love.

Once Arthur heard her and set the newspaper down some, he stopped walking and smiled as Hermione squeezed his shoulder in greeting and asked, "What are you doing here?" It was once normal for Arthur to be heading in and out of the Ministry daily, but not since he'd been a Hogwarts professor for the past decade or so.

"Oh, I've requested a meeting with Kingsley," Arthur explained, "I wanted to speak with him after what happened at the school. I think it's about time my old department got a hold on _enforcing_ those laws they have against prejudices. They're there for a reason, after all." He was speaking of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, specifically the area it had devoted to the protection of Muggle-borns and Half-bloods. The Ministry had been trying to re-enforce some of their anti-prejudice laws after the last wizarding war, but clearly they hadn't been all that successful.

"Blimey, tell me about it," Hermione sighed with frustration. "I've been meaning to switch departments for ages, but I'm just too busy now that the Flock's off recruiting all these innocent creatures." Hermione worked in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and though her projects were normally concerned with house-elf rights, it sounded like her work was being stretched now that Astoria had gone after the giants.

Al's interest piqued at the mention of the Flock, so he listened even more carefully than before as Arthur said, "Yes, well, as a matter of fact, I was just reading about that. Luckily, it looks like Astoria was too late this time. Though in retrospect, I'm not positive that was to any benefit after what she did."

Arthur went on to explain that the article was issued this morning and reported a sighting of Knox Rookwood in the Kjolen Mountains of Northern Europe late last night. What was so interesting about it, particularly for Hermione, was the fact that this mountain range just so happened to be the supposed home of the last remaining giant tribe. Curiously, Knox was sighted without any giants in tow, and instead a brand new couple of recently killed Muggles.

"It can't possibly be a coincidence," muttered Hermione, trying to keep her voice down as people passed by. The Ministry had been infiltrated before, and Hermione didn't want any of the wrong people to overhear her theories. "Hagrid must have arrived before the hawk did. I'll bet you anything that the killing was out of pure rage upon seeing an empty village that shouldn't have been so hard to spot."

Al smiled to himself upon hearing that Hagrid was successful. By now, there would be an entire community of giants living in the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts, so even if Astoria wanted to place her revenge directly on Hagrid himself, she'd never get past all of his siblings. And, of course, she'd never suspect that it had been Al who'd given Hagrid the tip.

"Oh, I'm sure of it," agreed Arthur. "But it doesn't seem to be getting any easier to catch them even now that we know about their Animagus forms. It feels impossible to predict where she'll go next."

"It does, doesn't it?" Hermione replied. With another sigh, this one even heavier than the last, she said, "I just hope that she doesn't find the dragons. I mean, I understand that the Order doesn't want to use them because of how difficult they are to tame, but that doesn't mean that _she_ won't try for herself."

At that, the conversation died down, and Arthur and Hermione were soon on their way inside. Having heard all that he could have hoped to, Al was left knowing that Hermione was right. After the giants, the dragons were the most powerful creatures that Astoria could get her hands on. And if she did manage to, then the Order would surely have no chance against the Flock. And to make matters worse, Al himself had seen just how chummy Astoria had once been with Charlie Weasley, the manager of the world's largest dragon breeding grounds deep in the heart of Romania. Who's to say that he would even attempt to stop her if his childhood mate came knocking on his door?

Trying to think quickly, Al ran through the memory of the dream he'd had a few weeks back. There had in fact been dragons involved in the battle, and though the terrifying beasts had seemed to be controlled by the Flock, it had for some reason been Al himself who was leading them. Maybe, like the sign of the giants fighting with the Order of the Phoenix, this was yet another sign that Al should cease the opportunity to take control.

Unfortunately, Al was running out of time, and though being tardy wouldn't normally bother him, the person he was meeting didn't deserve another moment's wait. Still, Al couldn't just stand there and do nothing, so as he wondered if there were any owls around that he could commandeer, he started jogging across the city streets until he spotted an old Muggle post office.

Though he'd never stepped foot in one before, Al figured sending letters without magic couldn't be all that difficult, so he headed inside and cut the short line so as to gain a place at the counter. He didn't even look at the postman who faced him as he blurted out, "I need to send a letter to Romania."

"Right," said the postman in a much less anxious voice than Al's. And as he noticed that Al didn't actually have an enveloped letter in his hand, the man started slowly gathering the necessary materials before he handed a stamped envelope to his customer and said, "Write the address on the front and insert your letter in the envelope. That'll be one pound for the stamp."

When Al looked up at the postman – who bore a remarkable resemblance in appearance to himself, with inky hair and grassy eyes – with bewilderment, the postman defended the price by saying, "It's a new addition! In fact, those black irises just so happened to have been designed by my very own wife. That stamp's one of a kind, that is."

But it wasn't the price that Al was concerned about. Rolling his eyes at the nonsense that was spewing out of the man's mouth, Al tried to use his pocketed wand to transfigure a couple of galleons into Muggle money without being seen. Though the spell was simple enough even with Al being as awful as he was at Transfiguration, it took multiple attempts to work. By the time Al was satisfied with the money and was handing it over to the postman, he couldn't help but wonder how that spell could have been so difficult when being performed by the Elder Wand.

Al was still contemplating this when the man thanked him and nodded toward the envelope. Realizing that he had yet to fill it out, Al picked up the pace and scribbled Charlie's name on the front with an approximate address before turning the envelope over and, instead of stuffing it with a handwritten letter, wrote straight across its lip, _'She's coming. Don't trust her.'_

As soon as he wrote the last letter, Al handed it over to the confused postman and ran out of the store as quickly as his feet would go. He wasn't sure yet how late he was, but he wouldn't let anything slow him down, and luckily he hadn't worn his foggy glasses in months. This way, he didn't have to worry about them falling from his face as he sprinted through every back alley and cramped corner he could find.

It was a good thing he was running too, since the entire way there, he couldn't shake the feeling that somebody was following him. A part of him thought that it was just because he was scared of being caught sending Charlie that warning by somebody in the Flock, but a larger part of him knew that this wasn't just paranoia. Normally, when he was afraid of being caught, he'd feel cold shivers running up and down his spine, but right now, all he could feel was a familiarly warm wind.

He realized that he might just know who'd been following him all along when he finally turned onto Grimmauld Place and stopped in front of number twelve. Knowing that she wouldn't be able to see the house thanks to the everlasting Fidelius Charm, Al spun himself slowly around a few times in search for her. And after quite a few turnarounds, suddenly she was there, standing across the street behind an iron gate that led to an abandoned park.

Ilana was staring at him with melancholic eyes and sundried lips, her stunningly thin curves blanketed by a sleeveless top and a violet-colored skirt that flowed from her waist to her toes. Her hair was natural and wavy as it framed her face like leaves around a tree, blowing with the breeze like newborn flowers stretching toward the sun.

Though neither had seen each other since the night they'd shared at school, Al and Ilana didn't move to embrace one another. Instead, Al stayed glued to the pavement and Ilana to the grass as they took in the sights of each other from afar. Not daring to break the silence, Al looked around to make sure that they were alone before taking out a piece of paper from his pocket and writing the address of the Black family home on it. Then he folded the paper into a small bird, cupped it in the palm of his hand, and blew it across the street to watch it float toward Ilana.

She unfolded the paper gingerly before reading the address and looking up to see the townhouse that had been invisible before Al, one of its many Secret Keepers, had told her where to look. Smiling when he was sure that she could see it, Al walked backward in calm strides that were perfectly synchronized with Ilana's forward ones. Once he made it to the black door, he waited for her to catch up to him and then led her inside, the whole time trying not to give in to his overwhelming temptation to grab her and kiss her until he lost his breath.

They were still completely silent as Ilana started to explore the house, walking serenely through the haunting hallway with Al close behind. She looked at everything, the walls and the paintings and the dust, almost like every bit of the place had a story written around its edges and she wanted to read it all. But as she read, she didn't touch, leaving everything just the way she'd seen it as she made her way through the kitchen and into the living room.

But here, it seemed as though reading was no longer enough. Ilana's eyes were instantly transfixed on the centuries-old piano that stood against the far-side wall beneath a misty window, and she passed the torn couches and cracked tables without a second glance until she was close enough to pull off the sheet that covered it. She wasn't hesitant to touch this time, not even stopping to ask for Al's permission before she ran her delicate hands across the keys and sat atop the stool.

Al followed her until he was sitting by her side just as she started to play. He didn't recognize the song, for not many in the wizarding world learned how to play such Muggle instruments, but that didn't stop him from becoming mesmerized by the girl who was playing it. She brushed the black and white ivory with effortless efficiency and care, almost as if she'd been playing all her life, but it was her face that Al couldn't take his eyes off of.

It was the first time that she had ever seemed at all vulnerable to him. She was often so distant and introverted, which fascinated him, but somehow her softer side was even more enthralling. She was fragile like this, her lips quivering like she was finally reuniting with something she'd sorely missed, her chest rising and falling like every breath was hard to come by, her eyes tearing ever so slightly like she knew this reunion wouldn't last as long as she wanted it to. Watching her, Al felt like Ilana was showing him a side of herself that she'd never let anyone see before, and he couldn't describe how important that made him feel.

The feeling didn't go away once she was done playing, either. It lingered between them for a few minutes like sprinkles of dust caught in a ray of sunlight, and when Al couldn't stand it anymore, he finally broke the invisible barrier between them. His lips met Ilana's shoulders as she was staring down at the piano keys, but her eyes closed at his touch and she let her head lean back and curl around until it met Al's, and soon their lips found each other in a long, unanswered kiss.

They took full advantage of this moment, their bodies telling each other all of the things that their mouths couldn't seem to say: that they'd missed each other desperately, that everything else in their lives seemed pointless because this was the only thing that mattered, and that they dreaded the time only a few hours from now when their secret affair would come to a momentary end. But they both knew better than anyone that that was the way life worked sometimes; hardships would go on forever, while the beautiful things would never last.

* * *

Before long, the summer was already into mid-July, and Al couldn't help but feel as though not much had changed since the season had started. The Potters were still preoccupied with James, Al was still sneaking out to see Ilana every chance he got, and he hadn't heard any more news regarding the Order or the Flock. Things were slow, almost irritatingly so, but Ilana made up for all of that.

If it wasn't for her, Al would probably be going just as insane with boredom as he'd grown last year around this time. Not having Scorpius in the house with him was still an adjustment, as was Rose's absence from his life, but seeing Ilana made all of his problems seem so incredibly petty in comparison to their time together. Being with her was the closest he'd ever come to true happiness, so at least he had something to look forward to during the long days he spent at home.

Today was one of those days, since Al had no immediate plans until that evening, when he'd be able to escape into the night to see Ilana for the first time all week. It was only early morning now, though, and Al was just waking up to a surprisingly dark and wet day that had helped him sleep in longer than he'd expected to.

The only thing that did wake him from slumber was the rancid smell of a freshly completed pot of Polyjuice potion. One of Al's summer hobbies for as long as he could remember had been practicing his potion brewing. Before he'd realized that he himself wasn't under the Trace, he'd discovered that potion-brewing wasn't either, since it didn't require a wand. And this year, through so much time spent with the similarly potion-crazed Ilana, Al was particularly passionate about his latest brews.

After stepping out of his bed and throwing on a shirt that had been residing on his messy floor, Al grabbed the goblet of bubbling, green liquid and placed it on the open windowsill. He had a shelf full of various disguises already, but for the latest pot, he'd used the hair of the postman who'd helped him send the warning to Charlie. Al had found the short, half-gray strand on his sleeve shortly after leaving Grimmauld Place that night, and he figured it might come in handy to have a batch that could turn him into a Muggle for a while. If the smell was any indication, it was finally ready.

But Al wasn't the only one who'd noticed the stink emanating from his room, since at that precise moment, Lily came pounding in from the door that led into the bathroom the siblings shared, her face all squished and her nose being plugged by her hand as she asked, "What the bloody hell is that _stench_ coming from?"

Al rolled his eyes as he failed to answer his obnoxious little sister and walked right past her and into the open bathroom, then locked the door and laughed when she started banging on it from the other side. Regardless of what a mess Al's head was as of late, this was one of those moments that reminded him that some things never changed, including such normal mornings at the Potter house.

After brushing his teeth, Al exited the bathroom to find Lily waiting for him in his room, her arms crossed and her jaw clenched. Smirking, Al pointed toward the door and said with a shrug, "The loo's all yours."

Lily fake smiled and kicked him on her way inside, and after wincing some from the mark that would surely leave a bruise, Al left and headed downstairs. He was quiet as a mouse as he went, which paid off when he reached the ground floor landing and heard his parents discussing something from around the corner, where they were sitting in the breakfast nook of the kitchen.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Ginny was asking Harry with more than a hint of concern. "I mean, are you doing this for him or for you?" Al didn't hear his mother talk to his father that way all that often, but when she did, it was always either playful or serious and had to do with either Al or one of his siblings, and her tone now was most definitely _not_ playful.

Harry sighed before answering, "It's for both of us. And, you know what, it's about more than that. McGonagall says she's the best in her year, and we need more people on our side right now, especially younger ones who are going to be willing to fight this thing!"

"I'm just saying…" refuted Ginny, though she was clearly listening and had turned back onto her husband's side as her tone became more supportive than accusing, "That not everybody is _you_. They're not all willing to sacrifice themselves for a cause, even if it means protecting other people."

"You mean they're not _us_," Harry said with a low chuckle. "As I recall, _you_ weren't exactly willing to refrain from protecting other people either. And I'm telling you – this girl, she reminds me of you. She's talented. She's strong. She's _fearless_."

Though Al couldn't see her expression from where he was hiding, Ginny must have surrendered the argument, since she took a while to respond before telling Harry, "Yeah, well, anything's possible if you've got enough nerve, remember?"

Harry mumbled something to her in response, though Al had a hard time hearing it as Lily came thumping down the stairs behind him. She was already eyeing him suspiciously when he turned around and gave her a warning look that told her to keep quiet or he'd spill that Polyjuice potion all over her newest clothes. Not needing any words to understand, Lily stilled herself as she crouched coyly beside Al to join in on the spy business.

But things grew far less interesting when Harry suddenly changed the subject and asked Ginny, "Are you sure _that_ is a good idea?"

Al didn't know what his father was talking about at first, but then it became clear when Ginny replied, "It's definitely not, but I don't have much of a choice, do I? I don't think many people would see me as such a great wedding planner, but then again, Luna's never exactly seen things the way other people do." Luna had recently asked Ginny to be her maid of honor for her upcoming wedding to Neville. This time, they were going all out for occasion, since apparently neither of them had had very large first weddings.

Of course, Al couldn't care less about such nuptials, and upon overhearing the casual conversation, Lily looked at her brother like he was a tremendous idiot for spying on nothing important before rolling her eyes and stalking off. Al walked slowly behind her as she entered the kitchen, greeted their parents, looked over Ginny's shoulders at the mound of bridal magazines on the table, and asked, "Have they picked a date yet?"

"Christmas Eve, so I'm told," said a voice not from Ginny, but instead a young man coming through the door from the backyard. A sweaty Lysander was pounding across the wooden floors and into the kitchen feeling as comfortable as if in his own home, with an equally wet and sticky James not far behind him.

They must have been coming from an early Quidditch practice (James had recently helped Lysander earn a substitute Beater position on the team), though Al couldn't fathom how the sport was worth giving up so much sleep for. Still, as if the perspiration wasn't obvious enough, the boys headed straight into the kitchen and started ripping apart the cabinets and cupboards in search of hard-earned fuel.

"Only _five and a half months _from now?" Ginny asked with exasperation upon hearing the latest timetable. "You must be joking!"

After swallowing a mouthful of cockroach clusters, Lysander cleared his throat and said, "Hey, I'm just the messenger. Plus, you know my mum; she's all about being different, and an outdoor wedding in the winter is most definitely different."

"_Outdoors?"_ Ginny panicked, stepping up from her seat now so that she could start pacing across the crowded kitchen floor. As soon as she was off her chair, Lily was quick to steal it for herself, but Al refrained from stealing his father's when Harry got up and went after Ginny in an attempt to calm her down.

Meanwhile, James had poured himself a bowl of porridge and was flinging spoons of it across the counter he was sitting on as he said without bothering to swallow first like Lysander had, "Don't worry about it, Mum. You'll be fine. You can even take over my room and turn it into some sort of fitting room for the dresses if you need to."

"Except that all this talk about moving out means nothing until you actually find a place to live, not to mention the _money_ to pay for it," Harry spat at James while reminding Ginny to take deep breaths. Harry may have had all the money in the world when he was younger, thanks to the generous settlement his parents had left him, but he still believed in working for one's independence, and James was his first experiment to prove the value in his theory.

But James, being used to Harry's comebacks after hearing them so often this summer, was ready and prepared for refutation. He also knew that no one would be able to argue back when he hopped off the counter and said, "Yeah, I know, which is why I'm bringing it up. The lease for our flat came through this morning."

"_Our_ flat?" asked Lily, still curled up on Ginny's old chair. She didn't sound all that excited about her brother having a roommate, probably since she was worried about it being Mercy. Those two queen bees had never seen eye to eye.

It seemed like Lily was worrying for nothing, though, since Lysander answered, "Yeah. I really need to get out of that house. I mean, between Mum and Neville and Lucy and Lorcan slobbering all over each other all the time, I just don't think I can take it much longer." When it sounded as if Lysander was the mysterious roommate after all, Lily didn't seem nearly as jealous about it. In fact, Al could have sworn that he even saw a small twinkle in her eye.

"We both just got some payments up front thanks to the Championship that's coming up," James continued for Lysander, "And we'd already put a place on hold that's only a block away from the Magpies stadium, so we just sort of decided to go all in together."

After letting the news settle in for a moment, Harry smiled at the two boys and said, "Well, that's great, James."

Ginny too was smiling, as was Lily and even Al (he couldn't exactly argue with the benefits of having James off his back for a while), but the smiles disappeared when James added, "Yeah, so, we should probably get packing. We're supposed to be moving in later tonight."

Everyone was shocked by the suddenly quickened pace of James's moving out, none more so than Ginny when she realized that the first of her offspring would be gone in a matter of hours, since she pushed Harry aside and looked directly at James as she yelled, "_Tonight?_"

Lily and Harry held similar expressions, causing Lysander to edge himself into a corner to try to avoid being noticed while James addressed them all coolly with, "Look, I know it's soon, but I've been talking about this _all_ summer. It shouldn't seem like it's coming out of the blue or anything."

Nobody had any way to negate James's excuse, just like he had planned, though Harry did have plans of his own. "Well, I don't have a problem with your leaving, James. But it can't happen tonight. I've invited someone to dinner, and I'd like you to be here for it," he said adamantly.

Sick of arguing with his father, James just rolled his eyes and said, "Fine. I'll leave tomorrow instead." But just to irritate his parents even slightly, he asked with furrowed eyebrows, "Who's the guest?"

Harry squirmed slightly upon hearing the question, for he wasn't the best liar, and eventually answered, "That's a surprise. But you'll like them." To himself, but loud enough for Al to hear him, he mumbled, "I hope."

At that, James made an annoyed face before leaving the kitchen with Lysander in tow to start packing. By the end of the day, when Lysander finally left to get his own things together, James's room was empty but for the piles of brown boxes stacked against the walls. Just before the surprise guest arrived, the entire Potter family was standing in that very bedroom and marveling at its transformation.

Even Al felt somewhat nostalgic upon seeing so many childhood memories disappear in the blink of an eye. There were moments of his life that connected to each and every one of James's old posters, from the Quidditch team banners, to the vintage Muggle music records, to the moving veela profiles. To see it all gone made it seem all the more real that James was leaving too, and Al wondered if he'd ever come back. Something told him that James had far too much going for him to ever need to return home, and though Al couldn't escape quite yet, he knew that the same would one day be said for him, and most likely Lily as well. All three of the Potter children had been independent and self-satisfying since birth; it was in their blood to know how to take care of themselves.

The family huddle was interrupted when a knock was heard at the door, and the five of them raced down the stairs like a stampede to see who this surprise guest was. But when James, who was the tallest and therefore also the fastest in the family, found his hand on the doorknob first, the evening's ignorant bliss was replaced with convoluted drama all over again.

The door opened to an already smirking Mercy standing on the front porch, looking as gorgeously glowing as ever. She had a small bouquet of yellow daisies in her hand that perfectly matched her hair, and was wearing a summery white dress to contrast her dark lipstick. As soon as she let go of the flowers, though, inviting herself inside and handing the daisies to Ginny, her obvious beauty was obscured by James's shock and embarrassment.

"What are you doing here?" He asked as she addressed him, ignoring the mob that comprised his family standing on the two bottom steps of the staircase and staring at him defiantly.

"Relax," Mercy said with a bite to her voice and a sting in her glare. When James didn't look any more relaxed, however, she stated simply, "I'm here on business."

Now, James finally seemed to catch on, as he took his eyes off of his ex-girlfriend momentarily to point them toward Harry as he said without any questioning, "Explain. _Now._"

Ginny, after being concerned for James's well-being all morning, stood firmly on her son's side as they awaited a response from the scheming Harry. Al and Lily, meanwhile, weren't quite sure which side to take, but were eager to find out which would win.

Trying to ignore the spectators and focus solely on James, Harry said with as clear annunciation as possible, "I met Mercy at your graduation, and I knew that she was hoping to find some Auror training. After checking with her teachers and her parents, I agreed to take her on as my newest trainee. I'm going to be mentoring her and overseeing her training until I deem it fit for her to take the practical exam."

Becoming an Auror was a long and arduous process, most of all the initial training. Recent graduates were handpicked by members of the Auror office to work under a present professional before they were even allowed to become classified dark wizard catchers themselves. These days, especially after Astoria had gained control to the office and its database, very few young witches and wizards were selected, and the ones who were tended to be trained by lower ranked Aurors than Harry Potter. James, who was well versed in the subject area, caught this discrepancy in the arrangement right away as he said to his father, "But you haven't mentored anyone in _years_!"

"Yes," Harry agreed, "But the whole department's gone underground now, and we need to gain as much support as possible from the inside. It's not easy to grow an army in secret, James, and us Aurors are in charge of all of that."

But James wasn't satisfied with the excuse, since he contested quickly, "That doesn't explain why _you_ suddenly need a protégé, or why your little project has to involve _her_." The final word in his accusation was just as bitingly cold as Mercy's tone had been before, and he pointed straight toward her without the least bit of respect for her personal space.

Al supposed that such behavior was only normal for the two of them, though. He'd never seen James and Mercy together when they _weren't_ fighting, so he knew just as well as they did that it was a part of their dynamic. He understood it too, since he and Ilana had gone through their fair share of angry phases already, but there was still something about James and Mercy that didn't sit right with Al. In fact, he couldn't say that he'd ever thought any of his brother's past girlfriends had been at all right for him. Regardless of how desperate for affection he could be, much like Al and Lily, James always seemed stronger when he was on his own.

Harry took a while to respond, but eventually he told James, "We don't just need more Aurors. We need more Order members. We need more _soldiers._ And right now, after everything's that happened with Astoria, I'm the only person I trust to train anybody new."

Though Al had been his quiet self through this entire confrontation, he couldn't stay silent upon hearing Harry's confession. Surprising everyone with his presence, he suddenly asked harshly, "Oh, because you're the only one who's strong enough to fight off Astoria? Have you never considered that she might be stronger than even you?"

Ginny and Lily turned to Al with wide eyes as they silently urged him to drop the interference, but Harry didn't even flinch at Al's questions. Instead, he tried to look at both his sons as he answered, "I'm not overestimating myself, nor am I underestimating Astoria. I'm only trying to protect people – people like _Ron, _who happens to be my _family_ – from any more danger. Everyone else has a responsibility, so why shouldn't Mercy be mine?" Turning back to face James completely, he added, "And to be honest, I thought you might like to have another reason to see her around… one that doesn't interfere with your Quidditch schedule, because you can see us and her all at the same time."

James wasn't buying a second of this 'doing him a courtesy' act, though, shooting back at Harry, "But we _broke up!_ Don't you understand that?" Al wasn't quite sure whether or not James meant to be pushing Mercy away, especially since Harry was right about the reason behind the couple's recent split. It could just be that James was using the surprise as a reason to be angry with Harry, just like Al was always using Scorpius.

Mercy seemed to be wondering the same thing as she cut in and said to James, "Look, you don't need to get worked up about this. I don't expect anything from you anymore. I told you, I'm here for business. That's _all_."

As Mercy and James continued to stare each other down in an effort to read the other's true reactions, Harry and Ginny took the silence as a good transition for them all, slowly leading everyone into the dining room where a home-cooked meal was waiting for them on the table. Of course, when James and Mercy inadvertently sat in adjacent chairs, the awkwardness of the evening became even more difficult to dissipate.

Most of the dinner was spent with Harry trying to get to know Mercy, which may or may not have been a very good idea, depending on how James took it. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking from his stoic expression across the table from Al, but the latter figured that either James honestly didn't care about the girl anymore, and was only growing impatient to move out of this house once and for all, or that he felt utterly ambushed by his father and the girl he still had feelings for, but was just too proud to admit to them.

"So, I couldn't help but notice your large family at the graduation," Harry said to Mercy at one point, eager to know that she would had people in her life who were worth fighting for. "How are your brothers coping with the idea of you becoming an Auror?"

Ginny and Lily scoffed at the question, for they both knew exactly what it was like to grow up with a myriad of brothers and wind up more talented than any of them. Still, it was that same competitive spirit that made them look at Mercy like they were daring her family to outshine theirs as the golden girl said, "Oh, they're a riot. The youngest, Pippin, is pretty ecstatic. He's only five, but he's already scouring the Dark Arts section of the _Daily Prophet _every chance he gets."

Everybody tried to be cordial as they nodded with judgmental interest, but Lily just couldn't hide her opinion any longer when she spat out her pumpkin juice all across the table until it practically splattered Mercy's plate and asked, "His name is _Pippin?"_

Harry and Ginny stared at Lily with glares of disapproval at her rude behavior, but Mercy shrugged the question aside like she heard it every day and answered straightforwardly, "Yes, but actually, the two older ones are worse. They're named Wallace and Dougal. My step-mother has a real knack for giving her children names that would be better suited for pets."

Every last Potter stifled a laugh at that, even James. Al had never paid witness to the funnier side of Mercy, since she always came across as an arrogant know-it-all at school. But here, she didn't need to impress people with her looks or intimidation anymore; she'd already impressed the Chosen One with her talent alone. She couldn't exactly ask for much more than that.

When Mercy joined in to the laughter on her own expense, Al also noticed that James was looking at her for the first time all night, and he knew instantly that he'd been right about his brother. James always had to let a person go to realize how important they were to him, and he was finally letting himself see Mercy as one of those people, rather than just a pretty girl who looked good on his arm.

Once the mirth subsided, Ginny leapt into the conversation by commenting to Mercy, "Well, your parents must be very proud of you. Harry tells me that you received the year's highest NEWT marks." All the graduates had acquired their exam results a week or so ago, though James hadn't paid them much mind since he didn't need any to play professional Quidditch, and Ilana hadn't mentioned hers to Al. They didn't mention much to each other, especially when they only had so much time to fill with _other_ activities.

"They are," Mercy affirmed, "Though sometimes they're not the only people whose pride I'd like to earn."

Her proclamation sent a wave of silence across the room in one fail swoop, for of course everyone assumed that she was talking about James. Perhaps more interestingly, though, was how much all of the Potters could relate to Mercy, if in their own ways. Harry had always worked to impress his mentors and his friends, Ginny her older brothers, James the people at school who knew about his family legacy before they had the chance to know him, and Lily all the boys she loved who never loved her back. Al was the only exception, because he'd never desired anyone's pride in him more than that of his father's.

They were all still lost in their own thoughts when James took Mercy's hint and broke the silence to say, "If you could excuse us, I'd like to speak with Mercy alone for a while." And though he asked for it, he didn't wait for permission before he jerked his head at Mercy and led her upstairs to his room, which might have just been the only place empty enough to hold all of the issues that they had yet to sort through.

Back in the dining room, Al and Lily couldn't get Mercy's words out of their heads, but an impressed Ginny lightened the mood once again when she said to her husband, "Well played. Can't say I could have done it any better myself."

And she was right. The rest of the night went swimmingly, with James and Mercy locked in the former's bedroom and talking for hours, but never once raising their voices enough to be heard from downstairs. By the time they finally came out and Mercy thanked Harry and Ginny for the meal before she and Harry scheduled a time for her first real day of work, James seemed much more at ease with the whole situation and even gave Mercy a quick kiss goodnight.

Once the rest of them headed off to bed, though, Al's curiosity got the best of him, and he found himself standing in the open doorway to James's bedroom as his brother taped up his very last box. Not waiting for James to notice him, Al made sure that his parents and Lily were asleep in their rooms before he asked, "So, what, are you two back together now?"

James turned around quickly, taken off guard by Al's voice coming from behind him, but quickly caught his breath and sat on a box as he answered, "I'm not sure. It's complicated, you know?"

When Al's face went vacant as he pretended that he had no idea what James was referring to, James knelt his head toward the floor and explained thoughtfully, "It's fun for a while, but then it gets bloody hard _bloody _fast. At first, it's all easy and light, and you're infatuated with each other, so much so that you convince yourself that that's what love feels like, whether it's true or not."

Al didn't want to relate to his brother's words, but he couldn't help it. He felt that way about Ilana right now, because things were fun when they were secret and anything but serious, but then there was that voice in his head that wondered why Ilana had once thought that they couldn't be together. Was she right? Were things more complicated than they appeared on the surface? Would they last, or was this just a summer fling – great while it's there, but short enough to forget?

So, Al listened closely as James continued, because regardless of how he judged his brother sometimes, James was more experienced than he was. It was that simple, and James seemed to understand this, since he didn't question Al's sudden interest as he continued with, "After a while, it starts to become less a question of whether or not you love the person, and more of whether or not you love them _enough_ to keep fighting for them."

Al thought about James's words for a while, but when James looked up at him like he was about to ask why he was so curious in the first place, Al tried to shrug off the seriousness of the conversation and said jokingly, "Right. Well, er, just don't come 'round to Grimmauld Place and use it as your shag shack again, okay?"

When James seemed even more confused than before, Al said in a whisper, "It's already taken," and then left the bedroom and closed its door on his way out, only just catching the echoes of James's proud laugh in the background.

Now that it was late enough that the sun had set and his parents would be oblivious to his whereabouts, Al put some cleaner clothes on and then headed downstairs to get on his way. Unfortunately, as soon as he made it to the back door, he heard the soft breathing of his sister coming from behind him.

Sighing, he turned around to face Lily and asked, "What do you want?" He wasn't in the mood to play one of her games right now, not when he had somewhere so much better to be.

Cutting straight to the chase, since Lily had never been one to beat around the bush, she said, "I want you to help me get out of here."

Al squinted his eyes as he tried to figure out her motive in all of this before asking, "Is this about your sudden fascination with walking under the stars?" He'd only run into her in the midst of one of these walks the one time back at Hogwarts, but even then, it hadn't seemed like something she was ready to give up on just yet.

With pursed lips, Lily crossed her arms and said, "So what if it is? After what you put me through this morning, you owe me a favor. And since I'm not seventeen, I can't exactly use a silencing spell on my way out like you can!"

Al laughed, because she always did know when to use any little moment as blackmail for her own benefit, and he didn't really have any reason to turn her down. She'd be a nuisance and beg him to accompany her for the first little while, but she'd be an even bigger nuisance tomorrow if he didn't help her now.

Without saying anything, he performed a spell that opened the door without any sound made at all and let Lily walk out in front of him. Sure enough, she did convince him to walk with her at first, since she kept telling him that he'd like the place she was headed to, and so Al went along hesitantly, checking the time every few seconds on the watch his parents had given him for his recent seventeenth birthday.

Lily didn't fail to notice Al's impatience, either, laughing at all of his anxiety as she strolled through the woods that she knew like the back of her hand. She didn't say anything about it at first, though, instead just letting her brother squirm, since she thoroughly enjoyed the entertainment.

Meanwhile, Al was starting to be thankful for his decision to go with her, since he wasn't convinced that she'd be very safe out here on her own. Quickly growing worried that this could turn into a nightly excursion, though, Al asked with concern, "How long d'you reckon these night walks are going to last, Lil?"

"I dunno'," she replied. "Maybe until the daylight starts to feel like enough again." Her confession made Al realize just how much Mercy's words at dinner had affected her. He knew they'd struck a chord in him, but apparently Lily had been listening after all. And now that James was moving on, just like everybody else around her seemed to be doing, she was succumbing to her loneliness and the dreadfully powerful need for attention that had been instilled in her all her life. Lily was just a perpetual summer; she was full of life and color, and she was everyone's favorite time of year, but even she couldn't escape the thunder that came with the afternoon rain.

Distracted by the thought, Albus almost didn't hear Lily when she turned to him and asked, "What about you? How long d'you reckon things will last with that older girl of yours?"

Al faced Lily as he suddenly stopped walking and waited for some explanation of how she seemed to know about him and Ilana when nobody else did, and when he had been so careful to keep their relationship a secret. Lily understood what he wanted to know, though she kept walking and waited for him to catch up before she said, "I saw you watching her as she floated away in her rowboat. I just figured it was her you'd been running off to see these past few weeks. After all, I've never seen you so anxious to be somewhere before."

Accepting the fact that his sneaking out hadn't gone quite as unnoticed as he'd thought, Al tried to trust that Lily wouldn't tell anyone since she'd been trying to refrain from gossiping as of late. Plus, Al himself wasn't all that concerned with people knowing about him and Ilana. It was her he was trying to protect, not himself, though he didn't exactly think that their relationship was anyone else's business.

"I don't know how long that will last either, I suppose," Al said in response to Lily's original question. Thinking of what James had said before about loving someone enough to fight for them, Al smiled internally and added, "But for now, I don't feel like I need anything else. She's enough."

Lily didn't dispute this, but merely said as if to warn Al, "Then, you should hold onto her. And don't disappoint her, you hear? Nobody deserves to be disappointed by the people they love."

"Yeah, I hear. But that might be rather difficult, considering the fact that I disappoint people all the time." Like a surprising number of things, Al and Lily had this trait in common. The difference was that Lily disappointed other people because she tried too hard and let her emotions get in the way of all logic, whereas Al forgot to try to earn people's love because he never believed that he was worth it.

As if she could read this thought in Al, Lily countered with, "Maybe you do, but for what it's worth, you've never disappointed _me_."

Not knowing what to say, Al just smiled in hopes that it would be enough to show his gratitude toward his little sister. And after that, they didn't talk again for another five minutes or so, and Al had gone back to checking his watch before he finally gave in and asked his leader, "Okay, please just tell me where we're going before I miss out on seeing Higgs at all because I have to drag your corpse the whole way home."

But Lily rolled her eyes at the comment. "Oh, shut it," she said just as she was about to step between two trees that led to a much clearer looking field than the ever-darkening woods they'd been sifting through and said, "Anyway, we're here."

Al followed her through the trees only to be met with not just any field, but a never-ending one that stretched further than the horizon and was filled with rows upon rows of irises. Al had to walk up to a group of them so that he could get a better glimpse with the light of his wand, but he soon saw that the flowers were a dark shade of purple, possibly even black. They were as smooth as a painting and were filled with delicate shadows beneath their tender folds. Best of all, they went on forever; they didn't have ending in sight.

So captivated by the place that Lily had brought him to, Al lost track of time for a while and didn't realize how much of it had gone by until Lily yelled from a few yards back, "I think I'll be heading home now."

"So soon?" asked Al.

With a nod, Lily said, "I've been here before. I found the place last summer... I found a lot of things last summer. Anyway, I just wanted to see them in bloom again." And then, with one last shrug, she turned around to leave.

Al was at first hesitant to have her walk back by herself, especially without any light, but their eyes had adjusted to the darkness by now, and Lily seemed to know her way around these woods well enough to navigate without a chaperone. Plus, he needed to get on his way as well, so after plucking the strongest iris he could find, he Apparated straight to the front walk of number twelve, Grimmauld Place.

This time, Al didn't look around for Ilana, since he knew that she'd be waiting for him inside. But as he walked over the threshold and out of the dark, he was surprised to find a quiet house without any piano music emanating through the hall. Sure enough, Ilana wasn't sitting at her normal spot in front of the baby grand, but Al was sure that she was there somewhere.

Though they'd never spent any time upstairs before, Al ended up finding her in the drawing room on the first upper floor. She was staring at the Black family tree that had been engraved in the wall, running her hand across one of the faces that had been blasted off by the old family matriarch, Walburga.

"Always pure," Al stated the Black family motto as he walked inside to meet Ilana. She wasn't surprised by his voice, but did seem to look at him almost nervously for the first time since they'd met. Averting his gaze and looking toward the mural, he added, "I didn't show you any of this before because my brother's sort of tainted most of the house."

Remembering his encounter with James and Mercy from that winter, Al grimaced to himself and laughed while saying without really thinking through the comment, "You're lucky you don't have one of those."

"What? A brother?" asked Ilana. When Al nodded, she said, "Well, actually, I do have one of those. His name's Felix."

Al hadn't seen that coming. Ilana hadn't once divulged to him any information about her home life. Of course, she'd always known plenty about his, because every person in the magical world knew the name Potter, but why had she chosen now to equate their knowledge? And did she want to tell him more, or was that all? Should he even ask?

Something in Al told him that he shouldn't, though. Things with Ilana had never gone smoothly when he asked questions, and if this instant was any indication, it seemed to pay off to be patient with her. That was why Al didn't press further as he zeroed in on her brother's name by thinking of the famous 'liquid luck' and asking, "Like the potion? Felix Felices."

Ilana, who'd turned away from him to look back at the family tree, turned back upon hearing his surprising question and smiled ever so slightly as she replied, "Yeah, actually. I mean, technically Felix was named after my dad, but I suppose it is the same as the potion, now that you mention it."

"Cool," said Al as if he was somehow impressed.

For a while, the two of them just stared at each other like they so often did, each of them wondering what to say next. They'd crossed a whole new line tonight, and neither of them had expected to, so it wasn't exactly clear where they should go to now. In an attempt to find out if Al was thinking the same things that she was, Ilana inched toward him and asked softly, "Are you not going to ask me if I have any other siblings I've failed to mention to you?"

Al thought long and hard about his answer, because he knew that she wanted one. This wasn't at all rhetorical, and though Ilana may have been hinting that she was in fact hiding further information from him, and that there _was_ more to tell, he didn't think that that was what she wanted to hear from him. And as he thought about what she _did_ want to hear, he came up with his answer.

"No. I figure you'd tell me if you wanted to." Ilana was an independent spirit; that much he knew, and so she wanted to have things her own way. And he couldn't blame her for that, because he felt the same.

He knew he'd said the right thing after all when, instead of replying with words, which had never been a strong suit for either of them, Ilana just leaned forward and kissed him. It wasn't tentative or innocent, but rather sure and passionate. They kissed each other differently every time, but each one was as if it was their last. There were no more longing looks, no more prolonged temptation, no more waiting. They gave in to each other during every moment they shared, because they wanted to discover things. They wanted to know each other physically in every possible way, because they refused to open their minds.

But before this kiss escalated into something more like most of them did, Ilana pulled away upon feeling something slightly prickly against her back, where Al's hand was leading her toward him. Grabbing his hand gently and moving it so that the flower was floating in between them, she looked to Al as he told her, "I meant to give it to you."

Ilana's eyes were shining and her smile was infectious as she took the flower and said, "Irises are my favorite. Where'd you get it?"

Al was about to tell her of Lily's discovery when he came up with a better idea and suggested to Ilana, "Why don't I show you?"

They were downstairs and out the door within seconds, and as soon as they were on the front walkway, Al outstretched his hand for Ilana to take and they Apparated to the field that he'd come from. It was odd, because they'd held hands countless times this summer, but never when they were out in the open like this. Maybe it was because neither of them wanted to feel like they belonged to the other, but now that they'd given in to the communal symbol of love, it almost felt right. It was like their hands had always meant to be held, but that they'd never fit with anyone else's before now.

That was also why their hands remained locked together as they stood in the center of the field and took in the sight of it before them. By now, each of them was using their free hand to hold their illuminated wands, and after taking some time to look over the flowers, Al started to notice that there was even more to this field than he'd seen at first glance.

Fireflies were dancing around their magical light bulbs like fairies, and this haunted field was their Neverland. But the fireflies weren't as infinite as the field was, for they disappeared in unexpected and spontaneous flashes, only to show up again a few moments later before flickering away once more.

When he noticed that Ilana too had her eyes on the fireflies, Al said, "They sure don't stay around for very long, do they?"

Ilana laughed and said, "No, of course they don't. They're just like humans in that way."

"What d'you mean?"

Coming close to his face while at the same time finally letting go of his hands, Ilana answered Al in a whisper, "They like to be _chased_." Then she was running away from him and into the night, only her wand showing any sign of where she was headed.

He raced after her as if his life depended on catching her, but also like he was running atop the clouds. For once in Al's life, he felt at peace, and like he could stay in this one place forever. He could stop moving and just be here amongst the flowers and the fireflies, with this one girl whom he never wanted to disappoint, and his life would be as fulfilled and complete as he could have ever hoped for it to be.

"I hope they like to be _caught_ too!" he yelled after Ilana once he came close enough to grab hold of the back of her dress and twirl her into his arms. This time, their kiss was quick, because Ilana had something to show him.

As she pulled away, she brought her hand up to his eye-level and opened her palm to reveal the answer to his question. For there, floating just an inch above her porcelain skin, was a tiny, insignificant beetle that was as fluorescent and influential as the stars. And as it slowly flew upward and into the sky, two sets of green eyes watched it go and then Al and Ilana simultaneously blew it away toward the night, giving the small creature a piece of their wind to help carry it home.

Once it was gone, Ilana leaned into Al and caused him to topple onto the ground, bringing a few helpless irises down with him, including Ilana, since he wasn't about to let her go any time soon. They laid there for hours, seeping their skin into the grass, smelling the natural fragrance of the field, and loving each other in a purely physical way, because neither of them realized just how much emotion came with it.

At some point during their long night together, they found their way back to Grimmauld Place, and must have even dared to return upstairs, for Al woke up atop a bed of black sheets in a room that looked like it hadn't seen the sun in a century. A beautifully bare Ilana was curled into a ball beside him, her still sleeping face straight across from his and sharing the same pillow.

Quietly, he took a few strands of her hair and ringed them around his fingers, then let them bounce back against her exposed collarbone. He traced a line from her shoulder all the way down to her forearm, and was just starting to wonder why the skin there felt slightly coarser than the rest of her body when he heard tapping against a nearby window.

When the noise wouldn't go away and it started to make Ilana stir in her sleep, Al became too annoyed to ignore anymore, so he slowly stretched his legs off the bed until they hit the floor, then stood up while being careful not to make a single creak, put his pants on, and made his way over to the window that looked as if it was bolted shut.

Because Al had only expected to see a common woodpecker that perhaps had lost its way, he was surprised to find a scruffy rook standing on the outdoor windowsill. It seemed adamant to have its way, and when Al wondered why it was tapping its beak against the glass rather than squawking like normal crows did, he looked more closely through the haze and noticed some of its familiar markings.

"Knox?" Al asked in a whisper. The bird nodded exasperatedly, and though Al was still confused as to how Rookwood had even found him here, he performed a silent spell to open the window for his newly returned ally.

Luckily, since Al forgot to request for such even though they weren't exactly alone in the room, Knox didn't transform right away. Instead, he remained perched on the windowsill in his bird form as he pulled a rolled note out from inside his talons and placed it onto Al's open palm with his beak. Al read it quickly and sighed visibly upon doing so, for all it said was, _'Get ready. We've got dragons to catch.'_

Al was already dreading whatever plan Astoria and Knox had for him, especially after warning Charlie about their imminent arrival in Romania. He couldn't help but be pessimistic about the reason for his involvement in such a high-stake task, which was why for the next minute, he kept looking back and forth between the note in his hands that he would have to uphold and the girl on his bed that he would have to leave, secretly hoping that this was just a dream, but knowing that it wasn't. After all, Albus knew better than anyone that that was the way life worked sometimes; hardships would come back to haunt you, while the beautiful things would never last.

* * *

_**Note:** Thanks so much for reading! How are you all liking the Al/Ilana romance so far? Let me know in a review._

_As for my way to make up the lateness for you: the next chapter will be uploaded **EARLY**, on **July 17th** (less than a week!). I only feel comfortable with such a small amount of time because I'm crazily excited for the #27, and I'm sure after reading this that many of you can guess why. (One word: dragons.) But anyway, look forward to that, and in the meantime, I'd love to hear from you regarding your reaction to this update!_

_-Hailey_


	27. The Worst Task

_**Note:** This chapter is BIG for many different reasons, none of which I want to spoil for you now. I just hope that it lives up to any expectations you may have of it, and that you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it!_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**27 – The Worst Task**

Playing both sides wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. It was exhausting, confusing, even terrifying. But it was still easier than choosing one side and sticking to it. That game was impossible, because there was no way of knowing which side was _right, _and being on the wrong one could get you killed. At least in the middle, you were safe, as long as you didn't get caught. But that was the hardest part – doing everything that both sides asked of you in order to maintain their trust.

That was the part that Al dreaded with every fiber of his being. He had never liked being told what to do, especially when it was something he wasn't comfortable doing. He was constantly pushing his personal boundaries, but he did so on his _own_ terms. And even on his own terms, he never would have decided to go dragon hunting.

But he had no choice. He felt as though he was on thin ice with Astoria after giving warnings to both Hagrid and Charlie, even if Astoria didn't know about them. She'd find out eventually, and Al needed to build up her trust in him so that he might have a buffer when she learned of his indiscretions. So, when the rook form of Knox stared Al down after handing him the note about the dragons, just waiting for some sort of response from the youngest member of the Forbidden Flock, Al rolled the paper back up and nodded.

Upon seeing the affirmation, Knox jerked his head toward the door that led into the hallway. When Al understood that Knox wanted to talk somewhere inside Grimmauld Place so that he could transform but not be seen, while at the same time somewhere far enough away to not be overheard by the sleeping Ilana, Al allowed the bird to perch himself on his shoulder and led him all the way downstairs.

Once they were safe in the kitchen, Knox flew off of Al and transfigured mid-air into his sinisterly handsome, but dirtier than usual, human self. He took in his surroundings for a moment, squinting his eyes at the abandoned state of the infamous house he was standing in, before turning back to Al and saying, "You had better go home and get your things together. It's a long way to Romania; I expect we'll be gone for quite a few days."

Al nodded, at first wondering how he could possibly get away from his family for so long, but then realizing that the timing couldn't have been more perfect. He was supposed to be leaving for Scotland to attend the Quidditch European Cup with his parents and Lily, since the Montrose Magpies had actually made it to the finals alongside the Falmouth Falcons. It wouldn't be clear how long the game would last until it started, but if Al could convince Harry and Ginny to let him stay home, their absence would buy him some much needed time.

Just as Al was starting to think up excuses for himself, Knox added, "You should bring your broom, since we can't Apparate much thanks to the Ministry patrolling our every move. Oh, and Astoria says that you'll need to bring Polyjuice Potion. We can't have Charlie recognizing his own nephew, can we?"

"Right," laughed Al. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd seen his mother's older brother, but he also couldn't stop wondering if Charlie had received his letter of warning in time.

"You have two hours to get it all together before we meet Astoria on the coast of Dover."

"Where is she now?" asked Al. He tried to sound concerned, but really, he was just curious. Knox may have acted as Astoria's point man most of the time, but he wasn't usually her messenger. She would always come to Al herself, so why had she now sent Knox here in her place?

Knox shrugged as if he didn't know, even though Al knew that he did, and answered, "She said that she had business to attend to with Wynn. I'm sure she'll tell us of her plans when the time comes."

Al tried not to show his resentment to Astoria's working with Wynn, but he couldn't help but sigh. The albino wizard only performed the Forbidden Flock's most gruesome tasks, so to hear that Astoria might have one up her sleeve only made Al hope that she wouldn't in fact feel the need to involve him in it.

When Knox grew impatient with Al's standing around, he kicked his shin lightly and asked, "What are you waiting for? Get moving!"

But Al didn't move. Instead, he turned his head toward the staircase longingly, wondering to himself if Ilana had woken up yet while simultaneously dreading to have to say goodbye to her. Knox seemed to understand what Al was waiting for after all, though, since he started to make his way over to the kitchen window to leave as he said, "I get it. Believe me, I do, but you should know that your girl's hiding something from you."

Al still didn't fully understand the extent of Knox's 'Seeing' talents, but he took Rookwood's observations as they came and didn't ask much more about them. Even now, when he knew how concerned he should be about Ilana's supposed secret, Al really didn't feel the need to know the whole truth. Whatever it was, she didn't want it to have anything to do with him, and so it didn't need to. Plus, Al had secrets of his own, which he tried to tell Knox by saying, "Yeah, well, so am I."

He didn't get any response from Knox, though, since the latter was already back in bird form and flew out the window as soon as Al had finished speaking. Checking his watch to make sure he knew how much time he had, Al raced back upstairs without a second glance to see how Ilana was doing.

She was in the midst of getting dressed by the time Al returned to her, but she didn't seem at all surprised that he was still there. Looking up from her freshly clasped sandals, she said softly to him, "I'd like to say good morning, but I have a feeling that what I should be saying is goodbye."

Al stayed staring at the floor of the doorway as he thought aloud, "I don't know how long the match will last." He'd told Ilana last week that he might be gone a few days during the Cup, but the preparation didn't make leaving her, even if only for a while, any easier. Al just hoped that he would be able to find her as soon as he returned, so he looked up at her to add, "But you can come here whenever you like. I mean, if you want to get away from—"

"Life," Ilana finished for him when Al paused, not quite sure what she would be getting away from.

Realizing that it didn't matter _what_ her home life might be like, because everyone needed to run away sometimes, Al said, "Yeah. From life."

By now, Ilana was fully dressed and was standing from her seat on the bed before walking over to Al. She stopped in front of him to cup his chin in her hands as she kissed him sweetly – an odd kind of kiss for the two of them – and whispered, "I'll be here, then, getting away from life, while I wait for you to come back to it."

Al tried not to question how she could have such a strong hold over him as he leaned against the wall so as not to let himself follow her as she left. Once he heard the front door slam shut, he was quick to get himself dressed before fleeing into the city streets and Apparating back home.

It was already late enough in the morning that most of his family would be awake by now, which made sneaking back into the house rather difficult for Al. He ended up using his wand to make a sort of sticky tack for his hands that allowed him to climb up the back wall of the house and stumble through his bedroom window. Unfortunately, he still found himself slipping quite a few times on his way, as if his wand hadn't produced as strong a charm as he'd intended for it to.

Eventually, though, he made it inside and seemed to have avoided any notice of his family, for none of them knocked on his door as he started packing his things. He did so with more determination than he'd had in quite some time, feeding Witherwings, putting together an Undetectable Extension Charm on his backpack, and pouring his latest batch of Polyjuice Potion – the pot brewed with the hair of the Muggle postman – into a sealed container. Then he set the bag onto his bed, ran a hand through his black hair to make it even messier than it normally was so that it looked believable that he'd just woken up, and sauntered down the stairs and into the kitchen.

He found Lily at the bottom of the staircase, already decked out in black and white face-paint of squealing magpies on her cheeks, and a giant jersey around her small frame with James's number and signature on it. She smirked at Al upon seeing him and said with her hands on her waist, "Nice of you to drop by."

Much less annoyed with her than usual thanks to the time they'd spent together last night, Al just smiled and brushed her shoulder as he walked past her and around the corner. His parents were busy putting food together and stuffing it into a rolled-up canvas tent that made Al grimace every time he saw it, since apparently it had been given to them by Scorpius after he'd lived in it all of last summer.

It took a while for Ginny to notice Al's presence, but when she turned around, she asked excitedly, "Are you ready? We have to get out of here within the next ten minutes if we want to catch the portkey."

"Yeah, about that," Al started. He hadn't exactly come up with a feasible excuse yet, but he was hoping that his lying would seem more natural if he did it on the spot. When he did finally come up with one idea, he said to his mother, "I've actually been invited to go to a friend's house for dinner tonight, and she's sort of important to me right now, so I really don't want to let her down."

Harry went bright red at the mention of his son interacting with a female, though Ginny was much less surprised. In fact, she seemed rather pleased to hear that Al had found himself a new distraction, as was Harry once he wrapped his head around the image. Al was pleased with himself, too, since telling them about Ilana didn't really seem all that much like lying; it seemed like it was about time.

"What happened to giving James a whole family of cheerleaders?" Lily interrupted as she trudged back into the kitchen while Harry and Ginny were still beaming with pride.

Al sighed and told his sister, "I think he'll still have enough support even if I don't go."

In the midst of Al and Lily's conversation, Harry and Ginny were silently contemplating their decision amongst themselves. When they made up their minds, Harry was the one to break up the still-arguing siblings and say to Al, "If you'd like to stay, you can stay. We'll let you know how the game's going by owl or Patronus, but when we get back, we want to meet this girl. We want to know about everything that's important to you, Al."

Al had to make himself smile, because what his father was saying wasn't entirely true. This occasion was the perfect example of just how crazed they all were over a sport that Al didn't even care about, whereas his parents had never even asked him about his potions hobby. But that was also why he knew that they'd let him stay no matter what excuse he gave them; they wanted the black sheep in the family to feel loved so that maybe he would forget that he looked any different than the rest of them.

"Deal," Al said, still with that fake grin plastered across his face. And as he watched his family go from the backyard porch, he wondered momentarily if Harry would ask the Ministry to have his Apparitions tracked. He just couldn't believe that Harry would be so quick to trust him after Christmas, though of course, the fact that he hadn't been born with a Trace probably meant that the Ministry wouldn't be able to control Al's magic even if they wanted to. And maybe, in an odd sort of way, that was how Harry felt. He couldn't control his son, not anymore, so he might as well believe Al, because it was far easier to lie to himself than to believe that his own flesh and blood was lying to him.

Once they were long gone, Al had some time left over to have a bite to eat and make sure that he was ready for his own outing. The only problem was that he didn't exactly know how to prepare for a visit to a dragon sanctuary. All he could think of for an hour was that he should probably pack light layers, because things were sure to get heated. Thinking like that was Al's only relief at the moment, because even though he'd chosen to sport both the black and white teams, he wasn't sure how much longer he could stay camouflaged in gray.

And as the hour ended, it came time for Al to head off. Grabbing his broomstick – which he hadn't used in months, so he could imagine just how rusty his flying might be – on the way out, he walked into the yard and turned on the spot, zipping through dizzying wormholes until he was standing on the very edge of Dover's famous White Cliffs.

He'd never felt so much wind in his life, but as Al was pummelled by gusts of sea-stained air and blasted with excess splashes of white-caps, he immediately thought of Ilana. She would love it here, from the bright green grass, to the marble cliffs that looked like snow, to the pounding channel of water one hundred meters below. He could just imagine her standing on the edge right where he was now, her toes curling over the rock and pointing straight downward, but not being at all afraid as she took in every part of her surroundings. She'd become a part of the place instead of imagining it becoming a part of her, because that's what she did with everything she touched. Whether it was a potion, a piano, or Al himself, she always put every piece of herself into the things that she loved, sacrificing bits of her soul and giving them away to people who never deserved them.

But just as Al had nearly convinced himself to stop, give up, and go back to be with that beautiful girl, he heard the signature call of the most powerful bird in the world. Astoria looked as regal as ever as the golden hawk dove quickly past Al before shooting back toward the clouds, a small, shaggy rook in her wake.

With one last sigh, Al ignored the questioning looks of Muggle tourists as he stepped off the cliff, only to land on his broom and fly off faster than any Muggle would be able to notice. He followed Astoria and Knox all the way across the channel and into France and then Germany, the whole way reminding himself repeatedly to continue playing both sides, because it was the only way to remain loyal to every last person that he cared about.

* * *

The trio finally made camp a few hours after the sun set, deep in the woods of a small Austrian town just outside of Vienna. Astoria refused to transfigure into her human form for fear of being seen by a spy, so Al never had the chance to speak to her or ask what he would be needed for when they arrived in their final destination. Knox, meanwhile, was busy parading the streets in town and using this opportunity to talk to some of the locals about joining the Forbidden Flock, being sure to tear down his own wanted posters as he went from door to door, of course.

Al was put in charge of lighting a fire and cooking some of the rabbits that Astoria went off to catch with the help of her hawk hunting skills. He hadn't spoken to anyone all day thanks to the long and silent journey, so Al was itching for some company by the time Knox gave up on his recruiting and returned to their temporary hide-out.

He looked even more exhausted than Al as he sat down beside the roaring fire and sighed with disappointment that there wasn't yet any food. Al, however, was just glad to step out of his own boredom for a while, so as he thought about Knox's role in the Flock, he poked at the fire and asked Knox, "Whatever made you so interested in International Magical Cooperation, anyhow?"

Knox had met Astoria through working with her at the Ministry of Magic, which had prepared him well for helping her raise an international army, but Al had never been able to connect the dots between the teenage book-brained Knox who'd been in Ravenclaw and in love with Dominique, and the grown Knox who liked to joke to numb his pain as he did whatever Astoria asked of him.

"The same thing that interests everyone about it... to run away," said Knox thoughtfully. He wasn't normally a very open person, especially when it came to his past, but he and Al had a mutual understanding with each other. They each had their own reasons to be a part of the Flock, but their friendship would always remain separate from that.

Al didn't respond as Knox furrowed his bushy eyebrows and searched through his pockets until he pulled out a small, dark red object shaped like a heart. At first glance, Al thought that it was just any old stone, but after a minute, he noted its washed out texture and smooth edges and thought instead that it might be sea glass, which was confirmed when Knox muttered in impeccable German, "_Meerglas._"

Since Al had only ever seen naturally made sea glass a few times in his live, he was instantly brought back to the place he'd found some, on the sandy shores of Shell Cottage alongside cousins, Victoire, Dominique, and Louis. Of course, this made him think back on Dominique and the time she'd shared with Knox that had left her empty.

Realizing because of their relation to one another that Al must have known Dominique's story, Knox didn't bother to explain who he was talking about as he said, "But it's funny, because no matter how far I ran, she always caught up with me. Everywhere I go, I see things that remind me of her – Astoria's blue eyes, Vega's wild hair, or you, with the way you looked at that girl this morning. I see it all because I see everything in everyone, because for some reason, I was born that way."

Al could understand what Knox was getting at. He was saying that he was different, and that he didn't know _why_ he had to be the way he was, and Al was constantly feeling like that. Knox was just like him, because he had once been stuck between two sides, but what Al didn't understand was why he had eventually chosen to pledge his loyalty to this one.

Still, Al didn't want to pry, so he just continued to listen as Knox added, "The most bizarre part about all of it is that I don't feel like I miss her, not – not really. It's more like..." but he paused there as if he couldn't quite put the feeling into words.

But Al could put it into words, because Dominique had done it for him, so he finished for Knox, "It's like she's missing from you."

"Exactly," Knox nodded, assuming that Al was speaking from his own experience in missing Ilana. That's what made him say, "So, here I am, feeling incomplete next to a kid who's just beginning to understand what he's missing, and to fill the void, I spend most of my days either running from Aurors or killing people." Then he laughed, and it was surprisingly cheerful considering the topic at hand.

Joining in on the strangely joyous atmosphere, Al joked, "Well, either that or conquering dragons like real knights in shining armor." But as he said it, all he could think about was what had made Knox join the evil queen when he could have stayed with his princess.

He didn't get the chance to ask, though, since at that moment, Astoria flew down beside them and threw three rabbits that had been locked in her beak onto their magically made pan. They ate the meat just as quietly as they'd traveled all day, then fell asleep in shifts until the stunning sun replaced the midnight moon.

As soon as they were all awake, they set off for another day of flying, making it to the heart of Romania just in time for an afternoon tea. The infamous Romanian Dragon Sanctuary was lodged deep in the Caehlau Mountains along the border of Balaur, a village so small that it only had one street.

Astoria, Knox, and Albus were standing at the end of that street as they each took in the sight of the place. It was painfully clear that the town, which must have been a purely magical one, was completely reliant on the dragon breeding grounds just to keep it afloat. Every shop on that street (most of which also acted as houses to the owners and various workers from the sanctuary) was responsible for either bringing in resources for the dragons, or selling novelty items that the dragons produced. Though the buildings were remarkably similar in architecture, all made up of clay walls above stone foundations, they were distinguishable by their impressive colors, which ranged from neon lime green to faded salmon pink. But even with the rainbow effect of the string of houses, they were the last things to catch Al's eye.

All he could see as he looked above the oddly angled rooftops and into the mountains that circled them were pillows of smoke surrounding random blasts of fire and wingtips the size of blue whales. Al felt as if he had walked into his worst nightmare, not just because of the creatures that didn't lurk so much as blazon behind the town, but also because he couldn't see himself waking up from the sort of dream that would surely attempt to kill him.

This feeling only intensified when Al heard a giant roar from the top of an enormous stone cliff that rose through the darkening clouds off the side of one of the mountains like a sequoia tree protruding from the earth. Al's eyes met the cliff at the exact moment that a trail of swirling fire spewed from the mouth of a pitch black dragon with searing red eyes. It didn't look nearly as large as the others did from their barely visible wings alone, but it somehow maintained the most intimidating presence Al had ever come across. He shuttered upon seeing it, though Knox somehow kept still while Astoria smiled widely, but Al's fear was pushed to the brink when the dragon spread its sharply scaled wings enough for him to recognize it as the one that had invaded his sleep only a few months ago.

Luckily, Al's gaze was broken when Astoria said with her eyes still on the dragon that refused to move from its coveted spot on the tallest precipice, "Come along. We have a friend to find."

Al and Knox shared a look of anxiety before following Astoria as she walked straight ahead, her hips swinging rhythmically atop high heels even as she trudged through the mud of the sidewalk. By this time, though, Al wasn't exactly himself anymore. He'd taken a few revolting swigs of Polyjuice Potion just before arriving, so he was completely unrecognizable and felt slightly awkward in his new skin.

Still, he was thankful to know that he wasn't the one people were staring at for a change. There weren't many locals out on the street, but the ones who were couldn't take their eyes off Astoria and Knox. Before long, the shop owners had their faces pressed up against their windows to get a view of the wanted witch. Astoria was taking a risk transfiguring into her human form just so that she could speak to Charlie herself, but she seemed to think that nobody would dare to cross her so long as she remained as intimidating as the dragons that floated amongst the mist.

But those dragons also seemed to sense the presence of fresh meat, since a couple of Common Welsh Greens took off from their home fields and started flying above the village in steady circles as if examining the prey that walked beneath them. Their company didn't seem to stir Astoria in the slightest, though, since she ignored both the dragons and the patrons as she came to the other end of the street, marched up to a bright red house and knocked on its buttery door with three assertive hits.

Charlie Weasley opened the door within seconds, and soon he was staring directly at Astoria with an unreadable expression as all remained quiet on the front steps. Though Al barely remembered what he looked like, it was fairly easy to place Charlie as a Weasley. His long hair was the color of a bonfire mixed with an orange sunset and was roped back with a ponytail that flowed from the top of his neck down to the midpoint of his back. He wore a single ring on his right ear that had what Al assumed was the tooth of a dragon hanging from its end. His clothes were thick but torn with singed elbows that didn't quite cover a slew of tattoos that looked more like branded burns, his face round and kind with squinting eyes that looked as if they could be easily excited. Right now, though, those flighty brown eyes were filled only with shock.

"Story," he breathed in greeting to the woman he once knew as a young boy. Al wasn't sure if the surprise behind Charlie's tone was because he didn't expect her to show up at all, or because even with the letter of warning, seeing her was like taking a time-turner to step back into his childhood.

Astoria seemed to feel the same way, her mouth turning upward to form a small smile as her eyes became almost imperceptibly watery. Regardless of what each of them had been expecting or was now planning, for the moment, they were just two old friends who'd missed each other. Such was evident by their expressions alone, but was confirmed when Astoria said, "Charlie. It's been a while, hasn't it?"

Charlie nodded before he finally took his eyes off Astoria to see Knox and the disguised Albus standing behind her. Stepping back from the entryway to allow them some room to come inside, Astoria remained silent as they introduced themselves and shook Charlie's hand.

"Knox Rookwood," said Knox while making sure to give Charlie a firm shake and a frightening glare. He was the most talked about and sought-after member of the Forbidden Flock after Astoria, so he was always careful not to give away his name without also providing the listener with a dose of his power.

Al was next, and he was rather caught off guard when he realized that he didn't have a fake name for himself. But as he took Charlie's hand, he said the first thing that came to mind as his thoughts swam back to Ilana like they always did. "Felix. Felix Higgs."

He tried to send Charlie a knowing look to tell him that it was him who had sent the letter, and that he wasn't dangerous because he only wanted to help him, but Charlie was too distracted by Astoria's mere presence inside his home to pay much attention to the nobody that Al was pretending to be.

Once everyone was inside, Charlie hunched back his shoulders and said rather awkwardly, "Would anybody like some tea?"

They all nodded and subsequently followed him into the kitchen, which was on the far side of what Al quickly realized was a very narrow house. The entryway led directly into a shabby living room with a single couch sitting against the wall beneath a giant map of the dragon sanctuary. There wasn't much more room there than for a single coffee table, but Al realized after gazing at it for quite some time that it was no ordinary table. The top surface was made of some conductive metal and was held above the wooden floor with stacks of rocks on each of its four corners. Beneath the table lay a bed of straw with two rows of three large, golden ovals the looked like enlarged eggs. It was then that Al realized that they were dragon eggs, and that the table was an upside-down stove used for incubating the fetal creatures.

The office was the next room over, and though the papier-mâché dragons that hung from the ceiling continued from room to room, everything else in the office was even wackier than what was in the rest of the house. There were drying hides and jars of powdered horns, but it was the miniature dragons that acted as real-life replicas of various breeds that made the place a deathtrap rather than providing a positive working atmosphere. Regardless of how small they were (about the length of Al's hand), the replicas were just as uncontrollable, feisty, biting, and filled with fire as the full-scale ones, and they squealed at each of the houseguests as Astoria, Knox, and Al walked by them.

"Don't worry. They won't hurt you," said Charlie upon seeing Al duck from a miniature Chinese Fireball. "Except for maybe the Horntails. You'll want to watch out for those."

Hearing the warning, Al shoved Knox to make him stumble more quickly into the kitchen behind Astoria, and as Al brought up the rear, he walked onto the newly tiled floor and shut the door closed behind him. Finally letting himself breathe after holding it in while passing the dragons, Al sighed and accepted his tea only to swallow the entire cup with a single gulp.

It took a while for Al to regain his composure and join in on the conversation being had around the cramped countertop that was laden with burning pots containing a mixture of brandy and chicken blood that would apparently be needed once the baby dragons from the living room were hatched. The smell of the broth made Al feel queasy for quite some time, but he told himself to pay closer attention when Astoria and Charlie got past the niceties and started to address the reason the former of them was really here.

"I don't mean to put you in any questionable position within the Order," Astoria was saying when Al finally tuned in. "But I'm asking you, as a _friend_, to help me." Al had never heard her sound so desperate before, though he had witnessed her skills as a charmer on multiple occasions. After all, that was the side of her that had convinced him to join her cause.

Charlie wrinkled his forehead as he said, "Story, you know I can't do that. Even if I wasn't part of the Order, I can't just hand over a dragon to someone who shows up here with no forewarning or permits." Charlie wasn't in charge of the sanctuary since he hadn't been born here in town, though his work still appeared to be fairly extensive.

"Oh, please," Astoria snarled at him with a roll of her eyes, her usual fiery disposition starting to seep through. "You and I both could confund these idiots before they'd have time to say, '_Wotcher!'"_

At the mention of Tonks's signature phrase, Charlie's eyes locked with Astoria's and the former realized just how much he owed her. Bringing up their mutual friend made all of this no longer about the Order of the Phoenix versus the Forbidden Flock. Al could tell that now it was about two people who'd been forced apart by the world and by the third person that both of them had loved with all their hearts, but that had given her life in a war that Astoria was trying to recreate in a way that would place her in as safe a position as possible. And now that the Order had the giants, dragons seemed like the only beings that could keep Astoria and the rest of the Flock from going up in flames. At the end of the day, Charlie didn't want to see another one of his best friends die at the hands of war.

After thinking through of all of this, Charlie wiped the beads of sweat off of his forehead and said, "Fine. I might have one that's ready to be bound. But I can't have it linked to you. That would be a liability for the entire sanctuary, and this is my home; I have to protect it."

Astoria, who appeared to sympathize with Charlie's loyalty to the town, reached her hand across the table to curl around his as she said with the utmost care, "I know, Charlie. I know." And then she turned her head to face Al ad she asked Charlie, "Why do you think I brought him along?"

When Charlie still seemed confused as to what she was getting at, Astoria faced him once more and said, "I know you recognize Knox, but you can the same for Felix? Seen any wanted posters with his face on it?"

Charlie looked to Al momentarily as he wracked his memory before answering Astoria with a simple, "No."

"Exactly," Astoria smiled, and suddenly Al understood why he had to be involved. Whatever Charlie was referring to about a dragon being 'bound', Astoria had brought Al along knowing that she'd need an unknown member of the Flock to link themselves to a dragon if Charlie was going to hand one over. Albus was that person. He was the one who'd need to be linked.

Al was in the midst of having a panic attack when Charlie, Astoria, and Knox suddenly rushed into action. He didn't like the sound of this binding business; he didn't like it at _all_. Furthermore, he still couldn't figure out which side Charlie was really playing. Did he have an ulterior motive or a secret plan that he'd been preparing since he'd received the warning, or had he not received the warning at all and was just giving in to Astoria's persuasion?

It wasn't until Astoria and Knox left the house momentarily to put a few security details around the premises while they waited for Charlie to get his tools together that Al had a moment alone with the dragon trainer. He had to bare the danger of walking into Charlie's office once more to speak with him, but he tried to subdue his fear as he walked up from behind as Charlie was rummaging through some of the jars of horn powder – a potion ingredient that Al had used before in strong sleep inducers – and asked in a whisper, "Did you get the warning?"

Charlie stayed still and didn't turn to face him in case Astoria and Knox barged in unexpectedly as he asked, "It was you?"

"Why do you think I had to send it by post?" spat Al, trying to make this conversation go a little faster. "I can't get caught. I'm in too deep as it is. What I want to know is how deep _you_ plan on getting, because right now, it's not looking very good for you."

"I know that," Charlie said as he bottled some of the horn in a couple of spare teabags. "But I have a plan." And as he held up one of the teabags for Al to see, he added, "For her next cup."

Al laughed appreciatively at that, because though he still wasn't sure which side of this war he felt more loyal to at the moment, at least this way he could protect everyone while at the same time avoid bringing a dragon back home. So, after Charlie put together a few buckets of aging venison meat and a bagful of communication and branding supplies, he and Al headed outside to meet Astoria and Knox once more.

Evening had fallen by now, which according to Charlie meant that the majority of the workers would have retired for the night. With no one to interfere with the quartet, Charlie took his visitors on a night tour of the grounds. Al wasn't so comfortable with the dark or the pathway through the land of the dragons, but Charlie assured him that they would all be tied down by now. Not many of them (with the exception of some of the more docile breeds) were completely free during the day either, since it would put the village folk in danger, but every last one was chained to their respective exhibits overnight to keep them from flying off.

They entered the sanctuary to be met with a few snoring Norwegian Ridgebacks that Charlie said were sleeping. He was extremely animated as he talked to them about the dragons, and seemed like he could go on forever as he told them, "Those ones look much more treacherous than they really are. Most of them are getting on in their years now, except for Norberta, of course. She was sent here from Hagrid after I left school, and she's been doing very well ever since. You should try to get a look at her if you can; she's quite a beauty."

The walkway through the exhibits, which were lined with magically made barriers invisible to the human eye, was lit with floating candles that cast shadows upon the scales of the dragons' backs. The glowing pathway went on for miles, passing by the wide awake Swedish Short-Snouts that had to be blasted away by the barrier when they attempted to snag some food from one of Charlie's buckets, along with the venomous Peruvian Vipertooths that were smaller than most breeds but still as vicious as their shining copper color against the starry night sky, and finally the giant Ukrainian Ironbellies that resided around a lake and knocked down its surrounding trees to have fun skipping them across the water like stones.

Charlie listed off all sorts of facts and narrated stories about breeds they passed, though as they started on a steep ascent up the side of the mountain where there were very few exhibits left, he changed the subject ever so slightly to explain a dragon's lifecycle to his company. "You see, these animals are very territorial when they're born, and they must be raised right in order to be tamed," he said as he walked backwards so that he could face Astoria, Knox, and Al. "If they are exposed to too much darkness or pain, they will resist training for the rest of their lives. But if they stay with their mothers for their first two years as they grow to their full size, they can happily leave their nest and be bound to a human.

"Binding is a fairly simple process, and all of the dragons you see here have been bound to their trainer, which essentially means that that trainer is the one person, or even _thing_, on this earth that the creature will listen and respond to. It must do anything that the person asks of it, and can only be unbound if it is treated with ongoing disrespect to the point that the dragon is being fatally harmed."

Now understanding what it meant to have a dragon bound, but not liking the idea any more than he had before, Al stayed quiet in order to remind himself to keep breathing as Knox's curiosity took over and made him ask, "What happens if a dragon is never bound to a human?"

Shrugging, Charlie answered, "Then that dragon remains free and either solitary or part of a family of other free dragons. But it also means that they will migrate across wide territories, which is what the Ministry tries to avoid. Here, they don't leave, because they only go where their trainers go."

"And you say that you have one that's ready?" asked Astoria as she started to grow excited. "A young dragon awaiting to be bound?"

Charlie nodded skeptically and said, "Well, hopefully. He was saved from a pirating band of wizards off the Hebrides Islands in Scotland, so he wasn't raised very well. So far, we've tried to bind him to three different trainers, none of whom he responded to. Right now, we're just trying to keep him from flying off, which is why if I give him to you, it will be easy to convince my colleagues that he escaped in the middle of the night."

But this was only worrying Al even more. He could only assume that Charlie was planning to make Astoria _believe_ that he had bound Al to the dragon, knowing all along that the creature wouldn't take to anyone, let alone a complete stranger. But what if it did work? What if Al was the stranger this dragon had been waiting for? And if he was, it sounded like he wouldn't be able to stop it from following him all the way back to England.

Al tried not to think about this as they approached the protruding cliff that held the dragon he had previously recognized from his nightmares. He was staring straight up at the beast that wouldn't stop spitting fire at the moon as Charlie told them that the animal's name was Zephorien. The dragon was a Hebridean Black, about thirty feet long with spikes of arrows shooting from its tail that was wrapping around the cliff like a boa constrictor, and Al had to hold himself steady as he felt like he was about to faint.

"So, like I said, the binding process is fairly simple," started Charlie as he grabbed hold of the chains that were attached to Zephorien's ankles and lengthened them enough to allow the dragon to fly back down to the ground. And as he threw a few slabs of meat onto the grass beside him, he said, "First, we need to get him down here so that we can introduce him to our friend, Felix."

Once Zephorien caught sight or smell (Al couldn't be sure which) of the food, he pushed off from the cliff and made his way down in a few circles, almost grazing the tops of the onlookers' heads as Charlie motioned for them to spread out and yelled, "Make some room! He's about to land!"

And land he did, stomping his enormous feet onto the ground and clawing his talons into the dirt so that he was directly facing Al and Charlie, with Astoria and Knox standing off to the side. Seeing the dragon so close but still with its head soaring above them, Knox mumbled under his breath, "Wicked."

But Zephorien didn't take very well to the young wizard, sending a sharp flame of fire in Knox's direction as soon as any sound came out of his voice. Knox grabbed hold of Astoria and stepped out of the way just in time to avoid being burnt to a crisp, and once the dragon closed his mouth, Knox encouraged the newfound calmness by using a nickname to say, "That a boy, Oreo. No need to fret."

Astoria, however, was growing impatient at this point. Peeling her eyes away from the dragon and pointing them to Charlie, she said, "Let's get on with it, shall we? I need to see this work." Al and Charlie both could tell that Astoria wasn't all that comfortable with her lack of control in the present situation. Surely, she wanted to be the one bound to a dragon rather than Al, but she knew that this was the only way to get even part of what she wanted.

"All right," Charlie nodded, tightening his grasp on Zephorien's chains as he instructed Al to stand only a few feet in front of the meat that the dragon was currently kneeling toward and tearing apart.

Reluctantly, Al stepped forward until only the dead deer stood in between himself and a creature that weighed nearly six tons. Albus closed his eyes and gulped upon thinking of that, though, reminding himself yet again that Charlie had a plan. But when Zephorien's red eyes flapped open to take a long look at Al and the ancient wand that was wrapped in his hand, Al wondered how much longer he could keep this up for the sake of his own safety when he was starting to feel anything but safe.

Once Charlie had found the iron brand from within his bag, he threw a rope to Knox and ordered to whip the dragon lightly on his side. When Al turned around and was about to inform them that this probably wasn't a good idea, Charlie merely shook his head and said, "All you have to do is point your wand at Zephyr here and create some sort of shield to protect yourself. It can be any shield you want – water, wind, you name it."

Al was speechless as Charlie stepped toward him and pointed the brand above the meat, just between Al and the dragon's head, and yelled to Knox, "Now!" And upon command, Knox whipped Zephorien once so lightly that the dragon would have barely felt it, but it did the trick.

Soon, Zephorien was raging with anger, his bulging eyes looking up at Al, the closest person he could see, and he opened his mouth to send fire toward the boy. As Al held tightly to his wand, he performed a silent spell to blow gusts of wind against the fire, and he only hoped that even though the Elder Wand hadn't been performing to its high standards as of late, it would do as Al asked of it now.

It did just that, though Al wasn't exactly thankful for the connection made between his wand and Zephorien as fire met wind through the brand Charlie was holding in mid-air. Al knew that the binding had worked when he started to feel the pattern of that brand burn into his skin. The device wasn't actually close enough to touch him, but he understood that it didn't need to, because Al and Zephorien had created a channel of magic for the brand to travel through, sinking the pattern of Zephorien's scales straight into Al's chest and declaring him the master of this incredible creature.

Once the branding was complete, Zephorien's fire vanished at the exact moment Al's wand relinquished its spell. Al fell backwards in exasperation, Charlie catching him just before he hit the ground as his face flooded with shock that the process had actually worked. Astoria seemed to understand that it had as well, since she smiled widely as she looked down at the hole in Al's shirt and the brand new tattoo that lay in its place.

But Al wasn't paying much attention to anyone else. All he could see was Zephorien, since the dragon that had seemed so angry and dangerous before now looked solemn and protective. In fact, when Knox ran over to Al to help him off the ground, the dragon growled at him and shoved Knox aside before turning his head around to Al and pushing the boy up with his nose.

Still watching the scene with astonishment, Charlie marveled aloud, "Unbelievable. He's bound to you."

Al didn't know what to think over the next hour or so that he spent with his pet dragon, tying him back up for Charlie and ordering him to return to his spot on the cliff because Zephorien wouldn't listen to anyone but him. At first, it felt rather odd and still quite terrifying to be telling a dragon what to do, but after a while – once he was sure that Zephorien wouldn't ever dare to hurt him – Al almost felt captivated by the control he felt over another being.

But Al only had so much time to explore that control before he was heading back down the mountain alongside Astoria, Knox, and Charlie. He didn't get the chance to speak alone with Charlie on the way back, but he was fairly certain that regardless of what had happened with Zephorien, Charlie was still going to go through with his plan. So, once they returned to his house in the village, Al stayed on his toes as he set up a small bed for himself on the couch in the living room beside Knox's place on the floor, both of them eyeing the doorways through to the kitchen as they attempted to listen in on a conversation between Charlie and Astoria.

After raving about the dragons for a half an hour, Knox turned over his interest to Astoria as she smiled, laughed, and batted her eyelashes at every word that came out of Charlie's mouth from a few rooms down. When he looked at Al to see that the latter didn't seem so surprised by Astoria's abnormally cheerful behavior, Knox asked him, "What d'you reckon's going on between them?"

Realizing that Knox must not have visited the memories of Astoria's years at Hogwarts like he had, Al said, "Isn't it obvious? She's in love with him."

It took a minute for Knox to wrap his head around the idea of Astoria being in love with anyone, but once he did, he wrinkled his forehead and referred to Charlie as he asked, "And what about him? Do you think he's in love with her as well?"

From what Al had seen so far of Charlie, and some of the things that he'd heard from Ginny growing up, Al answered, "I don't think he loves anyone. I mean, there's only so much love a person can give, and after all that he's given to those dragons, I'm not sure that there's any left in him."

They both started laughing then, cackling for ages and letting the hilarity of what Al had said flow through them and replace all of their darkness with a light breeze. But the atmosphere turned serious once more when Astoria and Charlie walked back into the living room with fresh cups of tea in their hand. They offered one each to Al and Knox, Al looking to Charlie as his uncle winked at him and nodded toward the liquid, letting him know without words that the plan was about to be put into action.

* * *

Al woke up the next morning to the sound of gentle crackling from a few feet below him. He was still in the body of the taller, ganglier Muggle thanks to his wealth of Polyjuice Potion, so he wasn't completely used to having legs so long that his feet stretched up and over the armrest of the couch. But upon wondering why he was even on a couch instead of his bed, Al opened his eyes as wide as they would go and suddenly remembered where he was.

He was on the couch in Charlie Weasley's bedroom, and dragons were hatching from their eggs a few feet below him. Still, that wasn't what Al was concerned with as he noticed that Knox wasn't asleep on the floor by his side like he'd been last night. Then Al remembered the sleeping pill tea that Charlie had fed them all, quickly panicking when he realized that he had no idea what Charlie had done with Astoria or Knox after they'd been knocked out cold.

Just as Al had sat up and was about to jump off the couch to figure some things out for himself, Charlie came running into the room with piles of blankets in his hands. He was already sitting on the floor with a half-open dragon egg in his lap when he noticed that Al had woken up.

"Oh, hello, Felix," he greeted Al, his voice flustered as he was still preoccupied by the eggs. "I'm sorry I had to poison you as well. I didn't want to involve you in any more than you already had yourself."

"Where are they?" Al asked with extreme urgency. He wasn't sure what he'd expected Charlie to do with Astoria, but oddly enough, it wasn't her Al was worried about. He'd been prepared to lose her through teaming up with Charlie, possibly even when he'd first warned Hagrid about the giants, but he had never intended for Knox to suffer the same consequences as their leader.

"Well, that's just it," said Charlie while wiping off all sorts of nasty liquid from the newborn dragon's face. "I don't want you knowing of their whereabouts. I mean, I've captured them and have contacted one of my Auror brothers, so they'll be out of the way before too long, but you don't need to keep doing this. It's over now. You can leave without them."

"No, I can't!" Al practically yelled at him. Leaning toward Charlie fiercely, he added, "I told you not to trust _Astoria_! I never said anything about Knox!"

"Does it matter? Rookwood's on wanted posters all across the _continent_! He's a _murderer! _I was just doing us all a favor; I killed two birds with one stone," retorted Charlie, acting surprisingly strong even with Al's raised voice. He was used to dealing with bad tempers.

Al stilled upon hearing what Charlie had to say about Knox. It was all true, of course. Rookie _was_ a murderer. He'd killed tens of innocent people, probably even more than Al realized, but everything he'd done had been via_ Astoria's_ orders. _She _was to blame, not Knox. He was just as innocent and naïve as Al was.

Quickly making the decision that he couldn't leave Knox here only to be shipped off to rot in a cell in Azkaban, Al took out his wand and pointed it at Charlie's neck as he leapt across the incubator and grabbed hold of Charlie by his dragon tooth earring. Speaking through his teeth in the most threatening voice he could muster, Al ordered, "Tell me where you're holding them."

At first, Al wasn't sure that Charlie would ever back down, but as the latter set his gaze on the Elder Wand and remembered how it had been the only one to complete the bond with the crazed Zephorien, he seemed to comprehend just how much power Al held in it. Sighing and shaking his head because he now thought that it was he who had been tricked all along, Charlie surrendered and said, "Rookwood's in the cellar below the teenage Ironbellies, and Astoria's trapped beneath a Horntail nest at the mountain peak."

As soon as the information was given to him, Al let go of Charlie and headed for the door, turning its handle just as he heard Charlie calling from the background, "You'll never get past all of those dragons on your own!"

Laughing, because for once in what felt like a very long time, Al _didn't _in fact feel alone, he yelled back, "Maybe not, but Zephyr will!"

And with that, Al was out the door, running down the road and hiking over the fence on his way into the sanctuary. He was seen by a few wandering workers on his way to the Ukrainian Ironbelly exhibit, but he paid them no mind as he stayed on track. These dragons weren't as far back in the grounds as Zephorien's post was, and since Al wasn't sure how much time he had to rescue Knox, he didn't want to run any farther than he had to.

So, once he reached the adolescent Ironbellies that were currently drinking from their lake water with their dangerously protective mothers standing by, Al stopped to stare at them for a moment as he tried to figure out a way to make Zephyr come to him so that he didn't have to go to Zephyr.

Trying to think back on how he'd felt when they were being bound to each other, Al remembered the sensation of his fear slowly melting away as he realized that he was in complete control, and the feeling of camaraderie that the dragon extended to him by helping him get back on his feet after he'd fallen to the ground. It was like they had an unspoken form of communication – a language that only they were fluent in. So, Al decided to tap into that language once more, imagining the wind from his wand connecting to Zephorien's fire and willing the dragon to come find him.

Al knew that the telepathy had worked when he looked to the sky to find Zephyr roaring from his cliff and jumping off of it with giant bursts as he tried to break his chains. As if his life depended on doing so, he continued to lift off while breathing fire on the metal rings until one snapped in half and allowed him to fly away.

He soared across the mountain with his wings outstretched and curved toward Al, and somehow Al knew exactly what to do when Zephyr flew right by him with his tail zooming past his ear. Subconsciously, Al took hold of the dragon's tail and held on tight as he pointed his wand at the barrier to break it so that Zephorien could fly through.

Once they were inside the exhibit, the other dragons were throwing their flames all over Zephorien, and Al had no choice but to keep him flying in circles above the lake as he scoped out the area in search of something that looked like it could lead to a cellar. It took a few turns and lucky dodges before he finally set his sights on one of the tree trunks that was sticking out above the water. At first, he'd thought that it was just one of the ones the dragons had been throwing into the lake the night before, but as Zephyr angled around and gave Al the perfect view, he saw that the giant trunk was in fact hollow and led not into water, but rather some sort of underground lair.

As soon as Al thought through a plan in his head, Zephorien seemed to understand, since he circled around the exhibit one last time, descending into the spitting fire in order to get close enough to the open tree trunk to whip his tail toward it and fling Al inside. Al rolled through the trunk until his back banged against a barred door that was locked shut inside a tiny, dark cellar that smelled of nothing but dragon dung.

"Al! You came!" cried Knox from inside the cell. "Quick! Get me out of here."

"Give me a second!" laughed Al as he straightened himself back up and pointed his wand at the door. He had to blast it with a Reductor Curse to open it, sprinkling Knox with some of the ashes left over from the obliteration, but managing to do the trick.

Once Knox was freed and the two were crawling back out of the tree trunk, Al realized that Knox's wand must have been taken, but he knew from his silence over the matter that Rookie had no idea where it was. Al cursed himself for not interrogating Charlie further to find out where he was hiding the wands, but he knew that there was nothing he could do about it now. His wand, combined with Zephorien's power, would just have to be enough for the both of them.

Still, Al had a pretty good feeling that it would be as his dragon friend flew into the water just beneath the trunk opening right in time for Al and Knox to jump onto his back. They had to continue to dodge blasts of fire from the Ironbellies as they flew into the sky, but none of those dragons possessed the same amount of willpower that Zephyr did, and so they had no way of breaking free.

They were half-way out of the sanctuary and headed safely home when Knox started turning his head and looking in every direction from his spot next to Al. When Al noticed his tossing and turning and tried to tell him to stay still, Knox yelled in his ear so loudly that Al was certain it should have fallen off, "_WHERE'S ASTORIA_?"

"Charlie locked her up just like he did you," Al yelled back so that Knox would hear him over the cold winds. He could sense the concern in both Knox's voice and body language, but Al had made his decision. He had gone back to rescue Knox, but he didn't need to grant Astoria any further favors. He had done enough for her, and she had put herself in this precarious position the moment she'd decided to knock on Charlie's door; it wasn't Al's responsibility to save her from him.

Knox, however, did not seem to agree. "We have to go back for her!" he screamed with the utmost determination.

Realizing that they had reached a crossroads, Al held on tightly to a patch of Zephyr's scales as the dragon quickened his pace while Al replied crossly, "Why should we? We didn't get her into this mess; she got _us_ into it! I'm going to give up the _one_ chance I have to make things right just so that I can be sure she's alive and well. Why would _you_ ever want to do something like that?"

"Because I owe her my life!" Knox shouted back. As if everybody on the Forbidden Flock somehow felt the same, he added assuredly, "Don't you?"

Al had no idea where any of this was coming from. He'd joined the Flock because he'd wanted to, not because anyone had saved his life first. He'd also never heard that that was supposedly the way everyone else had been recruited. Trying to make that clear to Knox, he said with as much confidence as he'd ever had, "I don't owe anyone _anything_."

Knox looked straight into Al's eyes before he believed him, but eventually he accepted Al's confession and said, "Fine. But if you this for her – if you rescue her – she'll owe _you_! And believe me, that's an opportunity you don't want to pass up."

As Al's mind suddenly filled with memories of the times Astoria had stuck up for him and the whole lot of good he'd done for her – vacillating between sides because of his lifelong loyalty to his family and friends, then setting Astoria up for failure with Hagrid and Charlie – he couldn't help but understand where Knox was coming from. Plus, he was right about being on Astoria's good side. At this moment, she was the most powerful witch in the world, and surely she would find her way out of Azkaban if the Aurors managed to get her there. If she did happen to escape, she'd blame Al for being caught, and he'd be the first person she'd come after. But if he helped rescue her now, she would owe him _her_ life. She would owe _him_ a favor. She would have a reason to rescue _him_ from all of the places he was always trying to escape from.

Just as Al's decision turned on itself, so did Zephorien. Soon, the dragon was headed back for the sanctuary and flying straight to its peak, where Astoria was being kept amongst the Horntails. Al and Knox planned quietly together as the former ordered Zephyr to perch himself on an outlying rock in the exterior of the exhibit before attempting to break through.

There were about five dragons above them, four males traipsing around the summit, at the very top of which lay a female guarding a nest of eggs. Al informed Knox that Charlie had said that Astoria was somewhere underneath the nest, making Knox cringe at the idea of going anywhere near it with the mother's sharp horns so close by and ready to pierce any predator that dared to invade.

Luckily, since he was currently without a wand to protect himself, Knox didn't exactly need to worry about becoming that predator. Al would have to be the one to sift through the nest while Knox and Zephorien attempted to distract the mother dragon, along with all of her guardian males.

Once they agreed that this was the only way to complete their mission, Al hopped off of Zephyr's back, broke the barrier, and waited for the dragon to pass through before he followed in his wake. As it turned out, Zephorien was a brilliant decoy, as he jumped through the circling males and pretended to bite the nest in order to gain the mother Horntail's attention. When he had it, he was able to lead her up off the nest and onto her hind legs to face him in battle form. Then the two started to scratch and tear at each other in a ferocious brawl, Zephorien keeping the mother on her feet long enough for Al to sneak underneath the nest without being seen.

He had to lift the nest with his wand and keep it afloat for a few minutes, which his wand didn't seem to have any trouble doing, in order to find a hole in the ground the size of a typical grave with Astoria trapped inside. She was sitting at the bottom of it in a corner with her arms wrapped around her legs, but her eyes left her knees to meet Al's when she heard him standing over her.

"Take my hand," he said as he lay down on the ground and extended his arm into the grave for her to grab hold of. Surprisingly, though, she didn't follow his orders straight away. Instead, she just stared at him with those icy eyes of hers, piercing into his soul like she could read all of his secrets. But when he heard a roar of pain come from Zephyr's familiar, hissy growl, Al begged for her to accept his help before it was too late.

After repeating his request for her to take his hand, she finally gave in and let him pull her to the surface. By now, however, the male dragons had sensed Al's presence and all four of them were staring him down with mouths open wide and ready to cook the invader with a single breath.

Thinking on his feet, Al released his spell on the nest that must have been the size of his bedroom and let it fall back on top of its hidden trap. Then he urged Zephorien to take off without him just to get the dragon away, told Astoria to transfigure into her hawk form and start flying back home, and then pointed his wand at the four eggs atop the nest and threw one into the mouth of each of the male dragons in a single shot.

Just as he had hoped, the female spun away from Zephorien once he flew off and turned her attention to the betraying males that now had hold of her precious kin. As she shot her tail back in preparation to whip it across all four of them in one gigantic swing, Al redirected the Elder Wand so that it was pointing into the air, straight toward the black dragon idling above him, and screamed, "_Ascendio!_"

He shot into the sky just as the mother Horntail gutted her enemies with her pounding, bronze-colored tail. Knox grabbed hold of Al's arm as he flew past him and pulled the human fire bolt onto Zephorien's back once more. With a slap on its scales, Knox yelled at the dragon, "Come on, Oreo! Get us home!"

Zephyr followed the order, though only because Al had been willing him to from inside his head, and not at all because Knox had requested it of him. This time, they made it out of the sanctuary's borders and past the town of Balaur without feeling any need to turn back. In the next town over, they found Astoria flying through the overcast clouds like a phoenix recently reborn from its ashes, and though she seemed to want to fly on her own for a while, she eventually perched herself on the tip of Zephorien's tail for the remainder of the journey back to England. The dragon flew much faster than she or any of them could on their best day, so riding him ended up bringing them back in half the time they'd taken to get to Romania in the first place, returning to the White Cliffs just before nightfall of that same day.

Al had a feeling that Astoria was still either angry or shaken or both the whole way back, but once again, he had no way of speaking to her while she was in her Animagus form. Knox kept Al company by refraining from transfiguring and instead taking the risk of being seen, since no one would exactly be able to capture him when he was riding on the back of a dragon. And once they made it safely into England, Knox tried to help Al brainstorm possible places where they could set Zephorien down and ultimately hide him there for an extended period of time.

The one place Al's mind kept coming back to, however, ended up being the only one both he and Knox agreed would be suitable for the dragon. So, slowly and carefully, Al led Zephyr to the darkening woods around Godric's Hollow and sent him due north until they came across a still lively and overgrown field of irises. Once there, Al set the dragon down and jumped off his back to let Zephorien explore his new home, which he seemed immediately taken to. He was, after all, originally from Scotland.

But as soon as Al, Knox, and Astoria (who had quietly transformed back into her human form without Al noticing) were back on their own two feet, the tension Al had felt in Romania resurfaced almost instantly. Knox was busy joking about Zephorien, saying, "I think Oreo's learning to like me now," when Al spotted Astoria's persistent staring directed straight at him.

When he met her gaze, Astoria walked toward him while saying to Knox, "Why don't you go get some fresh meat for your new friend? I hear he likes _stags_. They shouldn't be too difficult to find around here."

Al tried to ignore the remark pertaining to his father as Knox nodded curtly and set off into the forest as a rook. Then he looked to Astoria with sudden worry, because her expression was one he'd never seen reflected on him before. This face – cold, distant, manic – was the one she'd worn when making her Unbreakable Vow with Ron last Christmas. This was the face she'd worn after extracting the blood of a Muggle to use in her marking potion. This was the face she wore upon looking at her victims when her plan fell perfectly into place.

Not daring to make a sound as she eyed him from head to toe, Al just waited until Astoria finally spoke up and asked with stinging vigor, "Did you really think that I didn't know it was you who'd given Hagrid the tip about the giants?"

Al was already silent, but if it was at all possible, now he was even quieter. Now he stayed even stiller. Now he felt even weaker. And all he could do was listen as Astoria continued with, "Who else could it have been? It had to have been someone Hagrid trusted, but also someone who knew where I was headed, and all signs pointed back to _you_.

"I was going to take a visit to Charlie anyway, but your little indiscretion provided me the perfect opportunity to test your loyalty to me. But of course, you failed that test when you helped Charlie to _capture_ me against my will." She was furious, and Al was regretful, because all he could think of now was how this confrontation could have been avoided if he hadn't gone back for her like Knox had begged him to.

But that same reasoning could also be used to defend himself. After all, only a few hours ago, Al had been under the impression that it was Astoria who now owed _him_, not the other way around. Figuring that he couldn't exactly make matters any worse, he said to her, "But I saved you. I went back for you. Doesn't that prove my loyalty enough?"

Astoria saw right through him as she spat back, "You came back to save yourself." She almost seemed sad as she said this, as if she was disappointed in Al, and maybe she really was. She'd had high hopes for him, and he hadn't delivered. She had a right to feel like her pride in him had diminished.

He could sense this in her as she reached out to touch his cheek. She'd never touched him like this before, and it was especially bizarre now, thanks to the soft layers of bubbles that were replacing Al's skin as his Polyjuice Potion finally started to wear off and turn him back into his usual self.

Once he was Albus again, though, Astoria seemed like she was seeing the person she trusted once more, and like the one who'd lost her trust was gone. Thinking this as well, she said sincerely, "But I want you to know that I still believe in you, Albus, which is why I'm willing to give you a second chance. All you have to do is prove that I can trust you with my secrets and tasks again."

Al didn't let himself consider turning the offer down before he said, "I'll do anything. I won't disappoint you again. You can trust me. I promise." He hated the position that he found himself in in this moment, but he had been prepared to face it when he'd taken on such duplicity. He'd wanted to play his own game, but right now, he was all the way off the board, and he had to play by the queen's rules for a while if he wanted to get back on it.

Smiling, Astoria put her still wand-less hand on Al's shoulder and said, "Take me to Spinner's End. Your chance for retribution is waiting for you there."

Al didn't question her as he turned on the spot with Astoria at his side and reappeared just outside the iron gates that fenced in the ghostly Rookwood house. Astoria didn't flinch from the Apparition, but was instead strong and steady as she opened the gate manually and strut up to the front door, which Wynn opened for her before she even had to knock.

Albus followed her inside, trying to ignore the red-eyed scowl from Wynn on his way. Though Al had only ever been inside the drawing room of the house, Astoria was headed in a different direction as she continued down the hall from the entryway. Al walked behind her with discovering steps and Wynn took up the rear as they rounded a corner and found Astoria waiting patiently in front of a closed door, nudging her head toward the knob as if requesting for Al to unlock it.

"_Alohamora,"_ he said with his wand pointed at the lock. The handle turned with the spell, allowing Astoria to open the door that led straight into a dimly lit staircase that stretched into the depths of the house's basement. Astoria took to the stairs as easily as she'd taken to the mud in Romania, her heels tapping against the wood as she made her way downstairs and providing just enough noise to diffuse the sound of a chair creaking against the floor, so that Al couldn't hear it until Astoria stopped walking.

When she did, Al listened closely to the creaking and simultaneous writhing from what he could only assume was the struggle of a human held captive as he approached the center of the basement from behind Astoria. The room was empty but for its concrete walls and flickering light, its sole piece of furniture being the wooden chair that sat in the middle with none other than Arthur Weasley tied to it with magically bound rope.

Wynn chuckled as Arthur, the Muggle Studies teacher at Hogwarts, caught sight of his grandson and started to struggle even harder in an attempt to break through the rope. But even Al could tell that there was no saving him from the knots that were bound across his chest, legs, and hands, nor the bushel of the hallucinogenic plant known as hellebore that was stuffed inside his mouth.

Al tried to hold back the tears that he could feel penetrating his eyes as he kept staring at his captured grandfather and asked Astoria the one question that he would probably regret, because he didn't truly want to know the answer. "What do you want me to do?"

Astoria and Wynn turned to Al at once so that there was someone staring at him from both sides as he stood in between them and faced Arthur. "If you hope to regain my trust, your task is simple," said Astoria almost dreamily. "Kill him."

And at that, Al let a tear fall from each of his eyes – one as black as night from its hidden place in the shadows, the other bright and clear as it was caught beneath the light. As he cried, all he could think about was the fact that playing both sides wasn't all that it was cracked up to be, especially when one side stopped playing fair. That game was impossible, because even if the player in the middle was safe from being killed, that didn't stop him from becoming the one who did the killing.

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_**Note:** ...What did you think? :S I know it was kind of crazy and I really hope that the ending was unexpected, because it was meant to be. Things are going to be pretty intense from here on out, but I would really love to hear your thoughts on this chapter, because I know that a lot went down in it._

_I am going back to the usual ten day schedule, so the next chapter will be uploaded on **July 27th**. I have also decided to start giving a few hints regarding the format of the fast approaching **Part 4**, since a lot of reviewers have been asking about it lately. So, if you don't want to know anything (though do make note that I'm not giving away spoilers for the story so much as details about the format), do not read the following clue..._

_**Hint #1**: Part 4 will consist of fifteen chapters, rather than the usual ten. ;)_

_Anyway, thank you so much for reading, and please do leave a review if you can!_

_-Hailey_


	28. Didn't and Don't

**_Note:_**_ Thank you so much for all of your reviews on the last chapter! You guys are amazing. Obviously, this chapter is a pretty heavy one, but I'd like to start it off with something more lighthearted by wishing a Happy Birthday to one of my readers, Pamomo. Hope you have a great day, and I hope you all enjoy the chapter!_

_-Hailey_

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**28 – Didn't and Don't**

"Kill him," Astoria repeated, though Albus wasn't certain that she'd actually said the words aloud once more. A part of him thought that her voice was only coming from deep within his own head, where so much else seemed to be stemming from at the moment.

Ironically, though, everything that Al was currently thinking about had nothing to do with the task Astoria had set for him only moments ago. Instead, he was thinking about blood. There were stains of it across the floor in the Rookwoods' basement where Al was standing, but he didn't need to see the results of the torture placed on his grandfather to have the crimson liquid flood his senses. All it took was Astoria's bloodthirsty voice to make Al's stomach crawl.

How had he been ignoring its presence for so long? How had he refrained from smelling its coppery scent as it burned through Astoria's skin and seared into his? When had he decided that his choices had nothing to do with blood status while Muggles were dying left, right, and center? Why had he saved Astoria from the Order when he had been so close to joining them himself? Why was it that right now, as he was looking down on a blood traitor, Al was the one who felt like his blood had turned to mud?

These thoughts leaped across synapses like a frog caught between two lily pads; Al couldn't find any separate paths for his brain to make. He was just a reckless snitch buzzing around a Quidditch pitch as he tried to avoid the two Seekers from opposing teams that longed to take control over him. He had been testing the power of his free will for nearly a year now, but he was starting to feel as though he had never gained any to begin with.

"You have twenty-four hours," said Astoria pragmatically, as if she was setting up any normal old meeting. "I'll return for a report at this same time tomorrow."

Al still wasn't entirely focused on the words that were coming out of her mouth, but somehow, he managed to nod his head in response. Though he didn't look at Astoria to see her turn around upon noting his agreement, he soon heard her heels clacking up the stairs in the background. He didn't need a goodbye to know that he wouldn't be seeing any more of her until he completed his task.

With Astoria gone, Al was left alone with the tortured Arthur and entertained Wynn, who was no doubt still present to make sure that Al didn't change his mind and try to free Arthur before running off the map with the head start Astoria had just given him. His assumption was confirmed when the albino pointed his red eyes at Al and said with a slimy sneer, "She's going easy on you, you know. I wouldn't have given you more than five seconds."

Though Al hadn't turned away from his grandfather since he'd noticed his presence, he took this opportunity to face Wynn as he shot the older wizard a look of penetrating confidence and said, "Yeah, well, maybe she's more empathetic than you give her credit for." He couldn't quite understand why he was defending Astoria in this particular instant, but for whatever reason, he had a feeling that it was the one thing that might entice Wynn to leave him alone.

"Possibly," Wynn considered, "Or perhaps she just wants you to think such so that she doesn't lose you and all the power in that wand of yours." Then he too turned around to leave, heaving himself up the stairs with his eyes still on Al until the wall blocked the boy from his view.

Just as Wynn had hoped would happen, Al's attention had been caught by the mention of his wand and its power, and now the thought had replaced the blood in his head and had rooted itself in the same consuming core. Wynn had most likely wanted to get Al thinking that Astoria only wanted his loyalty for his power, but Al had considered that before, and it wasn't what he was concerned about now.

What Wynn clearly didn't realize was that the Elder Wand, though supposedly the most powerful wand in the world, hadn't been consistently performing to its high standards as of late. Al had been having difficulty with it on simple spells all summer long, at least until he used it to bind himself to Zephorien, his newest pet that he'd never intended to take home. Come to think of it, Al had no idea what was coming between his wand and his commands, nor if it would be an ongoing problem.

But as Arthur thrashed against his chair once more and regained Al's attention, the latter turned to Arthur and finally let himself wonder what he was going to do. Within seconds of looking at his grandfather, who had tear stains and an expression of utter helplessness to parallel Al's, however, Al knew that he would not be able to make this decision right now. He needed more time, more information, more direction. If it was at all possible, he needed less free will, because he was beginning to understand that he had no idea how to make his own choices.

He also had no idea where he was going. As he ran from the Rookwood house before his emotions would take over and make him say or do something he'd yet again, Al found himself standing in the middle of the street in Spinner's End, just wondering where he should Apparate to. There was really only one person and one place he wanted to go to, but as the panic settled into his throat and anger fueled through his veins, he started to feel the need to blame someone for his latest predicament, and soon it was that someone to whom he was headed.

If it hadn't been for Knox, Al would never have gone back to the Dragon Sanctuary to save Astoria after Charlie had captured her. Knox had convinced Al to turn around by telling him that it would give Al more control over Astoria, but now the complete opposite had happened, and it was all because Al had been far too quick to judge his newest mate.

Luckily, Knox wouldn't be that hard to find, since Al and Astoria had left him in Lily's iris field outside of Godric's Hollow, and he couldn't have Disapparated, since Charlie had taken his wand back in Romania. Still, he wasn't anywhere near the snoring Zephorien when Al popped out of nowhere into the middle of a flock of fireflies. The dragon woke up immediately upon sensing his master's presence there, and because he was bound to Al and therefore had some sort of telepathy with him, it was Zephyr who jerked his head toward the shore of a bordering pond where Knox was sitting.

Al didn't waste a second as he stormed up to Rookie from behind and yelled furiously, "_WHAT DID YOU DO? I _TRUSTED _YOU!"_

Knox squirmed awkwardly through muddy shrubs as he tried to stand up to face Al while holding up his hands in surrender. And as Al moved closer and curled his fists so that they were ready to take a swing at him, Knox backed away and said as calmly as his voice could manage, "What are you talking about?"

"Don't play that game with me," Al spat with a shake of his head. "I just came from _your_ house, where Astoria and _Winter _Wynn are holding _my_ grandfather captive, so don't pretend that you were miraculously left out of that little plan." He wasn't about to believe that Astoria's personal puppet hadn't been involved in her latest scheme every step of the way, including the part where Knox had made sure to save Astoria's life so that she could return safely to England and present Al with her ultimatum.

But Knox still seemed confused, as he relaxed his hands only to rub his tired eyes while mumbling pleadingly, "Al, I had no idea. I haven't been home in weeks; Ryder and I have been trying to keep our distance so that your dad doesn't track us there." And though Al was still hesitant to believe Knox, his trust returned to him when Knox sighed and sat back down by the water, staring at his own reflection as the news started to sink in and make him feel just as betrayed as Al was while he said, "She didn't tell me about any of this."

That was all Al needed to hear to finally believe that Knox hadn't been involved in Arthur's capture, after all. Knox felt rightfully hurt for being left out and ultimately used by Astoria, just as Al did for being played by the ultimate player. But Al had given reason for Astoria to turn on him, because he had turned on her. Knox, on the other hand, had always done what she'd asked of him. As he'd told Al earlier that morning, Knox somehow owed Astoria his life and was just trying to pay back his debt.

As Knox tried to wrap his head around his recent demotion from the Forbidden Flock, he turned his focus to Al's problem by trying to understand the point of Astoria's plan, muttering more to himself than to Al, "It doesn't even make sense. He's not the one who has what she wants."

Al was too distracted by his own thoughts to listen to Knox or register what he'd said, however, so for a while, the two of them remained silent as they each wondered about Astoria's motives. Knox wanted to know what new secrets his leader was keeping, while Al wanted to know what might happen if one of her secrets was let out.

After a few minutes of such wondering, Knox realized that he hadn't received the full story, so suddenly he asked Al (his deep, smoky voice more commanding this time), "Why did she show him to you? What does she want you to do?"

"Kill him," Al answered simply. At first, he didn't think he'd be able to speak the words, but they flowed from his mouth rather easily. Saying it wasn't the hard part; the hard part was going through with it.

Knox didn't seem surprised, and Al hadn't expected him to. If anything, Rookie almost appeared disappointed, as if giving Al the sort of task that was usually assigned to Knox was insulting and proved his worthlessness to Astoria. After all, everyone in the Flock had their duties, and while Al was a spy or a potion maker, Knox was a killer. Al didn't think that he had always been that way, but for as long as Al had known him, that's who Knox was.

Thinking this while wondering if there might be more reason to Knox's willingness to kill for Astoria than just this mysterious debt he owed her, Al asked exactly what he would need to know to make his decision. "What do you think she'll do to me if I don't go through with it?"

"I dunno'," replied Knox. He had never refrained from fulfilling Astoria's orders before, so he didn't know what might happen if someone defied her. Still, Astoria wasn't nearly as unpredictable as her enemies feared she was, especially to someone with talents like Knox's, so he added while looking Al straight in the eye, "But I have a pretty good guess."

So did Al. He had had a pretty good guess from the moment Astoria had started walking down those creaky stairs in Knox's house, into a basement that was as ominous and frigid as her soul. Arthur taught Muggle Studies, so to the outside world, his death would look like a symbol of all that the Forbidden Flock stood for: preserving those pure and tainting those tarnished. What they wouldn't realize was that Astoria hadn't captured Arthur for him to serve as a symbol; she needed him to serve as a _test_. And if she was willing to kill just to test one of her follower's loyalty, then surely she'd be willing to kill that same follower if he didn't receive a passing grade.

Knowing that Al understood what he was insinuating, Knox turned away from him to stare at the sun that was slowly rising at the far end of the field and said solemnly, "I'll never forget the first person I killed."

Al, who hadn't expected Knox to reveal such a delicate part of his past, listened closely and respectfully as Knox continued with, "I'll never forget his face, especially his eyes. I was about your age at the time, but he was older. I kept telling myself that that made it okay, because he'd lived, and he might die naturally in a couple of years anyway. But that didn't make it okay. I don't reckon anything can really make it okay."

Now more captivated by Knox's story than what was about to become his own, Al couldn't help but pity his friend as he asked, "Does it get any easier? I mean, with the more people you kill." At this point, he didn't know what else to do but to go through with the task, though he didn't agree with Knox's notion that Al was being promoted to take his place. Al didn't think that Astoria would order him to kill anyone else after killing Arthur, but a part of him thought that if he performed such an incredible betrayal, he might not pass up the next opportunity to kill a pedestrian Muggle just to embrace his new self.

"Yeah, it does," answered Knox after thinking about his response for a moment. "It shouldn't get any easier, but it does. After a while, you learn not to look at their eyes when you do it."

Albus nodded. He hated to imagine the look in Arthur's eyes as he pointed his wand toward his grandfather's chest. Even worse were the eyes that would follow his death, from people like Rose and Hugo and Harry. Those were the eyes that Al would never be able to look away from, and they were the ones that he knew would make him too feel dead inside.

Luckily, Al's concentration was broken when Knox stood up and started walking away. Wondering where he was spending all his time if it wasn't at home in Cokeworth, Al found himself asking with a shout, "Where are you going?"

Knox turned around to face Al, but continued walking in backward strides, as he answered, "Deaths haunt you, Al. They haunt you before they happen, as well as after. So, I'm going to pay a visit to my ghosts, and maybe you should take a while to think about what you'll have to do to avoid becoming one."

Al hung his head so that he wouldn't have to watch Knox transfigure and fly off against the sunrise, off to some graveyard to drown in his sorrows. He didn't want to watch Knox because he didn't want to follow him, not yet. He didn't want to understand death to the point that it no longer made him angry the way it did with Knox. Al appreciated his fear of death, because it was a sign that he was still alive.

But even Al knew that he wouldn't have much time left if he didn't get a move on, and right now, he was running on no sleep, so he wasn't thinking clearly. Once he decided that the best thing for him to do right now would be to get some rest, he walked back to his dragon and told Zephorien to wake him up at noon before laying down in a patch of grass beside the beast. Somehow, he knew that Zephyr would understand and would oblige by Al's request, since as the former laid his own head beside Al's body, Al noted that he had one giant eye still open and staring at the sun as he waited for it to reach its highest point.

Come midday, Zephorien was roaring a foul smell in Al's ear, and it took Al a minute to suppress his fear of the dragon before he remembered the tattoo on his chest that meant that Zephyr would never hurt him. After smiling to Zephyr in thanks and telling him to go find some lunch for himself, Al bid the dragon farewell and walked all the way home.

It was a nice change of pace to walk rather than Apparate, and Al was still groggy with what felt like jetlag since his journey back from the east. He was at first hesitant to return to Godric's Hollow, because there was a chance that his parents and Lily had already come back from Scotland, and he would have a lot of explaining to do if they had. Still, it was the only place he could go to that had any food in its kitchen, since he'd never felt the need to stock the fridge at Grimmauld Place.

He walked around the front of the house rather than going to his usual back entrance, which allowed him to peek through the window in the door to see if anyone was there. When he'd determined that the coast was clear, Al was about to unlock the door and head inside when he noticed that he was stepping on something smaller and bulkier than the normal 'welcome' mat on the front stoop.

Leaning down to pick up the newspaper, Al walked inside with the latest issue of the _Daily Prophet _in his hand, his eyes scanning its back page. He had to flip the paper over when he caught sight of his very own brother holding a rather large trophy before passing it over to his teammates in a picture that sat beneath the headline, '_Montrose Magpies Win European Cup Under Young Seeker, James S. Potter'._

Al didn't even smile with pride at the news that James had led the Magpies to victory. Instead, he searched frantically for the date of the paper's issue, eager to know when the game had ended so that he might have an idea of his parents' imminent arrival. However, as he finally found that the paper had been issued this morning by turning it to the front page, the main headline grabbed his attention away, and soon he was reading with abject haste:

_**Arthur Weasley: Missing and Missed**_

_After sitting twenty-four hours without receiving any word from her husband, Molly Weasley reported Arthur, Professor of Muggle Studies at Hogwarts School and proud father of the well-known wizarding family, as missing to the Ministry of Magic late last night, the thirty-first of July. This date is of course a familiar one to the Weasley family, as it happens to be the birthday of Harry Potter, defeater of the late Dark Wizard, Lord Voldemort, and husband of Mr. Weasley's only daughter, Ginevra. Potter, who until recently served as Head Auror, has issued an expansive search party for his father in-law upon hearing the tragic news, and though Potter has given no comment on the matter, it can only be assumed that the responsibility for Weasley's kidnapping lies in the hands of the Forbidden Flock. Though there may not have been any signs of a struggle from witnesses who last saw Weasley on the streets of Ottery St. Catchpole, the timing of his disappearance coincided with Potter's going away for the weekend to attend the Quidditch European Cup in Scotland in support of son and recently named Seeker for the Montrose Magpies, James S. Potter. It may also serve to note that Forbidden Flock leader, Astoria, appears to be following in Voldemort's footsteps yet again, as the capturing and ultimate murder of then Muggle Studies Professor, Charity Burbage, was one of the ripples made prior to the Second Wizarding War. However, underground Aurors are standing by pending Potter's return to London and appear confident that Weasley's fate will not parallel that of Burbage. Further reports will be issued as the search continues._

Al finished reading and let the paper fall onto the floor as the page's photograph, featuring Arthur sitting at his desk at Hogwarts with a rubber duck in his hand, took a permanent place in his mind. Suddenly, Al had lost his appetite completely, and he wasn't sure what exactly he was doing until he found himself in the middle of his parents' bedroom, pulling scrapbooks off his mother's bookshelf and flipping through them while staring back at the framed photos that covered the walls.

Harry and Ginny had filled their house with memories from the time they'd started building it, but their bedroom held the cream of the crop. This was where Harry kept the photo album of his parents that Hagrid had once given him, as well as the two similar pictures of the founding members of the Order of the Phoenix beside that of Dumbledore's Army, and the portrait of Ariana Dumbledore that Aberforth had left him in his will. Al had spent countless hours of his childhood sitting and staring at all of the people and moments that had lived before he had existed, mystified by the idea of his father having had a life before Al had been a part of it.

Now, however, Al was no longer interested in his father's memories, for it was Ginny's pictures and Ginny's memories that he wanted to explore. He found all of the newspaper clippings chronicling various Weasley family vacations, from Romania to Egypt to the Quidditch World Cup. He found the photograph of Ginny and Hermione in their graduation robes on the Hogwarts grounds, Arthur's arms around each of them, that sat just below the picture of recent graduates, James and Lysander, gasping for air beneath Ginny's arms. But Al stopped perusing all of his mother's things when he came to the photo that he had been looking or all along.

The picture had been crumpled and ripped over the years, tucked away in the very middle of a scrapbook devoted to Al and his siblings. He didn't remember the day the photo had been taken with one of Arthur's Muggle cameras, but he had been told of it years ago. It was his grandfather who had revealed to Al when he was around ten years old that Harry hadn't been present during his birth. He'd been off on some Auror mission when Ginny had sent him the patronus message saying that she was going into labor, and he hadn't been able to get to the hospital before Albus, a squirming baby who was born not crying but rather screaming, was brought into the world. And though Arthur had not been with his daughter in the delivery room, he had waited outside with a young James and was soon thereafter the first male to hold little Al, as he was doing in the still picture that Al was looking down on now.

Al had never thought much about the photo, or even the importance of Arthur's presence in his life, for that matter. He had just used the story as yet another reason to resent Harry later on in life, but in this moment, all he wanted was to remember what it had felt like to curl himself into Arthur's arms. He wanted to know what it had felt like to be carried by muscles strong and sure. He wanted to what it had felt like to have Arthur's blood pounding against his infant chest. He wanted to know if Arthur's arms had brought him to life because somehow the world had always known that it was Al whose arms would drop Arthur into death.

Al was just wiping the endless tears from his eyes when he heard the back door slam and the vexed voice of his mother call from downstairs, "Al! Are you here?"

Quickly running from the room and down the stairs before Ginny realized that he'd been going through her private things, Al bumped into his mother at the bottom of the staircase. She had eyes as red as his and was cracking her knuckles nervously before she pulled him into an unusually sincere hug. Once she let go, she sniffled lightly and said in a whimper, "I assume you've heard?"

Al merely nodded, because seeing his mother cry was like watching a silent film; he didn't know what to say without breaking her beauty, and he didn't want to interrupt the softness of her cheeks with the hoarseness of his voice. So, he just followed her into the kitchen without saying a word, trying not to think about the fact that this was the first time his mother was crying because of him.

Ginny walked straight to Harry and leaned her head on his shoulder, the two of them now standing just off the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. Harry didn't seem as torn up as Ginny, but his glasses were slightly foggier than usual and the lightning bolt scar on his forehead was red and swollen like he'd been scratching at it. His left hand was locked with Ginny's, but his right one was sitting on the countertop beside a stack of letters that Al had failed to notice until now.

They were handwritten and unopened, and Al soon realized that they had been sent to him by his parents over the last few days that they'd been gone. He hadn't seen them before, since of course he'd been away as well, but Harry didn't know about that part. Trying to come up with some excuse as to why he'd left them there, Al scratched his own forehead and said, "I just got home. I've been with that girl I was telling you about before. We sort of lost track of time."

Normally, Harry wouldn't be so quick to buy into Al's white lie and would ask a few more questions before accepting it, but today, he didn't have enough energy for that. Like every terrible thing that ever happened to the people he loved, Harry blamed himself for Arthur's disappearance, and Al knew from experience that that took up more energy than a person could ever have.

So, Harry just nodded and moved slowly away from Ginny to pick up the _Daily Prophet_ that Al had dropped on the floor in the entryway before turning back around and stating with a ghost-like quality to his voice, "We have to go see Ron and Hermione. I'd like you to come with us."

"Okay," agreed Al. It wouldn't be very difficult to argue with Harry right now, but Al knew that the repercussions for his present actions would surface in the near future if he didn't do as he was told. Plus, he wouldn't mind being around Rose for a couple of hours; no matter the situation, she was always a comfort to him.

But as the three Potters moved slowly toward the backyard where they could Apparate to the Bird's Nest, Al noticed that Lily hadn't returned with his parents, and upon asking where she was, Ginny answered, "We asked James to let her stay behind with him. She doesn't know about anything yet, and we're hoping we won't have to give her the bad news until we have some good news to accompany it." She still had hope, as did Harry, and in an odd way, even Al. Maybe that was why Al didn't mind going to the Weasleys' with them, because he thought that something or someone there could tell him how to spare two innocent lives rather than a single guilty one.

Al was thinking about such as he was just about to cross the threshold behind his mother, but Harry stopped him by grabbing on his arm and pulling him back inside. Al was caught off guard by the gesture, and found himself staring into the eyes that he had inherited as Harry asked with a mixture of sadness and guilt, "Do you have anything to do with this, Al? Anything at all?"

Harry had had far too much trust and faith in his son since what happened at Christmas, but that wasn't something that he as a father was ashamed of. Believing in his children was one of the few traditions he had carried on from his own family, for he would do anything to defend and protect Al, no matter how distant they grew from each other. Right now, though, Harry knew that that belief wasn't the problem; the problem was the almost imperceptible fear that he might be wrong. That was why he had asked Al the question he'd never thought he'd need to ask, and that was why his eyes filled with terror as they waited for Al to respond.

Al, meanwhile, was just as shocked as Harry to see him suddenly open his eyes from the blindness that he'd been enveloped in for months on end. While Al may have attempted to be stealth with his secrets, he was no expert like his sister was. It should have been obvious ages ago that Al hadn't been maintaining Harry's trust; at least, it seemed obvious to anybody who was really watching, like James, Rose, and Scorpius. Al had nearly forgotten that his father had ever known about his original betrayal, but he almost felt happy to hear Harry voice his concern, because it was a sign that he cared.

Even so, Al wasn't about to throw in the towel now. Sure, he could tell Harry everything and Harry could attempt to protect him from whatever Astoria might try to do, but then Al wouldn't have any free will at all. He'd be surrendering himself and admitting to his greatest weaknesses. He'd be letting the most powerful witch and wizard choose the winning side rather than proving his own power and making his own choice. And really, that was what this past year had been about for Al: deciding who he wanted to be regardless of who everyone else thought he was, and fighting for his own voice even when he wasn't sure what he would say with it.

So now, Al had to use that voice to keep going, keep growing, and keep fighting. That was why he said to his father without blinking or flinching, "No. I don't know anything more than you do. I promise."

And just as Al had expected, Harry believed him. He didn't say another word as he pushed Al softly out the doorway and onto the front porch, then walked beside him until they reached the edge of the property line where Ginny was waiting for them. Together, they took each other's hand in a circular trio, Al once again feeling slightly further away from the other two than they were from each other.

In an instant, the Potters were standing in the Weasleys' front yard. Al was still dizzy from the turn when he felt Ginny let go of his hand and run off toward the house, and he looked up from the ground just in time to see her embrace her older brother like they were the only two people left in the world. Ron had on a similar disposition to his sister, with eyes that matched his hair and ears that looked like they'd been in the sun for far too long.

Hugo was at Ron's side and gave his aunt a quick hug before he noticed that Al was there, and soon the little monster was running at his cousin with a sharply pointed finger growing ever closer to Al's face. "You're not getting away with it this time, you numpty!"

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Hugo was tackling Al to the ground, and Al was just trying not to fight back for fear of squashing the kid who was about as thin as a pole thanks to his extensive growth spurts. Of course, this meant that Al had to endure many a slap and tear from the hostile Hugo, alongside insults like 'twat', 'blighter', and Hugo's personal favorite and one he and his sister had learned from their mother once upon a time, 'foul, loathsome, evil little cockroach'.

The brawl seemed to last for ages before Hugo was being pulled off of Al by Rose on one side and Scorpius on the other. Apparently, Ron, Ginny, and Harry had been too busy talking amongst themselves to notice the brutal spat taking place right in front of them, but Rose and Scorpius managed to hold Hugo back on their own long enough for Al to stand up once more.

With Scorpius still holding Hugo steady by his wrists, Rose turned to face her little brother with a stern look as she said, "Calm down. Al is _not_ responsible for any of this, you hear me?"

"Rosie, you _know_ that's not true," Hugo argued back, but Rose wouldn't hear any of it.

"No, I _don't_, Hugo. I don't know anything. None of us do, not even him." She was still looking at Hugo, but Al almost felt like he was the one she was speaking to. At least, that was until Rose added to Hugo and Hugo only, "All I know is that Granddad's going to be fine, because he's not going to give up. None of us are going to give up, because we're family and because we love each other. All right?"

Rose blocked Hugo's view as the boy tried to serve his eyes around to glance at Al, and her distraction seemed to work its magic, since before long, Hugo was looking back at Rose and saying, "Yeah, all right. Let's just get him back." Al hadn't known until now just how close Hugo had grown to his grandfather over the past few years, and he wasn't sure that he really wanted to know. It might have been a lot easier if he had never realized just how much love might soon disappear.

By now, Ron had overheard the yells and screams coming from the far side of the yard, and was running to catch up to his children. Once he was near enough, he glared at Al with his own form of contempt before wrapping his arm around the still distraught Hugo and saying, "We will get him back, Bud. We will," and steering him toward the above-ground front porch.

Ginny met Ron and Hugo half-way to the door with Harry at her side as she asked, "How's Mum doing?" Al could barely hear her from where he was still standing, but he listened closely at the mention of his grandmother, whom he hadn't realized was currently staying with Ron and Hermione.

"She's inside with 'Mione," answered Ron solemnly. "George and Angie came by this morning, and I think they helped. But I have to say, it's a bit odd to see her sit still for so long." Molly was always up and about, always had a million things to do, even after all of her children had grown and started families of their own. She was a natural worker, unlike the majority of her sons, and Al had always admired her for that. He didn't ever want to see this stiller version of his grandmother.

Alas, he would soon have to, since as their parents filed into the tall house that sometimes looked as if it might topple over like the Tower of Pisa, Al sighed and followed Rose and Scorpius across the yard and up the front steps. He could still feel the tension between him and his old friends, especially since it had been over a month since they'd last seen each other, but he was thankful that they were there. And for a split second back when Rose and Scorpius had been pulling Hugo off of him, Al had almost felt like they were their old selves again, with Scorpius doing the protecting, Rose calming the air, and Al taking the heat for the trio.

Though Al didn't expect it to, this feeling lasted for most of the day, starting with the moment the three of them stepped foot in the Bird's Nest. Rose gave Al a reassuring smile as he walked up to his grandmother and kissed Molly on the cheek from where she was sitting in the corner of the room filled with misshapen bookshelves and bucket loads of Quidditch souvenirs. She was small and frail with a blanket wrapped from her ankles to her neck and a cup of steaming tea bouncing softly from her exposed hand. Hermione had been sitting on the chair's armrest when Al and the others had first come in, but now Ginny had taken her place there, with Hugo crouched on the couch opposite them with a giant book on his lap.

Once those three were comfortable, Ron jerked his head toward Hermione's study, the only room on the first floor (other than the lavatory) that was completely closed off from the rest of the house. Harry and Hermione seemed to understand that Ron wanted to talk in private, but it was Scorpius who led the way inside the office and jerked his own head to tell Al and Rose to come along as well.

The six of them migrated naturally toward Hermione's desk, which they gathered around in a tight circle, the older trio on the side facing the window, and the younger trio closer to the door. Harry stood in the middle of one side, as did Scorpius on the other, and Al was off to the edge beside Hermione and directly across from Ron, who was next to Rose. It was strange for all of them to be together like this and in such a cramped space, but for whatever reason, the formation seemed to fit them well.

After a few seconds to settle in, Harry broke the silence by saying to those who hadn't already heard, "I've sent the Aurors out in a search party. Mercy's supposed to be shadowing me, but I told her to go with them and gain some field experience."

"What's their route?" asked Scorpius without hesitation. Al hadn't expected him to be so confident in his leadership role, and it was like an out-of-body experience to see his best friend, who had always been a follower of Al's, take the reins and become the one others followed. Al hated to admit it, but he could tell just by the way everyone else in the room looked at Scorpius when he spoke – with the utmost respect and no sign of concern for his young age – that he was a much better leader than Al had ever been or ever would be.

"I've got them tracking a new suspect named Wynn Traylor," answered Harry. "He was seen the day Arthur was taken, and he was the only Flock member that we know of who's even been in town this past week."

"Where has Astoria been?" asked Rose upon hearing about the other Flock members. She was always worried about Astoria over anyone else, and Al didn't blame her. Still, none of them knew the way he did just how much they should fear Wynn as well.

This time, Ron was the one to reply, explaining to Rose – who was most likely only taking part in this meeting because both Ron and Scorpius knew that she'd throw a fit if they didn't include her – that Charlie had sent him a letter saying that he'd spotted Astoria and Knox Rookwood near his house in Romania, alongside an unknown wizard who had apparently gone by the name of Felix Higgs.

Al tried to hide his shifting eyes at the mention of the fake name he'd used while visiting Charlie, especially since Scorpius recognized the latter half of it instantly, and was staring at Al with his piercing orbs of blue while Hermione commented, "We should have been more prepared for that one. I _knew_ that's where she'd go next."

Ron squeezed his wife's shoulder to get her to stop blaming herself as Harry tried to move the conversation along, saying something about going out to track Traylor himself. Al wasn't listening anymore, though, since Scorpius still hadn't taken his eyes off of him. And when Hermione asked about tracking this Higgs person, the second mention of the name caught Rose's attention as well. Now, she and Scorpius were both flickering their eyes over to Al while still trying to remain discreet in front of Rose's parents and Harry, for Rose and Scorpius had clearly made the connection from Ilana to Al.

"Yeah, I've got Andrew Wood scouting for Higgs, but he hasn't found anyone that matches Charlie's description," Harry responded to Hermione, before steering her back on course with, "But right now we need to focus on Dad. I have a feeling they might be keeping him in a Muggle neighborhood, since we have surveillance over all the wizarding houses in the country."

Ron's eyes widened at the idea, for he himself would never have thought to look for his kidnapped father in Muggle country. But as soon as he'd accepted that Harry might be right, he banged the desk lightly with excitement that they had a base to build off of and said, "All right, so let's split the guys up. We can station two in Little Whinging and two in that, er-" but started snapping his fingers when he couldn't think of a second Muggle village.

He was looking at Hermione, having no doubt forgotten the name of _her_ hometown, so she crossed her arms with annoyance before answering for him, "Canonbury."

"Yeah, that's the one," Ron commented, though he and Hermione were soon locked in a silent spat with each other, like they always had a way of doing. Al was thankful for their polite fighting today, though, since it stole Rose's attention away from himself as she smiled at her parents' ability to turn any situation, no matter how grave, into one that was lighthearted and hopeful.

Meanwhile, Scorpius had set aside his own worries over Al and was now back in conversation with Harry, thinking aloud with, "There's another place that my grandmother mentioned once before... something about visiting Snape's house with her sister."

"You mean Spinner's End?" asked Harry hastily. With a hint of sadness, he added, "That's the town my mum grew up in."

At this point, Al was starting to lose it. They were already more than on the right track, and he had yet to say anything that might send them off it. But he couldn't possibly _want_ them to find Arthur, could he? If they did, there was no guarantee that they'd catch Astoria at the same time, which would mean that she could just come right back and kill Al in his sleep.

And with this thought, Al blurted without another moment of consideration, "But that's in Cokeworth; it's a complete no-man's land out there." He didn't know what he would say to back himself up, but it was all that he could come up with on short notice.

Of course, he had now given Rose and Scorpius even more reason for concern. They were back to staring at him, along with Harry and the freshly calm Ron and Hermione, as they waited for Al to elaborate. "The mill's run down; nobody lives there anymore," he said in an effort to give them all reason to believe him. "I flew past there once last summer while I was looking for Scorpius."

Luckily, no one had the chance ask for further details before they all heard a loud knock on the front door and headed out of the office like a herd of cattle running from a barn to find the sunlight. Al drew up the rear end of the pack, but he wasn't nearly as eager as the others were. They were all hoping to find Arthur ringing the doorbell and ready to reunite with his family, but Al knew better than to believe in such miracles.

And as it turned out, Al was right. Nearly everyone in the house was disappointed to see supportive boyfriend Nigel Creevey coming down the hallway, except for the ecstatic Hugo who was leading him to his family. It took a minute for Al to decipher through all of Nigel's greetings that he and Hugo hadn't yet had their family dinner that they'd told Scorpius about back at Hogwarts, and Ron in particular still seemed slightly unnerved to see Hugo and Nigel together as a couple rather than just friends. Still, Nigel's presence provided a nice distraction to all the adults in the house, and Al soon found himself slipping out of the room, his arm being dragged away by Rose's surprisingly strong hand.

She and Scorpius led Al upstairs and into Rose's bedroom, where she locked the door before turning around to face Al with crossed arms and the same expression that Hermione had given Ron for forgetting the name of her hometown. Al didn't have to wait long for the accusations to come, but he was already grimacing when Rose spat at him, "You know! You know, and you were just _sitting_ there. This is our _grandfather_, Al! It's bigger than just us!"

"I know it is!" Al yelled before he could stop himself. He was just as frustrated as Rose was, quite possibly even more. He was just as confused, just as angry with himself, and just as disappointed. But that was nothing compared to the alternatives, which were either becoming a killer or being killed.

Rose, who never could stay angry for long, was soon sitting beside Al on her bed and was looking toward him with nothing but acceptance in her eyes. Scorpius was still standing with his back against the door, but he was watching Al closely as Rose turned sympathetic once more and said to him, "Al, I told you before that I would always be here to lift some of the weight off your shoulders, even if I don't agree with the choices you're making. So, please, just let us help you." She didn't need to know what Astoria had asked him to do or why he was continuing to do it; she just wanted to make sure that no one close to her got hurt.

Until now, Scorpius hadn't shared Rose's same philosophy regarding Al. He hadn't been able to support Al in what he was doing with Astoria in any form, but he _had_ suggested for Al to start playing both sides. And as he looked at his friend from across the room, Al could sense that Scorpius was wondering which side he was playing now: the Order's, the Flock's, or his own.

Al still hadn't spoken when Scorpius took a deep breath, shrugged his shoulders, and suggested, "Why don't you just tell the Order where he is? Rose is right; this has been going on too long, and it's bigger than you, Al. It's bigger than any of us."

"Good suggestion," Al replied sarcastically, "I'll just tell you all where he is so that the Order can find him and save him, and I'll pay whatever due your _mother_ has in mind for me. No need to worry about what _I_ might want or what might be the best thing for _me_. You're right, Scorp, it is bigger than us. It's always been bigger than us, and that's exactly the problem. I don't want to be smaller than everyone else anymore."

He was looking directly at Scorpius as he said these words, but it was Rose who retorted, "You don't have to be. No one would even need to know where you got your information from, or the fact that this Felix Higgs character is really you. You could just say that you'd seen Wynn Traylor recently, and you think you might know where he was headed."

"No, I can't!" Al snapped at her. He had jumped off the bed and was now standing in the middle of the room, pacing like Scorpius always used to when he grew bored of Al and Rose's detective work. He hadn't realized until now what a disservice he'd done himself by letting Rose and Scorpius know so much about his work with Astoria, but he supposed that he never would have been able to hide it from them completely.

Plus, neither of them understood the whole truth, as was made clear when Scorpius took Al's place on the bed so that he could be closer to Rose and asked Al quietly, "Why not?"

Al sighed and rubbed a hand across his forehead before he answered more honestly than he had in months, "Because she'd kill me."

The entire room went utterly silent at that. It was even quieter than slipping into sleep or waking up from a dream, and Al couldn't stand it. The silence made him think about blood and death and choice, and he didn't want to think about any of that. So, he tried to distract himself from his own dizzying mind by turning to Rose and Scorpius and attempting to read their expressions.

He had once been quite good at being able to tell what each of them was thinking, but he was out of practice. Al didn't know what Rose was hiding behind her kind blue eyes and slowly slouching back, nor the unbreakable stare that Scorpius's ice was facing toward the floor. The strong, handsome boy looked defeated as he lost himself in a trance, and because he desperately wanted to know what Scorpius might be thinking, Al walked right in front of him and broke the daydream by asking simply, "What is it?"

Scorpius had to shake his head a few times before he glanced at Rose and then looked up at Al to say in a voice as impactful as water but as fragile as snow, "I'd die for you."

As Al's green met Scorpius's blue, the former wasn't quite sure at first what the latter was getting at. But the more he thought about it, with their eyes still locked together, the more Al believed that Scorpius was being completely truthful, and that he'd just revealed a piece of himself that Al had never understood. Al had just said insinuated that he wasn't willing to die in order to save his grandfather's life, and Scorpius was saying that _he_ would, and that he'd even die to save Al. And as Al broke his gaze and looked to Rose, whose lips were curled slightly so that they formed dimples in her cheeks, he knew that she would do the same.

"Well," Al stated to both of them as he prepared himself for the gap between them all to widen once more, "I suppose that's the fundamental difference between you and me, then. I value my life, and you don't value yours."

Rose was laughing breathily at this, rolling her eyes with the most judgment Al had ever seen her wear as she said to him, "But we do. We _do_ value our lives, Al."

She had Al's full attention by the time Scorpius finished for her, "We just don't value a life without you in it."

Before Al had spent enough time with them to let Rose and Scorpius's confession sink in, he was out the door and pounding down the stairs until he tripped on the second floor landing and bounced all the way to the bottom step. Once there, he decided not to make himself struggle or suffer by getting back up, so instead just sat down, taking his wand out of his pocket to try to mend a tiny scrape that his fall had given his knee.

But of course, the spell didn't work. The Elder Wand was being faulty yet again, and as if he could somehow tell that he was needed, Nigel was soon sitting beside Al on the bottom step of the staircase, examining the want just by looking at with infectious curiosity. Initially, Al felt rather uncomfortable to have the boy, whom he didn't know all that well, interrupt his breathing space, but when Al heard anxious whispering in all the other rooms and realized that there was no space to breathe here anyway, he let himself grow used to Nigel's company and waited for the kid to say something.

Eventually, Nigel plucked up the courage to ask Al (his eyes still on the wand that was sitting in Al's hand), "What's it like? I mean, how does it feel to perform spells with it?"

Al scoffed at that, because Nigel seemed much more impressed by the wand just from seeing it than Al had ever been from using it. "It's not as exciting as you might think," he answered, much to Nigel's dismay.

However, Nigel's disappointment didn't last long, for he was soon lost in his own train of thought before he told Al with more wisdom than Al had ever seen from a fifteen year old, "Sometimes, wands don't always do what they're told if their beholders aren't sure whether or not they truly want the wand to do it. And if the Elder Wand has ten times the power of any other, then I'd bet it needs ten times the certainty from its master."

Everything that Nigel was saying made perfect sense. Al wasn't sure of what he wanted because he'd been playing both sides. Every spell he'd performed had had two reasons behind it, and the Elder Wand couldn't function with such contradicting demand. The only exception to the rule had been Zephorien, because Al had had a plan then. He'd needed the binding to work, regardless of his fear of dragons, if only so that Astoria would rest easily and make it possible for Charlie to capture her in the middle of the night.

But this begged the question, what was Al's plan now? He didn't truly _want_ to murder his own grandfather, but he didn't want to die either. Surely, Astoria would need proof that Al had at least attempted to perform the Killing Curse on Arthur, but what if it didn't work? What if his wand knew not to perform the spell to its full accuracy, letting Arthur escape on his own accord while at the same time linking Al's wand to the spell that Astoria would need to see? What if two innocent lives could be spared rather than a single guilty one?

Smiling to himself because of his new plan, Al tried to show his gratitude to Nigel without giving anything away by asking him, "How do you know so much about wands anyway?"

"Actually, it's _wandlore_," Nigel corrected him with a friendly wink before adding, "And I've been practicing. In fact, I've even made a few wands of my own recently." Now, he was pulling a wooden stick out of his own back pocket and showing it to Al as if putting a precious jewel on display.

"That there's my latest try, after many failed attempts," explained Nigel. "Unfortunately, I haven't been able to test it yet, since I'm underage and all."

Suddenly, Al could see his plan falling perfectly into place, Nigel's wand completing the puzzle that had been plaguing him all night and day. But first, Al would need to get his hands on Nigel's invention, so he reached out for the wand and suggested, "Why don't I give it a go? I can test it out for you and tell you how it runs."

"Really?" asked Nigel as if flattered. Without waiting for confirmation, he handed over the wand and exclaimed, "That'd be great!" Then, just as they both started to hear footsteps coming from the top of the stairwell, Nigel stood up and told Al that he should probably go see how Hugo was doing.

Al let him go without question as he stared down at the two wands in his hands and prayed for things to work. He was just about to sneak out the front door when Rose and Scorpius spotted him on their way down the stairs and stopped him before he could leave. They didn't have a chance to chat for very long, though, since Harry also appeared to be heading out as he came thudding through the hallway with a look of determination on his face.

"Did you get a new lead?" Scorpius asked hopefully from his spot in the cramped entryway.

"Sort of, but it's not exactly what we were expecting," said Harry as he furrowed his eyebrows. After a slight pause, he looked around at the three teenagers and said, "Mercy found Felix Higgs... in Little Whinging."

Al could have sworn that his eyes popped out of their sockets at what Harry had said. It looked as though Rose and Scorpius were just as shocked as he was as Harry waived them off and said to Scorpius, "I'm going to go check things out for myself. You wait here with Ron in case you hear anything else."

Then he was gone, and Al tried with all his might to push aside the thought of Ilana's brother somehow getting caught up in all of this as he prepared for his own departure. He couldn't think about Ilana right now, not with everything else that was going on, including the fact that Al could see the sun setting through the hallway window, which meant that he didn't have more than a couple of hours before Astoria would come looking for him.

Rose and Scorpius, however, weren't so willing to watch him leave, especially after what Harry had just said about Felix. They cornered Al in front of the door so that he had no way of escape as Scorpius said to him, "I'm sorry, Al, but this is insane. You owe us an explanation, at the very least."

Groaning because they were just wasting time at this point, Al decided to tell them the truth (or at least part of it) so that they would back off. "Relax," he told Scorpius before turning to Rose and adding, "I have a plan. And I will tell you where to find him if you promise to give me one hour to secure my own safety." He wasn't going to tell them where _exactly_ the Rookwood house was located, but if he gave them a general vicinity, then Scorpius and the rest of the Order could find Arthur after Al set him free, and Astoria would never need to know how they learned about the place.

Scorpius agreed, though he probably would have agreed to just about anything at this point, and after Al told him to look in Cokeworth, the former and Rose finally let him leave the house. Then Al dashed for the end of the driveway in a full-out sprint before he stopped in his tracks and Apparated straight to Spinner's End.

This time, he didn't feel the slightest bit nauseous or dizzy as he hopped over the gate and rushed inside Knox's house, slamming the door shut behind him as soon as he was inside. He figured it was best not to give himself any time to catch his breath as he pounded through the hallway and down the stairs into the basement, since this way, he wouldn't give his brain enough oxygen to be able to second guess himself anymore.

Arthur was trapped on the same chair that Al had seen him in the night before, his eyes just barely open and his mouth dry and burnt from the hellebore that he'd managed to spit out at some point. But even with his open mouth, he didn't say anything as he used all the strength he had left in his starving body to turn toward Al and shift his eyes to see the face of his grandson. Arthur had said all that he'd wanted to through his struggle to gain Al's attention last night; he had nothing left to tell Al, and seemed to have no hope that anything he said would get through to the boy.

At least, Arthur didn't have any hope until Al finally let himself breathe so that he could say, "You're going to be fine." The words had been voiced as much to convince himself as to convince Arthur, but they completed both tasks. And as Al wrapped his right hand more tightly around the Elder Wand, Arthur creased his forehead until the dry blood on his skin started crackling as he waited for Al to explain his plan.

"I'm going to perform the curse," Al said with slightly panged confidence, "But it won't work. And once it bounces off of you, or gives you a little scratch but nothing more, or just does nothing at all, I'm going to give you a second wand so that you can escape on your own. Then I'm going to leave this place before anyone finds me, and the Order of the Phoenix will be waiting in town to take you back home. And once you're there, you won't say anything about my involvement with the Flock."

Al hadn't been able to look at Arthur much until he finished his short speech, when he realized that he needed some sort of confirmation from his grandfather. And that was exactly what Arthur gave him when his paternal side took over and made him say with a heartfelt nod, "I love you, Albus. Always."

Al reciprocated the nod as he held back his tears, gripped his wand firmly, pointed it toward Arthur's chest, looked straight into his grandfather's big blue eyes that were the exact same shade as Rose's, and took one last deep breath.

"_Avada Kedavra!" _said a voice that didn't belong to Al, and suddenly a spell emitting a single green spark was inching toward Arthur with unperceivable speed. Then the green was hitting his chest and infecting his skin like a virus, burrowing through his ribcage and straight into his heart, and then spreading through his veins like lightning striking a small body of water. And then everything was still, from Arthur's hand knit sweater, to his wrinkled forehead, to his big blue eyes.

But it hadn't been Al. The incantation hadn't come from Al's fearful voice, but rather a brave and assured voice that was deeper and huskier. The green spark hadn't stemmed from the Elder Wand, but rather a simple wooden stick stolen from Al's back pocket. Al hadn't killed Arthur. Knox had.

The world should have ended then. Everything and everyone should have died alongside Arthur, because he was their father, and he was their root. The earth should have stopped rotating, because it was far too heavy now that so much light had left its surface. The stars should have fallen, because surely they would need to bring this new star back to where he came from. The world should have ended, but it didn't, and Al should have stilled, but he didn't.

He was caught in a whirlwind of unstoppable motion as he flung around to face Knox, punched him in the nose and screamed, "_WHAT DID YOU JUST DO?"_

Once Knox regained his composure and spat out enough blood to be able to speak, he stepped toward Al, pointed at his own chest, and said, "I just saved your _life_! You would never have gone through with it, and Astoria would have killed you for it."

"No, you _bloody_ well didn't save my life, you tosser!" yelled Al. "I had a _plan!_ The spell wasn't going to work; we were both going to be _fine_!"

Knox looked at Al like he was insane for thinking such a thing as he considered Al's 'plan', and once he understood that Al had hoped to save both himself as well as Arthur, Knox just laughed and asked, "Are you really that naïve? Do you have any _idea_ what it takes to perform an Unforgivable Curse? I mean, out of all the people in the world, _you_ should know that Killing Curses don't just _fail_ or _rebound_. That kind of magic doesn't leave survivors, unless you thought that somehow you'd be able to repeat the history of your own family, which is a _daft_ notion even for a kid like you!"

"Fine, then!" Al fired back. He still hadn't gained control over his pounding and ever-changing emotions, but he did see what Knox was getting at. "You're right; I wouldn't have been able to do it. But at least if I hadn't, he would still be _alive!_"

"Yeah, and then what would _you_ be?" Knox asked almost furiously. He was far more loyal than Al had ever been, which was why he was looking out for the boy now; he needed to save his life because Al had saved his.

But Knox also knew Astoria better than Al did, because he'd worked with her longer. He had a better idea of what might have happened if he hadn't stepped in for Al, as he tried to explain by saying, "Look, Al, if you really want to turn your back on Astoria, so be it. Goodness knows that I'm not going to tell you to be her little slave if you can find a way out of it. But you should know that Astoria has a plan _far_ beyond anything you could ever dream of, so if you really want to try to ruin that for her, you at least need to _pick your moment_. And believe me, _this wasn't it_."

Al was lost for words now. He didn't know where he stood anymore, or what Knox was even talking about. All he knew was that his grandfather was lying dead on the floor behind him, in a poll of ancient blood that was on _his_ hands. It didn't matter if Knox had been the one to perform the spell that killed Arthur; Al had told him where to find the captive and had given him the wand to do it. Al had been the reason Astoria had ever ordered Wynn to kidnap Arthur in the first place. Al had chosen a side, whether he liked it or not, because now he was a true killer.

"Al? _AL!_" Knox was shaking Al's shoulders as he tried to keep Al from passing out, whether from shock or heat or hunger, Knox didn't know. But as he saw through the walls of his own house and into the street that was always empty except for this very moment when three wizards were walking down the center of it with locator spells that would lead them here at any moment, Knox slapped Al straight across his green-tinted cheeks and yelled, "We need to _leave! NOW!"_

Once he came to, Al let Knox drag him back upstairs, through the first floor hallway, and out the door onto the front steps, where Knox finally left him to transfigure into his rook self and fly away before anyone had the chance to lay an eye on him. Al, however, wasn't so lucky, since he staggered drunkenly across the Rookwoods' front walkway until he reached the gate and heard the calls of three eerily familiar voices.

Scorpius, Harry, and Ron were running down the street to catch up with him as they yelled words and sentences that Al couldn't quite make out. What he did understand was that he was currently positioned at the scene of a crime, and as a whole posse of Order members and Ministry reporters started filing out from the corners of the town to pay witness to Al's stance on the drive, he knew that now was the time to disappear.

He Apparated to the first five places that came to his mind, stopping momentarily on the White Cliffs of Dover before moving on to the creek behind the Weasley house, then the field of irises, then the London post office, and finally Grimmauld Place. His jumping would make it nearly impossible for Harry or the other Aurors to track him through the various Apparitions, and though he figured that his father might guess that he'd retreat to Grimmauld Place, Al no longer cared who came looking for him.

He was tired, hungry, and overheated, but that wasn't why Al was so exhausted. He was sad, guilt-ridden, and regretful, but that wasn't why he was no longer scared. He was picturing his mother's tears, his father's disappointment, and Hugo's anger, but those weren't the people whom he needed. The one person who could help him now was inside the house that he was about to walk into, because she was the only thing in this world that he hadn't ruined.

Al found Ilana at the end of the pitch black hallway, inside the kitchen. She was sitting on a chair at the side of the table closest to Al, her back facing him and her head set peacefully against the wood so that Al could only see one side of her gorgeous face, which was propped up slightly by the her left wrist, her right arm extended toward the center of the table.

As quietly as he could move so as not to wake her, Al sat in the chair beside Ilana's and laid his head on the table so that his open eyes were facing her closed ones. He stared at her and tried to think only of how beautiful she looked with her hair shining in the moonlight and her eyelashes fluttering from the dust, and slowly he stretched his own arm out toward hers so that he could hold her hand.

But just as Al was about to wrap his hand around Ilana's, he saw a flash of bloody red etched across her sink. After blinking a few times to make sure that he hadn't imagined it, Al turned his eyes upward and found the permanent scar that had penetrated Ilana's pale flesh with the word, 'Mud-blood'.

As Al's stomach began to crawl and his head started to spin, he let the blood seep into his own skin and take full control of his thoughts. How had he been ignoring its presence for so long? How had he refrained from smelling its coppery scent as it burned through Ilana's skin and seared into his? When had he decided that his choices had nothing to do with her while Ilana had told him time and time again that they couldn't be together? Why had he not felt the need to know Ilana's secrets when they were so incredibly linked to his? Why was it that right now, as he was looking down on a Muggle-born, Al was the one who felt like his blood had turned to mud?

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_**Note: **I don't know what to say about all of that. Trust me, it was just as hard to write Arthur's death as it was for you all to read it, but I hope you can understand why it needed to be done for the story. Also, I know a lot of you have guessed over the past few chapters that Ilana was a Muggle-born, so congrats on picking up on that, but I promise you that there is a lot more to her story (most of which will revealed in the next chapter, which should be uploaded around **August 6th**). Meanwhile, here comes your next hint for **Part 4**...__  
_

_**Hint #2:** Part 4 will follow the perspectives of multiple characters, rather than just one. ;)  
_

_Thank you so much for reading, and please let me know what you thought of this chapter in a review!  
_

_-Hailey  
_


	29. The Rogue Lover

**_Note: _**_Thanks again for the reviews on the last chapter. __I cannot believe that the penultimate chapter of Part 3 is already here, but alas, it is. I have been picturing the scenes in this chapter for a very long time, so I hope that they come across on the page as well as they did in my own head. ;) Anyway, please enjoy!_

_-Hailey  
_

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**29 – The Rogue Lover**

There was something so easy, almost natural, about lying to everyone when none of them had any idea that they were being lied to. It was when the suspicion came that the lying grew difficult, unnatural, and painful. But even with the pain, lying was still far easier than being lied to, and it wasn't until a person was on the receiving end of a lie that they understood the difference.

Al was sitting in the corner of the kitchen in the Black family home, crouched on the floor beside the fireplace and staring at the girl whose head was still flat on the table – the girl he wondered if he'd ever known at all. He wasn't sure when or how he had moved from the chair beside her to the other side of the room, but he did know _why_ he had felt the need to further the distance between himself and Ilana. He was terrified of her, not because of what she'd kept from him, but because of what _he'd _kept from her, and all the reasons_ she_ had to be terrified of him. She was the last person he'd ever wanted to scare off.

He watched her from his spot on the floor for hours until those hours became all night. His thoughts vacillated between Arthur's death and Ilana's secret, because Al couldn't decide which thought was worse. He didn't understand how he had let any of it happen. He didn't know when he had become so oblivious to the lives of those whom he cared about, and what effect his decisions might have on them. He wanted to pinpoint the moment he had forgotten about essential things like safety just so that he could fill his own life with a little danger.

So, he just stayed there, rocking himself against the wall so that he wouldn't fall asleep from the stillness as he listened to Ilana's quiet breathing and was reminded that his grandfather could no longer make such a sound. Al watched the sun rise and shine through the east-facing window as the rays of percolated light hit the scar on Ilana's arm and wondered how she had hid it from him. He watched her stir as her eyelids fluttered open and her green met his for the hundredth time, but for the first time, he wondered where those green eyes had come from. He wondered who her family was and where she lived and what she was like as a child. The only thing he didn't once ask himself was just how much she knew about him, and how she had been able to ignore it the same way that he'd ignored his not knowing about her.

"You're back," Ilana said as her head slowly rose from the table but her eyes remained locked with Al's. It didn't take long for her to sense that things had changed between them. They hadn't seen each other in over a week, but she knew just as well as he did that their time apart wasn't the problem. Being separated usually made them feel even more connected once they reunited, like she was a tree and he was the wind getting caught in her branches. But right now, they didn't feel connected at all. Now, she was the slowly dying grass in a torrid field, and he was the rain that refused to fall.

Al remained expressionless as he waited for Ilana to understand what he had just discovered, and eventually she looked away from him to glance down at her bare arm. She stared at the scar in the same way that Al had before – like it was the first time she was seeing it, and like nothing had ever looked darker against her snowy skin.

"Why didn't you tell me?" asked Al before he spent another hour staring at her without getting any answers. It wasn't really the first thing he wanted to know, but it was the easiest question to start with, since it was the only one he already knew the answer to.

Ilana looked up from her arm and responded just the way he'd thought she would, shrugging her shoulders rather innocently and asking, "Why would you have needed to know?"

And this was where things grew complicated, because normally, Al wouldn't have needed to know. In a normal world, there wouldn't have been a problem in discovering that his girl came from a Muggle family, other than the part where she'd omitted the truth from him for the whole year that he'd known her. But they were no longer living in a normal world, and Al was no normal wizard. What he needed to know to continue the conversation was how much of that Ilana understood. Like everything, she knew about the kind of danger she was in, for the entire wizarding world was well versed in the subject of Astoria, the Forbidden Flock, and what its motives were. But did she know the role that Al was playing in all of it? After all, _she_ was the one who'd provided the ingredients to brew the potion that had subsequently marked her very skin, and _she_ was the one who'd finally come to him even after all of her speeches about their not being good for each other. Did she know then just how close she was getting to her own enemy?

But as Al thought about what he should say next, he heard rustling coming from inside the chimney beside him, so he stood up in fright and faced the open fireplace with curiosity as Ilana took her place beside him. When a soot-covered letter landed in the ashes, Al leaned down to pick it up, but Ilana swatted her hand over his and grabbed the letter herself, saying at him with warning, "It's for _me_."

She tried to turn away from him as she blew the black off the paper and then opened it with surprisingly steady hands, but she couldn't hide from Al anymore. He looked at every one of her motions differently now that he had a reason to read into her story. He saw those steady hands and thought that they must have come from the piano playing or the potion making, and he saw the bangles around her left wrist and wondered who had given them to her, and he saw the letter and remembered all the other letters that he'd seen her write before, but had never once asked her about.

"Who's it from?" he said, finally giving in to the thing he'd never realized that he wanted to know. He wasn't ashamed of his snooping, even when Ilana's eyes shifted frantically as she read and she put her thumb to her lips as if she was about to start biting her nails, a nervous habit that Al had never noticed before, but one that he recognized now, because it was one that he shared with her.

Once she finished reading, Ilana crumpled the letter and threw it into the ashes before pointing her wand toward the paper and lighting it on fire. Without answering him or saying anything at all, she turned around and walked out of the kitchen, marching through the hallway until she had her hand on the front doorknob and was ready to leave.

Luckily, Al had expected that too, since they were always walking away from each other, so he was at the door before she was. Blocking it with his back, he resisted the urge to grab Ilana by the neck and kiss her, which was growing alongside his frustration, and asked again, "_Who_ is it from?" This time, he said the words with threat and fury, especially so when he added, "Who are they _all_ from?"

Ilana, who was just as persistent as she always was, tried to push him away so that she could reach the door, but he clutched her wrist with more force than he'd meant to and didn't let go until she stared back at his pleading eyes and answered finally, "It's from my sister. They're _all_ from my sister."

Al didn't have to ask her to repeat the words in order to believe them. He and Ilana were liars, because they lied to each other every day, but the ironic thing was that they lied through silence, because everything they actually said to one another was always the truth. And much like Al hadn't questioned the apparent existence of a brother that Ilana had failed to mention until recently, he didn't question the existence of a sister that she was mentioning now.

They were still looking at each other, their silence seeming even louder than Al's tense hold on Ilana's stinging arm, when Ilana said through clenched teeth, "I have to go."

"No," Al told her with a shake of his hand. She couldn't go yet, not when he still had so many questions for her. They weren't over. They couldn't be. She was all he had left. So, as he tried to come up with some excuse that would make her stay, he thought about what kind of chaos the Ministry was sure to be in at the moment and said, "It's not safe out there."

"It isn't?" asked Ilana as she raised her eyebrows. And though Al wasn't sure if it was the first time she had ever done so in front of him or if it was just the first time he'd had his eyes open enough to notice, he couldn't help but listen to her as her lips started trembling and her eyes filled with water. He completely let go of his hold over her when she added, "It can't be any less safe out there than it is right here."

Al didn't have time to refute her before the door was slamming in his face and she was on the other side of it. But when he realized what she might have meant behind her final words, he nearly went out the door himself to follow her, because clearly she knew more about him than she liked to let on. He had his own hand on the doorknob now and was about to turn it, however, when he realized that he couldn't leave.

Now that it was morning, Al was surely front-page news. Even if Harry had for whatever reason attempted to protect him like when he had hid Al's presence at the Weasley attack last Christmas, there was no way he'd be able to hide all the photos that had caught Al walking outside the Rookwood house only moments after Arthur's death. He'd be a wanted suspect by now, and so Grimmauld Place really had turned into his personal safe house.

Still, he couldn't very well let Ilana go without knowing if he'd ever see her again, so he tried to come up with an idea to get out of this place without being caught as he made his way back to the kitchen. And just as he was about to collapse onto the table, he heard the door opening and told himself to walk slowly down the hallway so as not to give away his relief to see Ilana return to him. As it turned out, he needn't have worried about such, since it wasn't Ilana who was standing in the entryway wanting to talk; it was James.

Al hadn't realized that it was raining outside until he saw the pellets of water dripping from James's messy brown hair, and now the drops from outside were all he could hear. Al hadn't let himself cry until he noticed the red marks around James's eyes, and now he had a steady stream of tears running down his own cheeks. Al hadn't allowed the thought of his family losing a member to penetrate his mind until he was faced with a member of his family who was still alive, and now all he could think about was how much more deserving of death Al was than any other Weasley or Potter.

Once James brushed some of the water out of his hair and took off his sopping coat, he stood still in the entryway and looked straight at Al for a short eternity. The brothers were trying to read the other's thoughts the same way Al had been reading Ilana's motions before, and though neither of them had ever been able to, they almost felt closer to accomplishing such now than they ever had before. They wouldn't have been able to explain it, to themselves or to anyone else, but somehow Al's transgressions had brought them closer together, like a storm carrying seeds of flowers to a barren field. After everybody else in Al's family had been driven away, James was the only person who stood a chance at getting through to him.

But that didn't change the fact that, like every other wizard in the world, James wanted answers. And because he was Al's brother, he actually deserved them, which was why he gave in and asked without any build-up or skipping around the subject, "Did you do it?"

For the same reasons that James had asked the question, Al answered in the only way he knew how. "No. No, I didn't do it. I only feel like I did."

James, who had his hands stashed in his jean pockets, nodded once in acceptance of Al's statement before walking past him and down the hallway until he came to the stair landing, where he sat down on the bottom step and waited for Al to join him there. Even though Al still desperately wanted to find Ilana, he followed his brother as if under the Imperius Curse, and he couldn't help but enjoy the temporary feeling of having absolutely no choice in the matter.

The two boys faced the house-elf heads on the wall as Al asked, "When did you get here?" He didn't literally mean Grimmauld Place, but rather England, since James had been shacking up with Lysander in Scotland for half of the summer. Lily had supposedly been there as well, at least over the past few days following the Quidditch European Cup.

"A few hours ago," answered James with just as little emotion as had been in his previous question. "I've been at the Burrow." It was quickly becoming clear to Al that James was done getting angry. He had been waiting for the blow-up, and though Al wasn't certain that this was it, he was sure that it would arise fairly soon, and James was keeping his promise. He was there.

Thinking of the Burrow where his grandparents had lived and realizing how much less of a home it would feel like without Arthur there, but still wanting to know that the rest of his family was okay, Al asked, "Everyone's there? Mum, Rose, Lily?"

"They're all there," confirmed James. "Lily had a bit of a breakdown when I told her after hearing word from Mum, which got me worried at first. But then I saw Ron and Hugo, and that's when I realized that Lily didn't have it bad at all."

Of course, Ron and Hugo would be taking the news worse than anyone else. Ron was the boy who'd been born to a mother still craving a daughter, but Arthur had always been proud of his youngest son. And Al could have guessed about Hugo, particularly after what had happened at the Bird's Nest yesterday, though he still wasn't sure when Hugo had grown so close to Arthur.

Still, hearing about all of their struggles wasn't exactly what Al had been hoping to get out of James, which was why he asked, "Are you trying to make me feel even guiltier? Because, believe me, I don't need to."

"Actually, I think you might," James said with his first sign of aggression as he finally turned away from the elves to face Al. "Let's be honest; it doesn't seem to have sunk in yet."

Al was looking back at him now, trying to counteract his theory through his wounded expression alone, though he knew even more so than James did that the theory was correct. Still, he didn't actually say anything to refute before James let his head fall some and added, "Anyway, that's not what I meant to get across. The guilt will come, but right now, I think what you should really be feeling is fear."

Albus immediately understood that it wasn't who _was_ at the Burrow that was important; it was who _wasn't_ there. To make sure he was on the right track, he asked simply, "Dad?"

"No," James said with raised eyebrows, just as surprised at Harry's indifference as Al was. "Dad's stuck at the Ministry with Mercy. Apparently, they have things that need to be sorted out at the moment. But Scorpius has gone mental; Rose said that he was the only one who went after you from Spinner's End, and he's been tracking you ever since. I suppose you're safe here, but once Dad's done with his work, I'm sure he'll lead Scorpius to the right place, and that's a team you don't want to mess with."

"I can handle them," Al argued defensively before he had time to think through his words. Truthfully, he was no much for his father, especially when Scorpius was added to the mix. But he had spent years convincing himself that he was in fact just as powerful as the Chosen One, because for whatever reason, he'd always felt like he needed that power just to feel like a true Potter.

"Oh, please!" James called his bluff. "You're just a _kid_. We _all_ are. And as much as I've tried to disprove the fact, Dad _isn't_."

Al was rolling his eyes at this point, because he didn't want to hear any more praise for his father, particularly from James, who'd never gotten along especially well with Harry himself. But as James ignored Al's reaction and continued his speech, Al found himself listening for the same reasons he hadn't wanted to initially – because James was the only person in Al's life who knew exactly how it felt to be Harry Potter's son.

"He may not understand any of us half the time, but you know him, Al. You know that he always does what he thinks is _right_, and sometimes his decisions pan through, and sometimes they don't. But that's just the thing – he has this hero complex because of the prophecy that he was born into, so he can't accept it when he makes a mistake, and I don't think you've ever been able to either. You expect him to be perfect because that's what he expects of himself, and whenever he does something wrong, you punish him by making an even bigger mess of yourself and seeing if he can clean it up. And I think it's time for you to decide whether or not you're going to let him."

Al didn't say anything even after James finished speaking. He just sat there, silently considering the suggestion. He thought about all the things he'd done behind Harry's back just to prove that he could be his own person, and how many mistakes he'd made through his wrong decisions. James was right that Al had been testing their father, and that the more Harry believed in him, the more Al pulled away, and the less he believed in himself. But at least Harry still knew who he was, because Al was beginning to feel like he had no idea who he was even supposed to be. In fact, the only time he ever felt content with himself was when he was with Ilana.

Ilana. She was the person he needed to see. Al needed to talk to her again before he faced what was waiting for him outside, because he needed to explain himself, and he needed to make sure that he'd still have her regardless of what happened to him in the near future. She was the last speck of truth in a web of lies, and he needed to know that she'd still be there when things became even more tangled than they already were.

So, he was right back to where he'd been before James had shown up, wracking his brain for some way to go looking for Ilana without being caught by anyone out on the streets. Only now, Al didn't give up on finding an idea so quickly, since the solution was staring right at him from underneath James's baggy sweater.

Cutting to the chase just like James had when he'd arrived, Al asked his brother, "D'you think I could borrow the Invisibility Cloak?"

Along with the Marauders' Map, James was ridiculously possessive of Harry's old cloak, and he didn't loan it out to just anyone. Usually, Al was not on the list of trusted borrowers, but he had a feeling that James would be sympathetic at a time like this, and as it turned out, he was.

"Fine," said James, lifting his sweater ever so slightly so that he could pull the cloak out and hand it to Al. "But just so you know, I wouldn't recommend going after her. She didn't look like she wanted to be found."

Al hadn't registered that James must have seen Ilana as she was heading down the steps from the house, but his observation didn't change Al's plan in the slightest. He was just as adamant to find Ilana as he'd ever been when he stood from the step, led James back to the door, and paraphrased the words that James had recently said to him with, "You were right. It's gotten bloody hard _bloody _fast, and you have no idea how literally I mean that. Right now, I _need_ to find out if we love each other enough to keep fighting for what we have."

With one last sigh of disapproval, James gave in and threw the cloak over Al's head as he told him, "Just be careful out there. I swear it doesn't feel like the same world it was yesterday."

Al could only imagine just how different things were outside, but before long, he didn't have to imagine it. Even under the Invisibility Cloak, he had to be discreet so as not to give away his presence through the oddly shaped hole in the rain, but the back alleys were open enough to give Al the perfect view of the world. And as he and James went their separate ways, Al found himself wandering through a darkened London that almost seemed as if it had lost its sense of purpose.

Perhaps the rain was fogging his vision slightly, but Al was fairly certain that he saw Muggles staring through their apartment windows and looking up at the sky as if awaiting an imminent monster attack. The streets were covered in mud, with the sewers too filled with dirty rainwater to collect any more through the open pipes. Worst of all, newspapers from both the Muggle and magical worlds were floating atop the water like driftwood along a river, and sure enough, it was Al's photo on all of their front pages.

Al tried to ignore his guilt-stricken face staring back at him as he searched frantically for a real estate office. He only needed to find one of the windows he had passed by countless times before – the ones with the photos of houses that were for sale in Muggle suburbs. Ilana hadn't ever told him where she lived, and now of course, he understood that she must not come from a wizarding village like he did. The only problem was that he didn't know of many Muggle areas, so he hoped that the pictures might somehow trigger a memory inside him that linked back to Ilana.

He was coming up on the Leaky Cauldron – the pub that served as the secret entrance into Diagon Alley – when he finally found one of the windows he'd been looking for. He stopped for a minute to peruse the various pictures and descriptions of Muggle houses and neighborhoods, finding homes for sale in Notting Hill, Waterloo, and eventually Surrey, where his eyes stopped moving as they locked onto a light brown house with dark shingles on Wisteria Walk in a town called Little Whinging.

Al had an aunt, uncle, and younger cousin in Little Whinging, since Harry had in fact grown up there. Even more curiously, though, Knox had killed a few Muggles there last fall (under Astoria's orders, of course), and Ilana had been distracted and concerned the whole week following, as if she had suspected that those Muggles may have come from her family. Al hadn't thought anything of it before, since they hadn't even been together at the time, but now he was positive that Little Whinging was in fact where she lived.

Getting ready to Apparate by gripping the cloak around his chest, Al turned around slowly to make sure no one was around to hear the pop, but stopped in his tracks when he saw an eagle perched atop the hanging sign of the post office that sat across the street. It was a rare sight to see a live eagle anywhere in England, let alone the city center of London, but Al was sure that this was the type of bird he was looking at now.

Her body was about three times the size of the average pigeon, with a wingspan that stretched far further, and was mainly white with only a few feathers speckled gold. She had yellow eyes like a snake and short toes that could just barely curl around a post the size of a flagpole, but none of that gave her identity away. What finally did was the obnoxious squawking that made all of her golden feathers stand on edge in the exact same way her human hair would when she was out of her Animagus form.

Once Al had deciphered that the bird was in fact Vega, the Forbidden Flock's head war strategist, she flew off as her eagle self until she was sitting in the outer windowsill of the Leaky Cauldron and was tapping her gray beak against the glass. Understanding what she was trying to tell him, and assuming that her supernormal eyes must have used the rain well to find him under the cloak, Al opened the door of the pub and walked inside.

There weren't many people indoors, though Al did recognize two teenagers seated at a long table in the middle of the main room. He tried to stealthily pass by a haggard-looking Colin Creevey as the boy looked around at the slamming door and then pushed up on his table to try to catch sight of the muddy footprints that were slowly covering the wooden floor and taking the shape of a non-existent pair of boots.

Al stopped walking in hopes that it would make Colin's suspicion wear off when the latter boy pointed to the footsteps and asked the girl sitting across from him, "Do you see those? Where are they coming from?"

"Oh, I can only hope they're the marks of my mother's spirit!" said Holly Longbottom rather excitedly. Al had momentarily forgotten that Hannah Abbott, Holly's deceased mother, had once been the landlady of the Leaky Cauldron, so it made sense that Holly would come here fairly often during the summer, especially if she wanted to show her crush where she'd grown up.

Holly's remark seemed to distract Colin enough for Al to finally move on without being mentioned again, though he listened in on their conversation for a while longer as Colin laughed and said to Holly, "I hope so, too. But speaking of spirits, have you heard from any of the Weasleys lately? Nigel's been worried sick; he says Hugo locked himself up in a bathroom at his grandmother's house and won't come out for anyone." He spoke with perfect authority to the girl, which Al couldn't help but notice, since he was used to Colin stuttering whenever he talked to anyone at Hogwarts.

"I haven't heard a peep, though I didn't expect to. He was a fantastic teacher, too – Professor Weasley," replied Holly, with far more normalcy than she usually displayed. But of course, she had real experience with death, so it was one of the few matters of life that she took seriously. "Is he there now? Nigel, I mean."

"Yeah, he's there," Colin confirmed. "He saw Hugo yesterday to make sure he was all right after hearing about Mr. Weasley's disappearance, and he stayed with them after they all got word of the murder."

Holly sighed sympathetically upon hearing this. She wasn't close with Hugo, since they had always been far too different to ever get along well, but she still didn't appreciate hearing about anyone going through such pain. Thinking such, she mumbled suddenly, "We should send them one of Luna's Dirigible plums. It will help them accept things."

"Maybe," said Colin, though Al could tell by his stilled brown eyes that he was thinking of something else entirely. Still lost in thought, he kept his eyes on the table as he changed the subject with, "But you know, Nigel told me the strangest thing in his letter this morning. He said that he didn't want to leave Hugo so soon, and that he needed me to give Harry Potter a statement about Al's apparent involvement with the murder."

Holly was listening closely as Colin elaborated, "He said he thinks that the wand Al was using at the time might have been one that _he_ made."

Al had been leaning on the end of the table this entire time, but hearing about Nigel's statement nearly made him topple into a chair and cause a giant stir. Luckily, he caught himself before he made any loud noises as he overheard Holly ask Colin, "So, are you going to tell Harry?"

"I think I have to," answered Colin. "I mean, I don't want our family implicated in this all over again, but according to Nigel, the Ministry should be able to use Mr. Weasley's body to track the spell back to the wand that produced it, just like you can take a wand and see the last spell it performed."

Al was out the back door before they said anything more, because he didn't want to hear any of it. He didn't want to _know_ any of it. At this point, it didn't matter what he did, because between the photos from last night and Nigel's statement from this morning, the Ministry wouldn't even need to question Al before naming him the true murderer of Arthur Weasley. After all, the Killing Curse _had_ in fact come from Nigel's wand, even if Al hadn't been the one to procure it.

He was almost too concentrated on his own fear to notice the tiny, yet almost fluorescent blue jay stooped on a pile of _Quibbler_ magazines on the other side of the brick wall that separated Diagon Alley from the Muggle world. There weren't enough people around here to notice the odd opening of the portal without anyone actually coming through it, and so the Animagus version of Ryder Rookwood made her presence known by flying toward Al and flapping her wings against the rain right in front of his face.

After backing up some, Ryder flew furiously down the street, passing the Apothecary and Owl Emporium so quickly that Al had to run after her just to keep up, but eventually she floated down onto a lamp post across from Gringotts Wizarding Bank and jerked her head toward the blackened street known as Knockturn Alley.

Al tried to swallow his hesitance as he made his way down the narrow walkway that Ryder had instructed him to follow. He'd never been down this way before, not once on his many trips to Diagon Alley over the years, and he was rather thankful for not breaking the promise to his parents to stay away until now, since it wasn't exactly the type of place in which Al thought he'd enjoy spending his time.

There were only a couple of witches and wizards around, all dressed in their own versions of dark robes with black hoods, pledging their abhorrent loyalty to the Flock by trying to dress in Astoria's uniform, but it was the run-down buildings with creaking doors that made Al's head spin. He was looking in every possible direction as he tried to catch sight of a rook, thinking that he was being led to Knox, and hoping in fact that he might get a chance to talk to Rookie, if only to gloat the fact that his plan to help Al had clearly failed miserably.

But Al never found a rook, and he never found Knox in human form either. Instead, he saw what was surely the last bird in the line when he came across the snow petrel sitting tranquilly atop the silver doorknob of a shop called Borgin and Burke's. Al hadn't known what Wynn's Animagus form was before, but there was no mistaking the white color of the bird now staring back at him; it was as light as the fluffiest cloud, and the exact same shade of Wynn's human skin.

As Al approached the door, Wynn flew off, allowing Al to head inside on his own. He didn't let himself take in the sight of the frightening room he was standing in before making sure all the curtains were closed so that nobody could see inside, and then he took off his cloak swiftly and stuffed it under his shirt. By the time he turned around, more of his attention was focused on the woman standing before him than the evil masks and rusty instruments he was surrounded by.

"_Beautiful _day, isn't it?" mused Astoria thoughtfully as she traced her fingers over a shriveled hand that seemed to emit light into the shop with a single touch.

"Yes," Al said sarcastically. "It's quite stunning, really."

"Don't be so petulant, Albus." Astoria was walking toward him at this point, twirling a brand new wand in her hand as she faced Al to say, "You did exactly as I asked of you. And for that, you have regained my trust. So, tell me, what could you _possibly_ have to sulk about?"

Al knew what she was doing. She was trying to get him to admit that he missed his grandfather, that he had never wanted to kill him, and maybe even that he hadn't been the one to kill him after all. Because naturally, Astoria had never believed that Al would go through with her task for him, and so he had to be careful not to say anything that might discredit all the evidence that pointed toward him. Instead, he decided to use that evidence to deepen Astoria's newfound trust.

Admitting that he was in a terrible mood, Al spat at her, "Oh, I don't know, maybe the fact that the _entire_ Order of the Phoenix is out looking for me, and that I could end up in Azkaban in a matter of hours for a crime that I committed under _your_ command!"

"Relax," Astoria said with a chuckle. Al was even tenser than usual, but Astoria seemed surprisingly calm. Al knew that she'd felt little value in his company as of late, but he still thought that she might be slightly unnerved by the idea of losing him so soon. Surely, she had bigger plans for him; otherwise, she would never have offered him a second chance.

When Al finally let his back curve over and stopped hunching his shoulders, Astoria put a hand on his arm and explained, "I understand why you might be concerned, though I can't very well support your decision to stand in the middle of the road for all the world to see after committing such a crime."

Of course, _he_ was to blame. Al should have grown used to such by now, but he was pleasantly surprised when Astoria's tone went from condescending to reassuring as she said, "But if you must know, you have nothing to worry about with the Order, or the whole of the Ministry, for that matter."

"What do you mean?" Al asked. Had she not been outside enough over the past twelve hours to catch even a single glance of the _Daily_ _Prophet_ headlines? "I'm already _wanted_ for _murder_!"

"No, Albus. You're _wanted_ for _questioning._" Astoria corrected him. "You might want to read your own articles next time. But if I must always do your research for you, I suppose I should inform you that those photographs that are being spread around offer absolutely no proof that you are guilty, especially when taken into context. After all, you have no previous ties to the Forbidden Flock or the man responsible for kidnapping Weasley in the first place, thanks to your father's impressive cover-up."

It was true that Harry had hid all evidence of Al's presence at the Weasley attack, but that didn't mean that he couldn't release such information now, considering he himself had been a witness. But Astoria read right through Al's thoughts, answering his question before he could ask. "He won't reveal the best of you, Al. It would ruin his own reputation, and you know he can't have that."

Still, Al wasn't completely convinced. Thinking of Nigel's upcoming statement, he asked with concern, "But what if they link the body back to my wand? Then, with that and the photos, they'll already have two giant pieces of evidence to use against me; are you telling me that that isn't enough?"

"Yes, that is exactly what I'm telling you. They'll still need a _link_, or even a witness, to give you a full sentence, which will only happen if they ever actually find you. I must admit, you're doing a far better job hiding yourself than I would have predicted."

Al didn't thank her for the compliment. His thoughts were too focused on the idea of never being found, which terrified him in every sense of the word, even more so when Astoria added, "And so long as you stay close to me, you can continue hiding. You won't have to reveal yourself until you're more powerful than all of your adversaries combined."

"Are you offering to train me?" Al was caught off guard by the suggestion, since although Astoria had looked out for him before, she'd never truly taken him under her wing the way she had with Knox, and even the other priority Flock members. After all, she'd been the one to provide support through their first transformations into their Animagus forms, and she'd been the one to teach them all how to fly. The only thing she'd ever taught Al was how to fall.

"I'm offering to _protect_ you," Astoria made herself clear. "You might think of the training as a sort of bonus."

Al considered the offer. He didn't want to at first, but what choice did he have? James had been right; he could either let Harry clean up _his_ mess, which would no doubt involve having to testify at the Department of Mysteries and quite possibly use Knox as collateral damage to save himself, or he could stay with Astoria and forget about ever seeing his family again. He was at yet another crossroad, and he didn't like either of the two directions he was being offered, mostly because he still didn't know where Ilana stood in all of it. And yet again, Al didn't feel as though either choice was his own, except when it came to Ilana. When it came to her, he _felt_ all of the wrong that he'd done, because _he'd_ done it, and it didn't have to do with anyone else. _He'd_ given her that scar and _he'd _put her in this perilous position, and he only hoped that with her help, he could get her out of it. And maybe, just maybe, she could get him out of his.

He wasn't sure how long he'd stayed silent until Astoria spoke up once more. "Are you ready, then?" she asked, assuming that he couldn't refuse her offer.

"Not yet. I have to do something first," said Al, not wanting to make her think that he was refusing her while at the same time buying himself some more lee-way. Realizing that he'd need to know where she would be now that the Rookwood house had been discovered, though, he quickly asked, "Where might I find you once I'm finished?"

"Here is fine," she answered cordially, her eyes scanning Al for some sign of deception. When she didn't find any, she shrugged her paranoia aside and said, "I bought the store a few years back from Wynn's uncle."

Al wasn't the least bit surprised that Astoria owned the shop they were currently standing in; she owned a lot more where that came from. He didn't have any reason to stay and chat further, either, so within seconds, he was back under James's cloak and was on his way outside.

He was about to Apparate to Little Whinging as planned when Al decided to make a pit-stop at Grimmauld Place, just to see if Ilana had decided to return. Soon, he was back inside the gray house and was pleased to see that Ilana was waiting for him there, though his relief wore off relatively quickly when she stood from her seat on the floor of the hallway and turned to face him with eyes as bright as the Killing Curse.

"You're back," said Al timidly just as she had said to him that morning, only now their roles had been reversed. _She_ was furious and _she_ was terrified, and he was just waiting for her to tell her what he'd done wrong.

Her expression held only anger, but Ilana somehow managed to control it as she addressed Al rather calmly by rubbing her eyes and saying, "I just came from the Ministry."

That caught Al's attention like nothing had all day, for the same reasons the sole sight of her Mud-blood scar had scared him so much when he'd first laid eyes on it. Ilana was the only person who hadn't been involved in anything having to do with the Flock or the Order; she didn't belong to a side, because she only ever belonged to herself, and Al wanted things to stay that way. In fact, he even wanted to join her there, so long as she'd have him. But now, it sounded as if it might be too late, because she claimed that she'd just been to the Ministry of Magic, and to Al, that was the same thing as saying she'd chosen a side.

Things only grew less clear to Al when Ilana's fury took over and she tried to take deep breaths in between her next request. "_Please_, Potter, enlighten me on why I just picked up my _father_ from being interrogated by _your father _for being a possible member of the Forbidden Flock! Because before now, I was _fine_ with having no answers, but dragging my _family_ into this – into whatever _nonsense _is going on with you right now? That's a line I _cannot_ let you cross."

Her face was inches from his as her impure blood flooded her forehead, but Al held his hands up in surrender as he said honestly, "Higgs, I have no idea what you're talking ab-" but paused, letting his eyes linger to the floor, when he realized that he might have an idea of what was going on after all.

Blinking profusely as he attempted to sort through everything that was running through his head, Al recalled something his father had said yesterday about Mercy having found a Felix Higgs that matched Charlie's description in Little Whinging. Then Al thought about where his fake name had come from, remembering when Ilana had told him about her brother, and when she'd also mentioned that her father had the same name. Finally, he considered the disguise he'd used in Romania, and the hair he'd collected from that Muggle postman in London, and suddenly all of the pieces fit.

Ilana was waiting nervously for an explanation by the time Al finally collected his thoughts and asked with closed eyes and a deep sigh, "Does your father happen to work in a post office?"

He opened his eyes to see Ilana squinting at him with even more confusion than she'd shown before, combined with something that was far worse – blame. And Al could feel that blame searing into his chest as she said, "Yes. _Why?_"

Al licked his lips in preparation for the conversation that was about to take place, trying to warn Ilana by suggesting, "You might want to sit down for this." She knew things already – bits and pieces of information that she had chosen to ignore so that she could be with him without feeling betrayed – but he was about to tell her everything… he was about to ruin it.

Much to Al's surprise, however, Ilana didn't head to the kitchen where they could confer in a business-like fashion, or even slouch onto the floor where she'd be close enough to hit him if things got out of hand. Instead, she stayed right where she was, her expression turning gentle once more as she put a hand on Al's cheek and traced a finger around one of his eyes in a wide circle. Just as he was beginning to feel that unavoidable fire that always seemed to burn between them, wondering to himself how they could possibly be so drawn to each other when they were about to be torn apart, she replaced her hand with her lips, kissing the shadowy bags beneath his eyes like they were handfuls of powdery snow that she could blow into the wind before whispering in his ear, "Just tell me. Just tell me the truth."

He started at the end of his story, explaining how he had used the Polyjuice Potion to impersonate her father, Felix Higgs, without realizing at the time who he was actually impersonating, nor that he happened to be using the correct name for the postman. He told Ilana why his photo was in the papers, and that he had been asked to kill his own grandfather, but that he hadn't gone through with it in the end, regardless of what the Order might think. He told her that he'd been working with Astoria officially since January, but that he didn't have the same beliefs that she did regarding Muggle-borns. He told her that he'd done everything for reasons that he couldn't even explain to himself anymore, and that it had all spiralled out of control. He told her that he'd done all that Astoria had ever asked of him because he was afraid that she'd kill him if he didn't, and that one of those tasks had been brewing the potion that had given Ilana the scar now permanently etched into her arm. He told her everything. He told her the truth.

In return, she listened. She didn't interrupt a single time through his story, nor did she react in any over-dramatic way. She just looked at him and listened, accepting the fact that he'd been working with Astoria like she'd surely suspected of him, as well as the origins of her scar having started with him. She didn't look away until he finished, just after providing her with the details of Astoria's marking ceremony, when Ilana curled over her arm so that she could see the scar for herself.

Watching her and the way she looked at the red lines that meant so much more than the word they formed, Al said slowly, "Maybe, if I had known, things could have been different." He wanted to say that he wouldn't have gone through with the marking had he known then about Ilana's blood status, but he wasn't entirely sure that that was the truth. He had branded eleven year-old kids and sixteen year-old classmates with that same scar, and he hadn't thought much about the consequences at the time. Would things have really been any different if he'd known that Ilana was one of those kids, that she was one of those classmates?

He wasn't able to consider the idea or formulate an answer for himself before Ilana finally spoke up again, saying with light laughter in the back of her throat, "You think things would have been different?" She was back to looking at Al, and he actually shrugged in response as she shook her head and added, "Potter, you aren't the only one here with secrets. I was hiding my blood status long before you came into my life, and I had no intention to reveal it when you did."

Thinking about this, Al remembered just how lonely Ilana had always seemed at school, hunched over her cauldrons while she brewed potions through the lunch hour. She had never had any real friends, at least not until Rose and Al had acknowledged her presence over a year ago, when she had gained Scorpius as a part-time friend and when Al had later become a full-time lover. Nobody had had any idea that she was a Muggle-born, either, and students at the school hadn't ever bothered to question it since she was in the notoriously pure-blood Slytherin house.

Perhaps that was _why_ she'd kept her status a secret? Because Ilana didn't think that the other Slytherin students would accept her if she'd told them? But that didn't sound right to Al; that didn't sound like the independent spirit that he knew Ilana to be, and it also didn't explain _how _she had hidden the scar once it had branded her. Hoping to get a real answer rather than the ridiculous ones he kept coming up with, Al asked, "But why? Why had you always hid it? And _how_ did you hide it, especially with the scar? I mean, let's face it, it's not as if I've never seen your arm before."

Much to Al's dismay, Ilana didn't stifle so much as a small chuckle at his expense. Instead, she just took a deep breath and replied, "I stole your bezoar – the one you had in your suitcase."

Al remembered finding the empty bezoar box just after the ceremony, and he laughed to hear that it had been Ilana who'd taken it, but the stone's disappearance didn't explain why the scar had recently reappeared on her skin, clear as day. The first time they'd been together, Al hadn't noticed any trace of it, and now he'd be able to see it from miles away.

"It didn't work at first," Ilana went on. "It took a long time to make the scar fade, almost like a rash that was slowly healing from the outside in. And that's why I kept trying to push you away – because I didn't want you to see it, and because I had a feeling that you'd had something to do with it. But then it started working, and I just couldn't stay away from you anymore. I thought it would work forever, because everything has an antidote, but I guess I was wrong. The bezoar was only a temporary cast, and I've tried dozens of other potions to make it go away, but none of them have had any effect at all."

Al nodded upon hearing the explanation. He understood why she'd needed to keep it from him, and it was smart of her to do so, since it had also kept him from giving her name to Astoria. But what he couldn't wrap his head around was why she'd tried so hard all these years to hide it from everybody else. Muggle-borns had only been in any danger since Astoria had announced her power fairly recently. Before that, witches and wizards hadn't been afraid to tell others about their Muggle families, and Ilana clearly loved hers, so what was the problem?

Ilana was still standing serenely in the hallway, still contemplating all of the things that they had both said and not fully comprehending what it meant, when Al asked her, "But _why'd _you hide it all this time? What aren't you telling me, Higgs?" He'd told her everything, so she owed it to him to reciprocate.

Looking at her, he could feel the bomb inside of her about to explode. She had been so quiet and so patient for so long, with her stolen glances and precious smiles, but now she was bursting with noise and agitation, with more shifting eyes and trembling lips. In an effort to draw her back in, Al took a page from her book by placing a hand on her cheek and whispering softly, "Just tell me. Just tell me the truth."

Her slap came in a giant swing of anger, and that was when it started. That was when every bit of frustration in Ilana began to boil toward the surface; that was when she started to burst. And the explosion came with a rush of words that were stronger and surer than any she had ever said, "I NEVER _WANTED _THIS! I never wanted _any_ of this!"

Normally, Al would have been wincing from the pain of her slap by now, but his body seemed to have gone numb to the pain so that his mind could take in what he was hearing as Ilana elaborated in an only slightly more neutral tone, "I never wanted to be a witch. I never have, and I never will. I went to Hogwarts because my parents convinced me that I shouldn't pass up that kind of an opportunity, but I was homesick from the moment I stepped foot on Platform Nine and Three Quarters. I didn't want to tell anybody where I came from because I always planned on going right back, and when McGonagall pulled me aside after my Sorting Ceremony and told me that I was the first Muggle-born to ever be sorted into Slytherin, I knew that I had made the right decision. I fell in love with Potions because it reminded me of Chemistry, which had been my favorite subject at school, and I didn't make any new friends because I didn't want to replace my old ones, and because I had Lizzie to write letters to every day. I didn't tell anyone about my _Muggle_ parents, or my _Muggle _sister, or my _Muggle_ brother, and I didn't tell them about the Muggle me."

Al had never met anyone who didn't _want_ to be magical, and so he had never considered that that might have been the reason for Ilana's secrecy. Somehow, though, knowing her secret made her even more fascinating to him, and so he continued to listen with his ears wide open.

"After a few years at Hogwarts, people were used to my silence, so they didn't expect much else from me. I'd lost most of my old friends from grade school, but I was still determined to graduate Hogwarts and come right back home, go to university like my sister, and become a scientist, or maybe pick up the piano again, which I hadn't played since I was ten. Everything was going well, and I had a future that I could see _right_ in front of me, and then _you_ happened."

They were staring at each other like they had each ruined the other's life, and in a way, they had. That blame that Al had seen in Ilana earlier was back now, and it was stronger than ever. It was emitting from her body like arrows thrown downhill from an army with the high-point advantage, her nostrils flaring and her eyes glaring. She was finally taking in everything he'd told her only moments ago, because it wasn't until now that she could see clearly the consequences it would have on the rest of her life, and all the things that she was giving up just to be with him.

"I met you," she repeated. "You did _all _of the wrong things, and you made _all_ of the wrong choices, but you said all the _right_ words. You walked in the wrong direction, and you traveled to the wrong places, but you always came back to the _right _home. You had your head screwed on the wrong way, and you carried that weight on your shoulders with the wrong amount of pressure, but you held me with the _right_ amount of strength. And because of all of that, I convinced myself that you were also one of my right decisions. But now – now, I think you might have been the wrong decision all along."

She was starting toward the door as Al reached out his hand to stop her and said, "Higgs, come on, you know that's not true! We _are_ right for each other!"

Whipping back around, Ilana widened her eyes and countered, "_Right_ for each other? Potter, you're the son of the _Chosen One_ and I'm an aspiring _chemist. _You are just waiting for tragedy to strike so that you can have some excuse for feeling so angry all the time, and _I'm_ your tragedy. Your Astoria's puppy, and I'm a _Mud-blood."_

As soon as she said the word aloud, an incessant shrieking filled the air of the house, floating all the way down from the end of the hall, where the portrait of Walburga Black was still plastered to the wall under a Permanent Sticking Charm. The canvas that had been maintaining her privacy through Al and Ilana's normally quiet days and nights in Grimmauld Place had been blown off the frame with their newfound yelling and the mention of Mrs. Black's favorite word, and now she was screaming things like, _"FREAKS! Scum of the earth! Absolute FILTH to see another Mud-blood in my home!"_

Al and Ilana could do nothing but to try to ignore the insults, and they just looked at each other – Al with eyes as dry as an African desert and Ilana's just starting to water – as they waited for Mrs. Black to pipe down. When she finally did, they had both lost the energy to argue anymore, and Ilana had plenty of reason to leave. Al was starting to believe she would do just that when she had her hand on the doorknob and turned to him one last time to say solemnly, "Make your move, Potter; I dare you. I _dare_ you to move."

She was telling him to finally make the right decision even after spending so long making the wrong one, but he didn't want to make that decision without her. So, just as the door opened and she was about to cross over the threshold, he yelled back at her so that she could hear his voice above the still pouring rain, "This is all your fault, you know! It's your fault for making me _love_ you! So, I dare you to_ stay_, Higgs. I dare you to stay here and be with me, even if it is the wrong decision. I dare you to love me back."

He hadn't planned to tell her any of that, nor had he ever wanted to say those words to her back rather than her face. But it was all worth it when, after the longest minute of Al's life, Ilana turned around, dropped the coat that was in her hands, walked toward him, took his jaw in her palm, and kissed him in the exact same way that he had kissed her the first time their lips had touched.

Upon feeling her warmth surround him once more, Al pushed her up against the wall as he devoured her neck and tugged on her wafer-thin shirt. Her black hair blew into his face as she shot her arms up so that he could lift the shirt over them and throw it onto the floor, but just as she was about to lower her arms back down to work on his clothes, he grabbed each of her wrists and pulled them slowly toward him until they were low enough against the wall for him to reach. Moving away from her chest ever so slightly so that his own chest was turned into her side, Al leaned toward the emblazoned scar on her arm and left a trail of kisses all along its length. Ilana moaned at the touch, but Al knew that it wasn't because his tongue was causing her scar any pain; it was because she finally felt like she'd found its antidote.

* * *

Al woke up in the middle of the night, lying on a rug in the center of the living room floor. He was smiling to himself before his eyes had even opened, thinking that he had never felt so happy in his life. His elation felt wrong in a way, since he knew that he didn't deserve it, but he couldn't make it disappear as he turned on his side and took in the sight of Ilana sitting peacefully at her piano.

She had a thin blanket wrapped around her shoulders, but Al made sure to pull it down ever so slightly as he stood up and sat beside her, just enough to make room for him to kiss the patch of freshly exposed skin. But he was surprised to find that after he kissed her, she didn't attempt to kiss him back, and as he looked up at her tired face, he realized that something wasn't right. She didn't look nearly as happy as he was as she stared down at her steady fingers that were covering the keys that – if she only pressed down a little harder – would make a wretchedly minor chord.

He didn't ask her what was wrong, because he didn't want to disturb her pensive state. But of course, she could sense his concern, and was soon saying thoughtfully, "My parents fell in love over letters. My dad collected stamps as a little kid, and he got a job as a postman the day he turned sixteen. That same year, this woman started coming into his shop almost every week, begging him to buy and sell her self-designed stamps. He was the only one in the office who would take them, claiming that the most magnificent art could always be found on the smallest surfaces, just like the flowers and the birds that she painted on those stamps. They were married at the end of the year, and they never changed their vocations, nor their feelings for each other."

Al had been listening closely to the story of Ilana's parents, but he still wasn't sure what it had to do with him and Ilana, so he asked as respectfully as he could, "Higgs, what-"

But Ilana ignored the question and continued before he could finish, "They had this sign – this thing in common that they both loved – that helped bring them together. And when I met you, I suppose I thought that maybe our mutual love for potions was our sign, and that if I just found a way to work around the magic and the blood, then maybe we could be brought together. But I was wrong, because it was the blood all along. The blood was our sign, and it was never meant to bring us together. It was always meant to tear us apart."

Al didn't know where any of this was coming from, or what had suddenly changed Ilana's mind. Maybe he hadn't in fact convinced her to stay at all, but had just prolonged her imminent leaving. Still, he couldn't let her go now, and as he searched the floor for some sign just like she seemed to be doing, he caught sight of James's cloak underneath the open doorway, where Al had pulled it out from his shirt as he carried Ilana out of the hallway.

Having finally found his own road to take, Al said to Ilana pleadingly, "Run away with me. I have my brother's Invisibility Cloak, so I can get out of here without being seen. We can go anywhere, _everywhere_, and we don't have to be separated by our different worlds; we can make our own world."

Ilana laughed at that, almost like Al's suggestion was something a child might think up, and was shaking her head while responding, "You know, Potter, you may be the most flawed person I've ever met."

"You say that like it's a good thing," said Al, laughing on his own this time.

"It is," Ilana turned to him. "Your flaws, Potter, are the most _flawless_ things about you. You just haven't been willing to accept them yet."

As she looked away, he looked back at her, studying her saddening expression as she finished with, "You're the only thing in this world that I've ever felt connected to. I've never had a reason to stay here, until you came along. And I would stay with you, Potter. I would leave my other world and go wherever you led me, but that just can't be right. It can't be right for me to want to abandon my family to be with you.

"You asked me once before if it was possible to leave your past behind and start fresh, and I told you not to let go of your roots. I think it's time for me to follow my own advice. It's time to choose a side. Potter, you will always be what I _want_, but that doesn't mean that you're what I need."

Everything they'd ever said to each other was out in the open now, because she'd just said it all again. Their entire relationship – their whole history – had just been laid out in front of them, and they both knew that they had needed to repeat their beginning so that they could come to an end. So, as they leaned in to kiss each other and as that kiss escalated into something more the way it always did with them, they both tried to take in every moment that passed, because they knew that by the time one of them woke up, the other would already be gone.

* * *

And they were right. This time, Al woke with a permanent frown on his face, for he knew that no matter how much he searched for her, Ilana wasn't there, and he wouldn't find her. By now, it was late morning, and though Al tried to stay on the floor for as long as he possibly could, the emptiness of the spot next to him eventually made him too lonely to lie still, so he picked himself up and walked down the hallway like a ghost that had lost all reason to live, but that was stuck in this world anyway.

He didn't understand how he'd known to look at that exact moment, but somehow Al had felt the need to walk right up to the front door and spy through its peephole. It took him a second to refocus his eyes so that he could see all the way into the depths of the swampy park that sat across the street, where two silhouetted figures were making their way toward the house beneath a stunning sun.

Their outlines alone were enough for Al to recognize the men as Harry and Scorpius, the same two people James had warned would be coming for him. He didn't know if they had found a link like Astoria had said they'd needed to, or if they were just coming to find Al because they couldn't manage to stay away any longer, but Al tried not to think about either reason as he turned around, leaned against the door, and slid his back down it until he was sitting on the floor.

Just as he hit the wood with a thump, he noticed a perfectly folded paper fly out from under him and land beside his bare feet. Picking up the paper gingerly, he turned it over and recognized it as one of Ilana's letters, but this time, he knew that it was meant for him. Opening it, he read slowly so that he could take in every word of her hand-written poem:

_Why is blood so thick?_

_So pure and dark and bright._

_Why is it that you_

_Are undeniably light?_

_Can I ever shake this feeling?_

_This one that you control._

_Can I ever uncover_

_The part of me you stole?_

_Is this just a trick?_

_Making me love you more._

_Is this really guilt_

_That I feel when at your door?_

_How do I ease the pain?_

_The pain of what I'll lose._

_How do I say goodbye_

_If you are what I choose?_

_Does it make me sick?_

_To replace them with you._

_Does it make me wrong_

_Since my blood isn't true?_

_But is this all a game?_

_One we dared to play._

_But will it ever end_

_Before one of us is betrayed?_

_Why is blood so thick?_

_So pure and dark and bright._

_Why is that we_

_Are undeniably right?_

Al was crying by the time he finished reading, thinking about how it was his fault after all. He'd blamed Ilana when he'd been scared that she'd blame him, but it was had been his own fault all along. He had given her the wrong decision to make, and he had left Knox to his grandfather after making the wrong decision all on his own. But now, all that was over, and so his decisions didn't matter anymore. All he could do was accept whatever came to him and run with it, because fighting against such clearly hadn't been working for him.

So, as Al sat on the floor in the entryway of Grimmauld Place, he looked down the hallway until his eyes caught on James's Invisibility Cloak. He knew that he could take it right now, throw it over it his head, and break out through the back window. Al could run away on his own, or he could even run back to Astoria, but right now, the walk down the hallway looked longer than a winter's night, sicker than the most twisted game, and darker than the thickest blood. The cloak seemed impossible to reach, but the door was right behind him. The handle was sitting unturned just above his head. Harry and Scorpius were waiting for him just a few feet outside.

As if in a trance, Al grabbed the doorknob and used it to pull himself up until he was standing firmly on his own two feet. Then he turned the handle, opened the door, and walked straight toward the two people who could steer him away from the life he could have had. And as Harry took his shoulder and tried to say something in his ear, Al ignored the words and refused to say any of his own, because he knew that whatever he said would turn into a lie, and he didn't want to lie anymore. Doing so had grown difficult, unnatural, and painful, and it was no longer easier than being lied to. It was only now, after Al had realized that the best liars were the ones who lied to themselves, that he understood that there was absolutely no difference between the perpetrator and the victim. They might have lived in two different worlds and pretended to play two different sides, but in the end, they were one in the same, because they both knew how to lie and they had both been lied to. Worst of all, they had both been loved once, but that love hadn't been strong enough to save them.

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_**Note: **I am honestly dying to know your thoughts right now, especially in terms of the Al/Ilana break-up and just everything that was revealed about Ilana__'_s character. I_'_ve been careful to keep her really hidden until now, so I hope the wait was worth it! 

_As some of you already know, I have a one-shot planned to accompany this chapter, which will follow Ilana and will be uploaded separately __(so 'author alert' me if you haven't already) this **Friday, Au**__**gust 10th**. Chapter 30, which will mark the end of Part 3, should hopefully be uploaded around **August 19th**, but keep in mind that that date might change, as I have a relatively busy schedule as the summer comes to an end. Anyway, here is your next hint for **Part 4**...  
_

_**Hint #3:** All of the multiple perspectives that Part 4 will follow have already been followed before, either in usual chapters or in one-shots. ;)  
_

_Thanks again for reading, and please do leave a review!  
_

_-Hailey  
_


	30. The Plot of a Liar

**_Note:_**_ Look, I'm still here! Once again, sorry this update is coming so much later than I promised it would; I'm currently in my first semester at college, so I'm super busy. Anyway, thank you all so much for your patience, and I think this chapter has enough action to make up for the wait. Even though it's a little crazy, I've been planning it for a long time, so I'm really hoping that you'll all enjoy it!**  
**_

_As a reminder, this is the final chapter of Part 3! (As you all know, the story will consist of four parts, so it isn't over yet.) Happy reading!_

_-Hailey_

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**30 – The Plot of a Liar**

Addiction was a powerful thing, especially when the addictive substance was power itself. That power could pull a person in from any angle, like gravity pushing the wind against someone until they succumbed to its control and fell to the ground, their face lying bloody against the pavement with their heart pumping against the black but having nowhere to go. The only thing left to do was lie there and wait for the rain to soak away the blood until the person made the decision to stop fighting against fate and instead stand up and accept the power that they had always been meant to hold.

Right now, Al's craving for power was stronger than it had ever been, if only because he was trying harder to ignore it than he ever had. When he had woken up alone at Grimmauld Place and realized that Ilana had finally left him, he'd given up. He was determined to no longer make any decisions for himself, because he never could see the difference between right and wrong. From now on, he would let the people he was with decide everything for him, starting with Harry and Scorpius.

They had asked him a thousand questions on their way to the Ministry and into the underground Auror offices, where the onlookers had finally stopped staring since the area was strictly secured when Harry wanted it to be. Albus hadn't given them any answers, not a single confirmation or denial of their suspicions and judgments. He'd gone with them willingly, and would have followed them all the way downstairs even without his father's strong hold on his shoulder and Scorpius's leading footsteps. Still, that didn't mean that he would talk, because he didn't know what to say. Al had gone numb to the outside world, and so it was his internal struggle that was starting to weigh on him.

He was thinking about how easy it would be to wrap his hand around the Elder Wand, whisper an incantation in his head, and make the chair Scorpius was sitting on beside him collapse into tiny shards of metal ash. He was thinking about magic and the feeling that came with performing it, all while wondering how Ilana could have been so quick to give it up. He was thinking about how much more magic he could learn through Astoria's training just like Scorpius was learning from McGonagall. He was thinking about power because it was the only thought in his busy head that could make him feel strong again.

The one thing that made Al stop thinking about power, if only for a moment, was when Scorpius said something that Al found himself actually listening to. It was a simple sentence, laced in honesty that surrounded a core of blame, but Al's attention was consumed by the five very real words. "I'm sorry about your grandfather."

They were the same words that Al had once told Scorpius about his grandmother, Narcissa, just after Astoria had murdered her back in December. The boys hadn't talked in weeks, but Al had broken the silence because, like Scorpius now, he had felt truly sorry for his friend's loss. The only difference between the deaths was that Al hadn't had anything to do with Narcissa's, as Astoria had handled it all on her own without revealing her plan to a single member of the Forbidden Flock, whereas with Arthur's, Al had been aware of every moment leading up to that tragedy.

Though the condolences did manage to get Al to listen, they didn't make him respond. He knew that Scorpius was trying to make him talk through gaining sympathy, but really, he was still furious. He had been ever since Al had opened the door to him at Grimmauld Place. Scorpius had been searching for him all day and night, and Al knew from experience just how taxing it was to look for someone who didn't want to be found. After all, that person had been Scorpius not so long ago, and Al only wondered when their roles had become so obviously reversed.

They were sitting in two adjacent chairs against the wall in the hallway outside Harry's closed office, in which he had locked himself an hour ago to talk alone with the Minister for Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt. On the other side of the wall on which Al was leaning his head, discussions were taking place concerning the evidence being used against Al and the potential consequences that could come from a trial before the Wizengamot that was sure to side with the Order of the Phoenix at all costs. Al could very well wind up in Azkaban the second Harry's door opened if that was where Shacklebolt wanted him, but like everything else, he didn't care. He'd lost the only thing he'd ever cared about when Ilana had walked away; as far as Al was concerned, Harry and Scorpius could have everything else.

"You really aren't going to talk, are you?" asked Scorpius suddenly, at least five minutes after his last spoken sentiment and Al's subsequent silence. He was looking at Al with utter disappointment in his friend, but just like Al, he was too tired to fight anymore. They were arch enemies trying to hold on to their lifelong truce before they finally declared war on one another.

Al responded with a deep breath as he closed his eyes to rest them from the iridescent brightness emanating from every part of Scorpius: his hair, his eyes, his integrity. Al held on to the heavy air in his lungs and thought about the darkness behind his eyelids, wondering if the black was an actual color or just the thing people saw when they were too disheartened to search for real color anymore.

Scorpius was laughing as he finally swung his head away from Al's direction and said, "You're just like her, you know."

Al's eyes snapped open and turned to Scorpius before he could stop them, one eye already pointed and threatening while the other was sad and regretful, for Al assumed that the girl Scorpius was referring to was Ilana. But when Scorpius saw that Al was actually listening and elaborated on his statement, Al's eyes both turned cold and confused.

"Astoria – my _mum_ – used to yell and scream at my dad and me, the two people in the world she claimed to have ever cared about, until she drove us away," Scorpius said thoughtfully. "And once we were too broken to give her any more second chances, we'd always just hide away in our rooms with the doors shut closed all day and night, but sometimes I'd sneak out to see if she was back to being herself yet. That's when I'd find her sitting in a chair and staring at the floor with the straightest face she'd ever worn and her lips smacked shut. She'd stay like that for days – never speaking to anyone, punishing herself for what she'd done so that we never had any reason to punish her ourselves."

Inching slowly forward to the tip of his chair, Al buried his face in his hands as his elbows met his knees while Scorpius finished, "The ironic thing with her was that she'd drop into that cycle for two completely different reasons. She'd either be punishing herself for what she'd already done when she'd lost all control, or she'd be punishing herself for what she was _about_ to do when she'd finally gained the control she'd been looking for. And right now, you've lost all your control while she's finally gained hers. I just wish I knew what she needed it for."

When Al rubbed his eyes and looked back at Scorpius, the blond boy was staring at him with desperation, but not defeat. His usual determination was mounting just as Al's was withering, facing the danger rather than succumbing to it because he still had something worth fighting for. That determination included his continuing to search for answers even after Al had refused to provide any. The problem was that Scorpius claimed to want to know something that Al had thought would have been common knowledge by now.

"What are you talking about, 'what she needs it for'?" he asked, breaking his silence to get some answers of his own. Astoria had made her mission quite clear over the past year, especially since her marking ceremony; she wanted a pure-blood world, and anyone who dared to get in her way of accomplishing such would have her wrath to answer to.

Once the shock of hearing Al's voice again wore off, Scorpius replied, "I mean that Astoria has been using you and the Flock to do her dirty work, but what work has that been? Sure, she killed Filch and attacked the Creeveys, but she also let Hermione, a _Muggle-born_ herself, go free with the promise to never touch her again. She gained control of the Auror office to get people's files and blood statuses, and she scarred all the Muggle-borns at Hogwarts to know who they were, but she hasn't gone after a single one of them since. Instead, she murdered a few Muggles in the mountains and risked herself getting caught by the angriest Aurors in the world by killing their own _father_, and why? Just because he was a Professor of Muggle Studies? Was that really worth all the risk?"

Scorpius hardly ever rambled on for so long, especially about the ulterior motives of people he tended to try not to think about. He seemed legitimately worried now, though, and Al couldn't help but realize that Scorpius also had a point. Astoria had gained the name of every Muggle-born in the country months ago, but she hadn't yet acted on them. With the help of her followers, she had the means to kill anyone she wanted to even without the dragon army she'd hoped to raise. Perhaps she really had been using Arthur to test Al's loyalty, but that didn't explain what she was doing the rest of the time when Al was too busy with Ilana to attend any of the Forbidden Flock meetings.

"Look, Al," Scorpius said with the same frustration he'd had when Al had opened the door to him at Grimmauld Place. "I know my mother. I try to tell myself that the woman I used to live with isn't the same person she is now, but honestly, she's always been like this. She's always said that she was _looking_ for something, and she only ever destroys people when they either stand in her way or give her the perfect opportunity to move closer to her target. This blood parade is just a distraction; she wants the world to worry about what she'll do next so that she can have enough time to figure that out for herself."

Al was staring blankly at Scorpius, mesmerized by the words he knew were true. He had been blinded by confusion and, ultimately, lust (both of which had come from Ilana) for months on end, so much so that he barely thought about Astoria anymore. He thought about all the things _he'd_ done for her, but never what she wanted them done for, which was the exact kind of distraction she was aiming for him to find.

His heartbeat thumping fast and his fingers curling into fists of fury, Al was about to stand up and make a run for it – if only to look for Astoria and interrogate her himself – when he was stopped by the shadow of a female figure at his feet. He didn't need to look up to see who it was, nor did he need to hear Scorpius say her name, but mostly Al didn't need to hear the _way_ Scorpius said her name. It was a whisper: soft, silky, sunken. "Rose."

As far as Al knew, Rose and Scorpius hadn't seen each other since Arthur's death, for Rose had been held up at the Burrow with the rest of her and Al's family while Scorpius searched for Al, and though Scorpius was now reaching out to Rose with the utmost concern for her broken heart, Rose was acting as if he wasn't even there. Her attention was devoted to Al, who could feel the red seeping from her hair into the pit of her eyes as she waited for his green to meet her blue.

He wasn't sure what to expect when he finally looked up, but the slap he received from Rose was admittedly well deserved. Even so, deserving the pain didn't make it any less painful, and Al was left with his face frozen, one cheek leaning against the wall and the other stinging like acid. The slap also seemed to have knocked the wind out of him, since Al was panting with the same exasperated breaths as Rose, and neither of them was growing the slightest bit calmer. If anything, each of their frustrations were about to boil over.

After a minute or so, most of Al's senses returned to him and he could hear Scorpius standing and whispering things to Rose to try to steady her, but whatever he was saying wasn't working. Rose was ignoring him as she waited for Al to find the strength to face her once more, but Al was avoiding such at all costs. It wasn't until he tasted a drop of blood on his lips that must have come from Rose's nails digging into his skin that he turned back around and wiped his face clean with the sleeve of his filthy black T-shirt.

"How could you?" Rose asked Al through a clenched jaw and squinted eyes. Her face was red and patchy like it had been all of last summer, but there was something far more frightening in Rose now than there had been a year ago. Back then, she had been carrying her own heart on her sleeve when Scorpius had disappeared; now, she was carrying the hearts of every single family member she and Al shared, and her own heart was already long gone.

Harry and Scorpius had been asking Al the same question all day, but Al hadn't answered them. He supposed it was because, for the first time, they had asked Al with voices that were already prepared for the worst possible answer. They wouldn't have believed Al even if he set the record straight, but Rose was different. She always believed him. Even now, he could tell that she wanted to.

"I didn't do it," replied Al with a shake of his head. He held his gaze with Rose, though Scorpius was now also looking back at him, stunned to hear him pleading his innocence and actually meaning it.

More to herself than to Al, Rose inhaled deeply and forgot to exhale as she said, "No. You're lying. I don't believe you."

But Al was calm, for he knew her too well. "Yes, you do," he said. To Scorpius, he added, "You both do."

Rose gained back his attention when she took a small step forward in an attempt to get closer to Al. Then she sighed, losing some of her anger and replacing it with remembrance as she recalled, "We used to tell each other everything, Al. The three of us – we were inseparable. Do you remember?"

Once again, Al tried to keep himself from looking up at her, but eventually he gave in and met her gaze, which this time looked much more like Rose's usual self: friendly, inviting, full of love. Scorpius seemed to sense it too, since Rose turned her body ever so slightly toward his and took his outstretched hand as if it was exactly what she needed to stay balanced, and in a way it was.

Her other hand lay open in front of Al's chest as she finished with, "I need you to remember, Al. I need you to tell me everything. I _need_ you to help me understand."

Al looked away as his own breathing steadied, but his heart was still racing beneath his chest. This time, he was searching for Scorpius, because it was Scorpius's words that had made him realize what he was about to tell Rose. So, as soon as Al found that bright light of integrity, he told both Scorpius and Rose, "I don't know everything."

In his peripheral vision, Al saw Rose's open hand drop slowly to her side. Then she was backing away, towing Scorpius along with her until he was out of his seat and standing beside her at the end of the hallway where a circle of elevators were on their way to help them escape.

The last thing Rose said to Al as he remained glued to the seat that his father had designated him to fill was, "I can't do this anymore. You need to choose, Al. Order or Flock."

With a glance at Scorpius to make sure he was still with her, she continued, "Astoria or _us_. If you choose Astoria, we will leave you forever. No more second chances." And as they stepped into an elevator and the door closed on them, hiding Scorpius and then Rose, Al just heard Rose's last statement, washed out and dry like his still stinging cheek. "It's your decision." And he believed her. He always believed her.

Still, Al didn't have much time to mull things over before Harry was opening the door to his office and letting Shacklebolt walk out. Al stood up as the Minister bid good day to Harry and didn't spare a second glance at Al, walking straight past him until he was deep inside the buried building.

Al was still looking the way of Shacklebolt's disappearance when Harry stated monotonously, "You're on house arrest until Monday. Then you'll go on trial before the Wizengamot, and they will vote for your sentence."

It was Saturday, and Al had barely spent any time in Godric's Hollow over the past two weeks, during which he'd been in Romania or at Grimmauld Place with Ilana. He'd been running away from home all summer, so he didn't understand why he suddenly felt sad to know that in only two days, he could very well be leaving his home forever.

"Come along; we should get going," Harry broke Al's inner thoughts as he ordered his son to follow him to an open elevator. Once they were inside the enclosed space, Al still deadly silent and Harry still suffering from a silent death, the latter looked to Albus with a hardened expression and said, "I'll be needing to take your wand."

Al didn't argue before handing over the Elder Wand to its original owner, though he was curious to see how Harry would react to it. After all, Harry had never exactly wanted to use the wand for himself, which was one of the reasons he'd pawned it off to Al in the first place. Plus (according to Colin Creevey, at least), Nigel had sent word to Harry that it had been his hand-made wand that Al had used to kill Arthur, _not_ the Elder Wand, yet Al no longer had possession over Nigel's latest creation.

As Al expected, Harry showed his first sign of questioning when his fingers clasped the Elder Wand, causing him to mutter under his breath, "This isn't right."

Al's eyes were searing into his father's scarred skin as the elevator accelerated. He was waiting for Harry to either accept the fact that Al was innocent or question him further to find any way that he might be guilty. Unfortunately, Al didn't get the response he wanted.

"This isn't the wand that we traced back from Arthur's body," said Harry. With his free hand outstretched and waiting expectedly, he added, "Hand it over, Al."

That sentence – that single three-worded line insinuating that Harry was inexplicably sure that Al was guilty and that he no longer had any faith at all in his very own son – was enough to get Al to talk. Finally, he opened his mouth to his father and said the most honest words he had spoken to him all year. "I don't have it."

But Harry kept his palm open and kept waiting. He didn't flinch to hear Al speak, nor did he react to the opposing statement. He remained steady and firm, and so it was Al who turned toward him and, thinking of Astoria's theory about three forms of evidence, said, "Search me if you want to, but I don't have any other wand. I might have been at the scene of the crime, but I _didn't_ kill my own grandfather. Why are you _so _sure that I did?"

The elevator opened to the Ministry Atrium, and Harry threw James's Invisibility Cloak (he had spotted the cloak lying on the floor at Grimmauld Place and had brilliantly thought to bring it with them) over Al before anyone on the floor could see him. Then they both stepped over the threshold and onto the pristinely polished marble floor just in time for Harry to say, "Look, Al, it's not as if this hasn't happened before. Not to mention the fact that your girlfriend was pretty convincing."

It took a minute for Harry to realize that Al wasn't walking by his side anymore, having stopped in his tracks at the mere mention of Ilana as his girlfriend. Al had never once thought of her that way, though they had both been monogamous as far as he knew. He had just never considered Ilana as being a true part of his life, and especially hadn't ever imagined talking to his father about her. She had always been his secret, even more so than the Flock. She had been _his_ secret – one that he kept because he _wanted_ to, not because he needed to.

Eventually, Al told his legs to move and caught up with Harry, the two of them now immersed in the Atrium that was buzzing with workers and visitors, every last one of whom was talking about Albus Potter. At this point, Al had accepted the fact that Harry somehow knew who Ilana was, but was still wondering what she had convinced him of, and more importantly, _why_ she had convinced him of it in the first place.

By the time they made it out and onto the city streets, Harry led Al into a back alley so that Al could pull off the cloak and ask what Harry knew he was itching to understand. "What did she tell you?"

"She told me that you never stopped working for the Forbidden Flock," Harry stated simply. "She told me that she had the scar to prove it, which, as far as I'm concerned, is all the evidence I or the Ministry needs."

Al had told Ilana everything last night. She knew about the Flock, but she also knew that Al hadn't been the one to kill Arthur, because Al had also told her about Knox. But Harry couldn't see any of that now. All he could see was the lie that Al had kept from him not once, but twice.

All Al could see, on the other hand, were the parts of himself that Harry never noticed until they were gone as he asked, "What makes you so sure that she's telling the truth?"

Harry rolled his eyes, something he never did in front of anyone and especially not in front of people he respected, as he answered, "She wouldn't help turn you in if she didn't care about your future, Al. She's your _girlfriend._"

"But you're my _dad!_" Al screamed with his hands in the air. They lowered slowly with his rapidly blinking eyelids as he added, "You're supposed to _believe_ me."

Harry still showed no sign of emotion, putting one tense hand on Al's shoulder and saying, "But you're my son. You're supposed to _defy _me." Then he pulled Al into a worm hole of spinning, twisting Apparition and dropped him off in their darkening backyard before continuing on to the Burrow to fetch Ginny and Lily.

Al might have puked if he hadn't Apparated with an already empty stomach. The turn was harder than any he'd gone through before, and considering how many times he had Apparated under stress, that was really saying something. Of course, part of the reason for its difficulty was that it had been side-along, leaving Al with no control over where he was headed, but he should have been used to that by now.

It took him a while to shake off the dizzying side-effects, but once he did, Al slowly trekked across the yard and onto the back porch of the house that he was fairly happy to see, dragging himself through the doorway and using James's cloak once more as he hid behind the hanging broomsticks, having noticed James and Mercy arguing heatedly in the middle of the living room.

"That was _insane_!" yelled James, gesticulating furiously. "Your family is _insane_!" He was still walking forward with Mercy following him in exhausted steps, as if they had just now come in the front door from a long night at what sounded like Mercy's house.

"It's not as if I didn't warn you!" refuted Mercy. By now, they had both pounded to a spot just in front of Al, but they were far too consumed by each other to notice his presence amongst them. "In fact, I even _suggested_ that we use the perfectly legitimate excuse of your own grandfather's death to get out of it."

Both Al and James already knew how Mercy felt about her family, particularly a certain half of it, but it seemed to Al as though no amount of warning could have prepared James for meeting the Goldings. He was more jittery than Al had been only moments ago, his face flushed red and his eyes opened up to the size of Rememberalls.

"That's not the point," said James in a single breath with his hand smacked to his sweaty forehead. It had been a hot day, though Al hadn't known it thanks to having spent all his time inside at the Ministry.

Mercy was waiting anxiously for James to elaborate, but he was still stuck in his own world of confusion as he replayed the evening they'd shared. When he finally caught up with himself, though, Mercy was looking up at him patiently and listened closely to his next words. "That woman – your _stepmother – _is a _complete_ gold-digger. I–I mean, she must have asked about my family's money _twenty_ times, and it wasn't even subtle!"

"I told you what she'd be like," Mercy tried to interrupt, but James was deep into his rambling at this point.

"And all that talk about her travels to India to teach the poorer schools about magic after graduating from the 'most prestigious school in Spain' – one that I've _never _heard of, by the way. Her claims to be able to pick up a hobby and go from amateur to professional status in a matter of _minutes_. Not to mention the way she talks about your brothers – their whole lives have been planned out and they haven't even been enrolled at Hogwarts yet!"

Mercy didn't seem the least bit surprised to hear any of this as she tried to calm James down by telling him, "Yeah, which is why you can't possibly believe a word she says!"

But James, whose thoughts seemed to be flying by much too quickly for him to pause before speaking everything that was on his mind, quickly spat without considering any of the repercussions his words might lead to, "Why not? She's just like _you_!"

Mercy froze at the accusation, her lips pressing together and her eyes piercing like gusts of hail, and silence washed over the room in one giant flood. Al was careful to cover his mouth so that his breathing wouldn't be heard, but he couldn't help from becoming captivated by the row that was so reminiscent of his most recent spats with Ilana.

It was odd for Al to see the fighting take place in front of him rather than being a _part_ of it. He had seen this side of Mercy – the side that James was only noticing now – since she and James had first started dating, but for whatever reason, Al didn't feel like he could take his brother's side now. All he could see was the hurt that was etched across Mercy's face – the tears forming behind her eyes, the guilt making her cheeks swell, the mascara on her eyelids already clumping into big blotches of black. All he could see was the pain that she felt upon being prematurely judged by the one person she'd been sure would never judge her. All he could see was Ilana feeling that same pain when he'd judged her and her own family and had attempted to pry her away from them just to keep her for himself. Seeing all of this, soon his own eyes were watering, his own cheeks were swelling, and his heart felt like one big blotch of black.

For these same reasons, Al also understood why it was that James couldn't see any of these things in Mercy even as he looked straight at her. Instead, James only knew what _he_ felt, and right now his family was under threat. His grandfather had been murdered only two days ago, and he wasn't about to let anyone take something else from him. He wasn't about to let Mercy take his money or his name or his entitlement. He refused to let her become the latest threat.

So, as James stood firm in his accusation and as Mercy tried to take it in without letting it break her down, Al waited for one of them to make a move. Mercy ended up being the one to speak first, asking the floor in an angry, cat-like whisper, "What exactly is this about, James? Because I'm starting to think that this is more about _you_ and my relationship with _your _family than it is your relationship with mine."

James was staring at Mercy's feet – her perfectly painted toe nails that were visible through the opening in her high-heeled wedges that matched her summery dress – as he answered, "Yeah, maybe it is. Maybe I just don't think you were right to ask my dad to train you when you knew he'd feel obligated to say yes."

Shaking her head profusely, Mercy sat down on the couch to gain some distance between herself and James. Meanwhile, James was busy loosening the tie off his collared shirt as he stood still, awaiting a response. He never wore formal clothing and always looked severely uncomfortable in a suit, yet another reason for his current frustration with the girl whose family had hosted a formal dinner just to meet him.

"I could have gotten that job all on my own," said Mercy suddenly, causing James to look down at her and leave his half-untied tie aloof around his neck. "I'm a perfectly good candidate for Auror training."

"Yeah, but you _didn't_," James said. "You _didn't_ get it yourself. You used me and my family and my name instead."

"No." This time, Mercy's words were steady and sure. "No, that is _not _fair. I didn't _use_ you. I wanted to be an Auror, and that's what I _used_ to get closer to you. I used it to get you back."

"_Please!"_ James was rolling his eyes now. "You wanted something and you got it, just like you get everything ever want, but let's not pretend that _I_ was the thing you wanted in this scenario. I was the collateral damage, but my _father_ was the real prize."

Al hated to hear James talk that way. He and Lily had never felt nearly as much pressure to live up to their father's legacy as Al did, or so Al thought. Really, though, each of the Potter children had their own struggles whose roots could always be traced back to Harry – Al and his power, Lily and her popularity, James and his talent.

Mercy seemed to catch on to the same idea that was running its course in Al's mind, for the next thing she said to James after a long minute of careful consideration was, "I am _talented_, James. Why can't you accept that in anyone but yourself?"

James stayed put and didn't appear to have any rebuttal, giving Mercy the perfect opportunity to stand up and find her strength again. She pushed back her shoulders, ran her fingers through her gorgeous hair, took one deep breath like she was inhaling pure confidence, and said through a tightly clenched jaw, "You know, your dad told me early this morning that I could pass the qualification test _today_ if I wanted to."

When James still refused to look at her, he merely scoffed, "Come off it, will you! You've only been training for, what, a month?"

Mercy, on the other hand, stared straight into his mousy eyes and said, "You don't believe me? Fine, then. I'll prove it to you." This made James look at her as she smirked and added, "I'll ask Harry to give me the test first thing tomorrow, and in twenty-four hours from now, I promise you that I will be a fully qualified Auror, no more _mentoring_ necessary." She didn't let James comment on her ill-advised plan before walking past him and the still hidden Al, opening the back door and slamming it in the former's face.

Normally, Aurors would train for three years after being inducted into the rigorous program, in magical combat, elements of practical defense, and methods of criminal investigation. Granted, Mercy had already more than dappled in all of these subjects considering who her mentor was and just how many investigations had been ongoing this summer. The circumstances of last Christmas – with Astoria gaining control of the Auror Department records – also made it so that the department itself was desperate for more recruits, meaning that Harry might just be willing to test her now if it meant that he could earn a new Auror and possibly even a member of the Order's core alliance this quickly.

Al understood all of this immediately, but James still seemed skeptical as he went back to his untying and then dropped himself onto the couch like any other late summer night, leaning his head against his upturned arms and stretching his long legs all across the cluttered coffee table. It wasn't until he rubbed his tired eyes and hitched his breath ever so slightly that Al realized just how much James had been holding back – not just for Mercy, but for everyone... for Al – and it was when Al noticed this that he decided to show himself.

He didn't say anything, but just awkwardly twisted his body out of the corner and around the brooms until he was standing upright and facing an already spooked James screaming, "Bloody hell!"

"Sorry," Al said nonchalantly as he threw the Invisibility Cloak back to its owner. "I just didn't want to interrupt."

Once James accepted the fact that Al had been accidentally eavesdropping through his entire conversation with Mercy, he thanked Al genuinely for keeping quiet before asking, "Does Dad know you're here?"

"Of course I do," said Harry before Al could answer, his voice flowing inside on clouds of humidity from his stance on the porch where he was holding the sliding door open for Lily and Ginny. "I brought him here."

By the time everyone was inside, they had all gone silent. James and Mercy's argument had distracted Al from thinking about what it would be like to face his mother and Lily, both of whom he had never meant to hurt and whom he had lied to repeatedly over the past year. Now, each of them seemed to be buried in their own personal trance, in which Al wasn't quite sure how he fit.

Ginny walked over to the end of the couch farthest from Al and sat down timidly, very unusual for her normally energetic and graceless movement. It seemed as though she couldn't look at Al, with her eyes open half-way and her widened pupils pointed to whatever happened to lay thirty degrees beneath them. Her hair was greasy like rotting carrots and her baggy sweater – her father's sweater, with a giant 'A' embroidered to its chest – was torn and tear-stained all across its sleeves.

Al had never seen his mother like this, and as much as he wanted to help her, he also selfishly _needed_ her. But as he stepped toward her in an attempt to make her reach out to him, she scooted farther and farther away until she was huddled in the couch corner, her back curling against the gold-painted wall. Once she no longer had any room left to distance herself from him, he stopped walking and waited for her to say something, since her lips were parted and ready.

"Were you possessed?" she asked, her eyes still staring at the sandals that were clasped tightly around her feet. Al hated that she was wearing them; his mother never wore shoes inside the house.

"No," Al answered instinctively. When Ginny closed her eyes at the response and gulped with disappointment and sheer fear, he added, "But I didn't do it at all. I promise you, I didn't do it."

At that, Ginny looked at him, but her eyes were not the eyes of his mother. They were not the eyes of a flaming redhead with tomboy tendencies and a giant attitude. They were the eyes of a grieving stranger looking on their enemy for the very first time.

"Mum," Al pleaded desperately as those stone cold, unblinking, distant eyes seared into him, "Believe me. Nobody believes me. You have to believe me."

After a single blink, she went back to her previous staring and Al knew that she didn't believe him. But as he tried once more to come closer to her, it turned out that she didn't need to retreat on her own. Both Harry and James shot their arms in front of Al to stop him from making Ginny any more uncomfortable, and when Ginny buried her head in her knees to completely block Al from her sight, James shifted his spot on the couch so that he was able to wrap his arms around her and pick Ginny up the way a parent might hold their sleeping child. Then he passed Al with barely sympathetic eyes, walked their mother upstairs, and tucked her into bed.

Meanwhile, Lily was standing completely still on the other side of the coffee table, her hands tightly gripping what looked to Al like a letter, her expression masked and stoic. Harry was standing beside her, but seemed too worried about Ginny to stay still for much longer, so he squeezed Lily's shoulder and waited for her curt nod that somehow gave him permission to leave her alone with Al.

On his way out of the room, Harry looked back at Lily to make sure that she was still okay and then said to Al matter-of-factly, "I've put a barrier around the property, so don't bother running."

Al snorted instead of agreeing, though he wasn't trying to offend Harry. He didn't seem to, either, since Harry marched right on and followed in James's path without another word. As soon as he was gone, Lily stepped toward Al and handed him the letter she'd been holding, saying, "I found this on the porch outside. It's addressed to you."

She was already in the kitchen by the time Al looked up from the writing on the envelope that, sure enough, spelled his name in Knox's unmistakable cursive, but he didn't want to see his little sister walk away from him. Today, every single person he knew and cared about in the least had walked away from him; he didn't want Lily to be one of them.

"Lily-" he called at her to stop her from leaving, but it didn't work.

Instead of facing him fully, Lily turned her body half-way to say to her brother, "People lie, Al. They _all_ lie – Scorpius, Mum, Dad, James, you. Everyone. I'd even bet whoever wrote that letter for you lied in it. But have fun believing things you shouldn't. I know I do."

Lily had been in Wales with James since yesterday, so she hadn't been told about Arthur's death until long after he'd been kidnapped. Harry, Ginny, and James had all lied to her about everything that was going on, keeping her in the dark in hopes that they'd have good news to go with the bad. None of them understood the way Al did that Lily didn't want to be treated like the baby she was. What she hated more than anything was not being attuned to other people's secrets, especially lately, when she already wasn't attuned to her own.

But because Al had been one of Lily's liars, he let her go. Once he heard her door shut from upstairs, he made his own way up the steps that appeared to steepen as he touched them, reaching the second floor with little to no energy left in his body and hiding himself away inside his cave-like room that smelled like abandoned Polyjuice potion and owl dung.

Deciding to address the latter stench first, Al opened Knox's letter quickly and read, _'Don't worry. She has a plan. You're not going down for this.'_

"Oh, fabulous," mumbled Al as he thought of Astoria coming to the rescue in the middle of his forthcoming trial before the Wizengamot. He could just picture her striding into the Ministry court room with her flowing black robes and ten-inch heels and killing the entire jury without batting a single crazily curled eyelash.

Still, this thought, combined with all the things Lily had just said, reminded Al of what he'd been wondering about Astoria upon leaving the Ministry this afternoon. For a moment, Al thought without a doubt that Astoria's 'plan' was to do just as he had pictured her doing, but of course, it wasn't. That was what she wanted people to believe: that she killed in serial amounts, and possibly even for pleasure. Truthfully, though, she killed rarely, and always _precisely_. The real question was why she chose certain people over others. The real question was what her bigger plan was, because surely, that was what she needed so desperately to keep Al around for.

Before he lost this train of thought, Al turned Knox's note over, found a quill buried somewhere in his Hogwarts suitcase, and wrote a reply:

_Please. She has too many plans already. I don't care about going down for this; it was my fault anyway. I just want to know what I'm going down for. I want to know who's next._

Then he folded the paper and handed it to Witherwings, who was itching to get out of her cage anyway, and sent the owl flying to wherever Knox was hiding out these days.

As Al waited for a response, hoping that out of some blind act of friendship or perhaps a simple favor to repay his mistake in killing Arthur, Knox might actually tell him who Astoria's next victim would be, he cleaned Witherwings's cage and even washed his cauldron by hand. It took him a while, but by the time he was finished, the bird was back.

Al didn't waste any time in reading the response as he opened the next note:

_You know I can't tell you that. You know what she'd do. You know what she stands for… Revenge. Obstinacy. Secrets. Exaltation. She's a killer. We all are._

Disappointed, Al crumpled the letter and returned it to his owl, telling her to fly to Grimmauld Place and throw the paper into the fire pit so that his parents wouldn't find it, refusing to give the words a second glance.

He didn't want to think about Astoria or Knox, or anything that being a part of the Flock had made him do. He didn't want to think about his family and the ways they had looked at him today. He didn't want to think about Rose and Scorpius and the ultimatum they'd offered him. He didn't have any decision to make anyway. Either he was going to be sent to Azkaban by Monday morning or he'd somehow be 'saved' by Astoria and would be indebted to her yet again, but neither was any choice of his.

So instead, he thought of Ilana. He thought of their nights together and all the things her eyes had made him do. He thought about the way she always looked at him, no matter her mood or his. He thought about the ultimatum he'd given her – the choice he'd forced her to make – and he let go of his longing for power, replacing it with painful jabs of guilt. And as he closed his eyes, Al could feel his chest throbbing and his ears filling with the echoing screams of his heart.

* * *

Physical ailment sometimes killed a person, as did mental illness, so a combination of the two would _surely_ kill them. At least, this was Al's theory, which he couldn't stop wondering about as he laid awake in his bed and let the bright rays of sunlight dry out his open eyes. He was wondering why, after over eight hours of a double-edged disease coursing through his veins and not even trying to fight back at it, he wasn't dead yet. Then he wondered if this pain would ever go away or if he would ever feel like himself again. He wondered if he even knew who that person was in the first place.

It was Teddy's voice that managed to pull Al out of his room for the first time all morning, since it must have been noon by now. Knowing that his parents, James, and Lily had no desire to see him, Al had been avoiding an awkward family encounter around the breakfast table. However, he hadn't been expecting his eldest brother to show up, especially since Teddy was a member of the court that would soon be deciding Al's sentence.

Panicking while also hoping to find out where Teddy and his colleagues stood on the latest murder mystery, Al was careful to walk out of his room quietly and then quickly assessed the current goings-on. All of the other bedroom doors were open upstairs and nobody was in any of them, so Al suspected that Ginny must have left for the Burrow already to be with her family and to continue planning Arthur's funeral, while James was most likely at Quidditch practice and wouldn't be home until this evening. Lily's whereabouts were more questionable, but then Al heard her husky voice cooing to a baby Remy from the living room downstairs. Glancing over the balcony that overlooked the ground floor, Al saw that Victoire and Dominique were there too, their blonde hair pinned up against the backs of their heads that were stationed quite close together, with a similarly blonde Remy straddling their laps and making faces at Lily, the one outlier who was sitting across from the other girls.

Deciding the coast was clear, Al hid himself at the top of the staircase and listened in to Teddy conversing with Harry in the entryway. Sure enough, they were discussing Al's behavior in disturbing detail, Harry thanking Teddy for coming to keep an eye on Al for the day while Harry went in to the office to invigilate Mercy's practical exam, and Teddy brushing off the favor and asking question after question about Al in search for clues that might help formulate the whole true story.

"Does he seem scared?" asked Teddy at one point.

"Not exactly," Harry replied. "It's more like he's given up, except that he still claims to be innocent."

"Do you believe him?" Al couldn't see Teddy since he himself didn't want to be seen, but he could tell from his brother's open curiosity that Teddy had a far more objective outlook on things than Harry did. He'd been trained to separate himself from his work, regardless of how personally victimized he rightfully felt when facing a Death Eater or a member of the Forbidden Flock.

Harry sighed before answering, "To be honest, I don't know. I don't know who he is anymore. Sometimes, I don't think I ever knew."

Al closed his eyes upon hearing his father's confession, letting the salty water wash over his stinging corneas but still not feeling any relief; they were already too burnt from this morning's sun.

"You're starting to sound a lot like Ron, you know," Teddy teased Harry in an attempt to lighten the somber mood. Ron had a tendency to over-dramatize situations, especially when they had to do with Rose or Hugo and their respective paths to becoming their own people. Harry didn't usually talk about his kids that way, because he expected them to grow into individuals rather than clones of himself. It was his kids who expected differently.

Harry laughed, but he still seemed disheartened as he told Teddy, "Yeah, well, you're starting to sound a lot like Remus."

Teddy didn't reply to the comparison between him and his late father, but Al knew without having to look that he was smiling. Teddy had always reminded people of Tonks, and even Al could see the resemblance from the memories of Astoria's he'd visited – Teddy had Tonks's spiky, Metamorphmagus hair, along with her need for justice. People often forgot that what Teddy also had was Remus's intelligence and loyalty.

Al could hear Harry patting Teddy's shoulder as the former said to the son he'd never intended to raise, but had raised nonetheless, "Anyway, thanks again, and be careful tonight."

Realizing that his father was about to leave and wanting to face him before he was gone, Al came out of hiding and took a few steps down the staircase to catch Harry and Teddy's attention before he asked, "What's tonight?"

Much to his dismay, Harry didn't look at Al or even respond to his question. Instead, he nodded to Teddy, threw him the Elder Wand from his pocket, and walked out the door. It was Teddy who actually addressed Al, his hair changing from black to a washed-out grey, and answered, "Tonight's the full moon." Then he lowered his head to his chest and turned the corner to meet Victoire and Remy in the kitchen.

Al followed him slowly, wasting as much time as possible on his way downstairs. He now understood why Victoire and Dominique had needed to accompany Teddy in his day of babysitting, since Remy's werewolf tendencies had been growing stronger with every passing month. Still, Al knew that neither of his female cousins would feel as sympathetic toward him as Teddy did. In fact, Al was even convinced that Teddy wasn't really all that sympathetic himself; he just had enough buried anger to hide his disappointment.

Luckily, Dominique didn't show much of any reaction upon seeing Al. She was just as upset about Arthur's death as the rest of the Weasley grandchildren, but it was difficult to tell, since she was always upset these days. Little did she know, she had Knox to blame for not just half of her heartbreak, but for all of it.

Since she knew what it felt like to be betrayed by a loved one, Dom didn't have a hard time being around Al for the rest of the day. For the most part, she kept to herself while also keeping a close eye on her one year-old niece – who was switching between crawling and walking and went from happy to agitated in two seconds time – especially since Victoire was visibly distracted throughout the long afternoon.

The mother was about as sick in the stomach as Al was in his heart. He tried not to take it personally when Victoire puked in the kitchen sink just after laying eyes on Al for the first time since James's graduation. Teddy assured Al that Victoire's stomach flu was just a part of her grieving process, but Al could tell as the purging continued for hours on end that his presence wasn't helping in the slightest.

In an effort to give Victoire some space, Al spent most of the day in his room or downstairs with Teddy, which was where he was seated now as the two talked about what Al might expect from Monday's trial.

"Shacklebolt will ask to hear your recounting of that day, and you don't want to leave anything out of your description," Teddy explained. "Even if something seems arbitrary or unrelated to Arthur, don't hesitate to tell us about it. Otherwise, we might find a way later to trap you in a position that you don't want to be in."

Al was only half-listening, since he hadn't asked for Teddy to provide him with any tips. Plus, he had spent most of the day leading up to Arthur's death with the Weasleys and the day after with Ilana, and he wasn't planning to bring any of them into this mess. So, Al just nodded as Teddy kept talking, refusing to answer him whenever he asked about Astoria or the Forbidden Flock.

He wasn't sure exactly why he couldn't tell Teddy the whole story. Maybe it was because he didn't want Dominique or Lily, who were busy attempting to cook dinner in the kitchen next door while Victoire played with Remy outside, to overhear. Maybe it was because he didn't want to get Teddy riled up about Knox and all of the adventures Al had had with Teddy's arch nemesis. Or maybe, just maybe, it was for the same reasons Al had joined the Flock in the first place: he didn't want to be weak enough for people to see his shame.

When Teddy grew tired of the silence, though, he changed the subject to something he knew Al wouldn't be able to resist talking about, stating simply, "Al, if you're innocent, then you have nothing to worry about. You just have to believe that people will believe you."

"_He_ doesn't believe me," said Al, catching onto the bait that Teddy had set for him and walking right into a speech centered around Harry. Since Teddy didn't know that this wasn't the first time Al had lied to Harry about working for the Flock, he didn't defend Harry or protest Al's desire as Albus elaborated, "He always believes me, but not anymore. It took seventeen years and a suspected _murder_ for him to finally realize that I'm not who he wanted me to be."

At that, Teddy was about to interrupt, but Al didn't give him the chance. "I've tried to tell him so many times," he pressed further. "I was sorted into Slytherin, I befriended a Malfoy, I quit the Quidditch team. Still, he acted like all that didn't mean anything. He never saw what I kept trying to show him: that I'm _not_ him."

He knew that he was being dramatic. He knew that he was blowing Harry's expectations of him way out of proportion. He knew that Harry was doing his best, as he had always done. But none of that mattered to Al. What did matter was the unavoidable feeling that he had lost his father forever, before Harry had even had the chance to get to know the real him.

"He's your father, Al. He loves you," argued Teddy, not understanding exactly what Al was getting at since he had never felt so much pressure himself. He had always wanted to make his own parents proud, but he had never needed to try with Harry. Harry had only involved himself in Teddy's life as much as he'd wanted to, and it had still been far more than he'd ever involved himself in Al's.

"No," Al voiced as he thought about Teddy's own relationship with Harry and then recalled what James had said to Mercy last night. "No, he loves _you._ You're the _Chosen Son_, Teddy – you and Scorpius. But James and I are just props. We don't have a speck of righteousness in us, not like you two."

Teddy was laughing, and unlike Harry's laugh this morning, his was genuine. His voice was the same as he told Al, "I only have righteousness because I have reason. I only want to avenge my parents' deaths because they _died_. I have a debt to pay them, and debt is powerful, Al. One day, you'll understand that. One day, you'll owe somebody your life and you'll do anything to pay them back for it."

This time, it was Al's turn to laugh, for Knox had once told him that very same thing. He had listened then, and he was listening now, but both times he wasn't completely sure if he believed in the power of debt. After all, debt was just another form of guilt, but the only power Al truly believed in was addiction.

Teddy was about to ask what was so funny, but Al was saved from having to lie about Knox again when the sliding door opened to a sweaty James still in his Magpies uniform, holding up an overturned Victoire who tumbled inside looking as lost as Al and as pale as Scorpius. Teddy stood from his seat as soon as he saw her, rushing to her side and helping her regain her balance, but James was still panic-stricken as he looked between Victoire and the darkening yard behind him.

"So, I'm really hoping that Remy's somewhere inside right now," said James anxiously.

Nobody needed to tell him that he shouldn't be so hopeful when Victoire's eyes widened with extreme fear and she vomited water – the only substance left in her body at this point – all across the bright red rug. Teddy was rubbing her back with shaking hands as he called for Dominique and Lily, stretched his neck so that he could see the moon rising above the clouds from outside the window, and went quickly went into planning mode.

Victoire was sobbing at this point, and was trying to say Remy's name but couldn't seem to get her voice to work as Teddy turned to the others in the room and said steadily, "It's all right; we can handle this. Let's divide into pairs and take over different parts of the area." Then he turned to James and said, "You and Lily-"

"Will take the center patch of the woods," Lily answered for him. After her summer of night walking, she knew the forest behind Godric's Hollow better than anyone.

Her confidence seemed to ease Teddy somewhat, since he nodded at her and James to get going before he even had the chance to formulate the rest of his plan. Once the first pair had left, Teddy addressed Dominique and paired her with Al, not even questioning his action when he threw Al the Elder Wand. For the first time in days, nobody was looking at Al like he was a murderer; they were looking at him like he was part of the family.

Al and Dom waited for a minute to make sure that Victoire was okay, but Remy's disappearance caused her mother to suddenly wake up from her digestive failures as she grabbed hold of Teddy's arm and pulled him out the door, not willing to stay behind while everyone else looked for her daughter. When they made it outside, Teddy broke Harry's barrier before he and Victoire instinctively took to the streets while Al and Dominique decided to explore the outer woods.

Having his wand back made Al feel like himself again. He didn't need to perform any magic with it to know how much more secure he was to hold the Elder Wand in his hand, because now he _could_ make his own decisions, and now his choices _did_ matter. He could disarm Dominique and run away in seconds if he wanted to, but he knew as he rushed into the woods that his family was whom he needed to be with right now. More importantly, and for the first time in a long time, _they_ needed _him_.

Of course, Dominique didn't share the same feeling of safety. She may have been four years older than Al, but that didn't mean that she was any stronger than him, and they both knew that she wasn't anywhere near as powerful, especially with their different wands. Dom seemed to sense an imperceptible danger in Al, also, since she kept a safe distance from him as they entered the woods from the east side of town and started to work around the forest perimeter.

For the first ten minutes or so, they jogged heavily in hopes that they might outrun Remy, but their pace didn't last. Once they slowed down and caught their breaths, Al began to notice Dominique's frequent shutters at just about every noise that was made through their travels. It was barely dark thanks to the moon's impressive light, so neither of them had their wand lit, but Dom was spooked nonetheless.

"It's okay," Al tried to tell her after she twitched her face around like a bird for the tenth time since they'd left the house. "You don't have to be afraid of me."

Dominique stopped momentarily so that she could look at the still walking Al with straight eyes and steady lips as she crossed her arms against her chest and said, "I'm not afraid of you."

Ever since Teddy and Victoire's wedding three years ago – which also happened to be around the time she and Knox supposedly split up – Dominique hadn't been much of a talker. Before that turning point in her life, Dom had been plenty chatty, always vying for attention as Bill and Fleur's middle child. Similar to how Al felt in comparison to James and Lily, Dominique was less obviously beautiful than Victoire (but beautiful nonetheless, with a round face full of freckles, turquoise eyes, and wavy locks of dirty blonde hair) and was never as successful at school as her younger brother, Louis. She spent most of her childhood searching for something to be good at, and Al was just beginning to understand that what she'd been good at was loving Knox, which was why she now felt like she had nothing left to give, and thus nothing left to talk about.

"Then what?" Al asked as he took a few steps toward her, knowing now that she wouldn't mind his closeness.

Dom turned to him fleetingly as they continued walking and said with a hint of trepidation, "I'm not exactly a fan of werewolves."

That was understandable. Werewolves were not like magical Animagi; being a werewolf was a curse, not a choice. Werewolves had no control over themselves once they transformed, which in itself was controlled by the cycle of the moon. They could kill without even realizing it until they woke up the next day as a human and wore the scars across their flesh that chronicled their rough night. Most people looked down on them, and rightfully so. They were diseased and dangerous. They were uncontrollable.

Still, Al didn't think that Remy could do any harm just yet. She was barely walking and, according to Teddy and Victoire, her transformations had only been slightly furry so far. But Dominique knew better, for she'd been living with the Lupins all year and thus had helped raise Remy. Considering this, Al realized what she might have reason to be afraid of, and why Harry might have wished Teddy luck that morning – something Teddy and Victoire wouldn't have wanted to warn Al or Lily about so as not to frighten them.

To see if he was on the right track, Al asked, "She's teething, isn't she?"

Dominique responded with a smirk as she said, "It doesn't matter how sharp they are; a single bite could transform any one of us."

Wondering why he hadn't thought this through before and subsequently why Dominique had, Al commented, "You sound like quite the expert."

"I'm not," she laughed. "Knox was."

It was the first time Al had heard her say Knox's name. He had only talked to her about Knox once before, but she had been careful to remain cryptic in her responses. Now, it was almost as if she _wanted_ to talk about him, like she had been longing to talk about him for longer than anyone realized. She'd just been waiting for someone who would be willing to listen before shutting down the boy who broke her heart and automatically taking her side.

So, Al listened, out of loyalty to his cousin as well as concern and curiosity for his friend. He listened to every word that came out of Dominique's mouth as she said, "He used to run away from his house all the time when he was just a kid, still trying to figure out what it meant to be a Seer. He liked it in the woods – he could see through all the trees and find the animals rather easily, or he could at least sense when they were coming near. He didn't know it at the time, but finding them was his own way of training himself and his capabilities. Of course, this meant that on full moons, he had a tendency to run into wolves.

"He was five years old the first time he was attacked, and somehow he knew to stay away from the teeth, but he couldn't resist the claws. He would have died if Astoria hadn't saved him."

"_Astoria_ saved him?" asked Al. He hadn't wanted to interrupt, but hearing such a name made it so that he couldn't help himself. Just thinking about her caused his persistent chest pain to intensify, and the screams that had echoed through his head last night almost seemed real now.

"She was a good friend of Knox's mum," said Dominique. "And though I didn't realize this until word came in the news last Christmas of her Animagus form, it couldn't have been hard for her to find him or the wolf that night. Hawks have incredibly tuned senses."

Thinking about Astoria saving Knox's life when he was just a boy, Al mumbled under his breath, "He's in her debt."

Dom didn't hear what Al had said, though, so she just kept on talking. "Knox spent all his years at Hogwarts trying to make his nightmares of that night go away, and he seemed to be under the impression that in order to do so, he needed to face his fear. He became what Trelawney said was the best Seer in a century, developing his own unique abilities so that he was better suited for discovering secrets of the present than those of the future, and I think that was why he was always so drawn to me as well. He could see the wolf in me, even the little bit that I had inherited from my father. He could see everything in me."

Al knew how that felt. He knew what it was like to see into a person's soul and understand them far more thoroughly than he had ever understood himself. Yet again, his chest swelled at the memory of Ilana.

"Once he left Hogwarts, he wanted to test his talents around the world," Dominique continued. "He found his place at the Ministry in the Department of International Magical Cooperation and then there was Astoria. She became his mentor, and soon she became his everything. I should have seen it then, but I was never very good at seeing past the surface – not like him. And anyway, he owed her his life, and that's a tough bond to compete with."

As Dominique paused for a moment, Al had to stop walking to recuperate his fading body. He was glad to finally understand what exactly had torn Knox and Dom apart, not to mention the reasoning behind Knox's unflagging loyalty to the Flock. Still, he couldn't focus on Knox in that moment. All he could focus on was the feeling of deterioration that was overcoming him with every step he took and the persistent screaming that was making his head throb.

"Just give me a second," Al said to Dom as she looked to him with concern.

He didn't expect her to understand what was happening to him, especially since he didn't exactly understand it himself, which was why it came as quite the shock when the loudest scream yet infiltrated his eardrums and she asked immediately afterward, "What was that?"

"You heard that?" asked Al from below Dominique, his back bent over and his hands plastered to his knees.

Dom was nodding as she looked all around the area with helpless worry. "It sounded like crying – like a cry of pain."

Al was still confused as to how she had heard what he'd thought only he could, but he didn't have time to wrap his head around the idea until Dominique had set her sights on a black bird flying overhead and was yelling for Al to follow it with her.

It took Al all the strength he could find to run after Dominique and the bird that only she could see, especially since his pain grew worse and worse as they came closer to the source of the crying. They ran through at least a mile's worth of upturned roots and thick, prickly bushes, Dominique not willing to stop and Al too oblivious to try. The only thing that managed to gain any of whatever attention he had left was when he heard one last deafening yelp that had to have been coming from directly in front of him.

Dominique had halted by now, but wasn't giving anything away as Al slowly looked up from the ground to see a gigantic red eye thick with crackling veins staring at him with complete and utter powerlessness. It was Zephorien, Al's dragon and newly adopted other half, and Al understood instantly that the creature had been holding on to half of Al's pain all day and night. He was dying from it, and the only thing that could save him was Al's decision to take on the pain for himself, to face it fully and head-on.

From a few steps away in the field of wilting irises where they were all standing, Dominique was trying and failing to hold her breath from the fear she felt upon seeing a Hebridean Black right before her eyes. But Al couldn't think about her until he took care of his pet. He wasn't exactly sure how he would be able to do so, but he did have an idea that he was fairly certain might help.

Clutching his wand tightly, Al walked around Zephyr's nose until he was facing the dragon straightforwardly and said, "It's okay, Oreo. I'm ready."

The fire was weak but still burning as it pushed across Al's barrier of wind, but he could tell that the second binding was working. The pattern of Zephorien's scales widened against his chest, burning through patches of his shirt, and soon the dragon was back to his normal, powerful self as he withdrew from his master and strode down to the pond to quench his thirst.

Al couldn't scrape up the energy to explain what had just happened to Dominique, even though she was asking about it repeatedly. He was too overwhelmed with the range of emotions he had just taken back for himself – things that he had been ignoring without even realizing it, courtesy of Ilana and Rose and Harry, but mostly courtesy of himself. He could feel all the things he had ignored when his grandfather had been killed right in front of him, when Ilana had left him for good, and when Rose and Harry had refused to believe his innocence even when they had no reason to. He could feel everything again.

Dominique was still trying to gain Al's attention, her hands on his cheeks and her eyes searching for his, when the bird she'd seen before landed in the very center of the field and transfigured into the human-size Knox Rookwood. He was dressed in the same tattered clothes he'd been in last Al saw of him, the morning before Arthur's death, and even from afar Al could smell on him the same stench of rotting meat that had had filled Zephyr's breath.

A part of Al wanted to race over to Knox and punch him one more time for going behind his back, but something stopped him from making any sudden movements at all as he watched Knox and Dominique lay eyes on each other for the first time in nearly three years. It didn't take long for the ex-lovers to synchronize their slow breathing and rapid heartbeats, though neither spoke to the other. Al knew just as well as they did that in this moment, words would never be enough.

Knox was the first to step forward, and when he did, Dominique couldn't help but reciprocate. Soon, they were growing ever closer to each other, and Al was just watching the reunion from his spot on the edge of the field, not knowing if he should try to intervene or make himself invisible. When he saw Knox reach a hand into his pocket once he was only a foot away from Dominique, however, Al decided not to ruin this for his friend.

Al was expecting Knox to take out the red sea glass heart that he'd shown Al on the way to Romania, so he was shocked when instead, Knox revealed his hand to be clasped around Nigel's wand. Somehow, though, Dominique had seen this coming even when Al hadn't, pointing her own wand at Knox's chest before his had the chance to be pointed at hers, and flicking it lightly while voicing the incantation, "_Expelliarmus!"_

Her free hand was gripping Nigel's wand instantaneously, and Knox was left staring at her with what Al initially thought was contempt and fear, but what he later realized was acceptance. Knox was just waiting, as Al was now, for Dominique to put the pieces together, for detailed drawings of Nigel's wand had been posted on the front page of the _Daily Prophet_ as well as the walls of every wizarding village for the past two days. Surely, she would recognize it.

She did just that when she finally found the courage to look away from Knox and inspect the wand she was now holding more thoroughly and looked back up to say, "It was you."

When Knox didn't argue, Dominique laughed sadly and said, "Of _course_ it was you." Then she used her own wand to send three red sparks into the sky as a signal to Teddy and Victoire, ordered Al to help her tie up Knox, and started to work on sending Teddy a message with the Patronus charm. Al followed her command and started walking toward them, trying not to think about what was going to happen next to the guilty Knox, but stopped in his tracks when Dominique had finished stating her message and watched a silvery orca whale fly into the night. At first, Al wasn't sure why he was shocked to see this specific animal come from Dom's wand, but then he realized that he had expected to see a rook. When he looked at Knox's sunken eyes, it was all too clear that Rookie had expected the same.

Dominique was staring down at the two very different wands in her hands while Al waited for Knox to say something. When he did, Dom looked up at him with teary eyes to hear him proclaim, "I should have loved you."

"When?" she asked in a whisper.

"When you loved me back."

They maintained eye contact – turquoise and black fading into the grey of the moon – for a long minute before Dominique told Al once more to tie Knox up and then turned around and walked away, off to sit by the edge of the field as far from Knox and the dragon (whom she seemed to have forgotten was there) as possible.

Once she was out of earshot, Al faced Knox and waited for him to voice a plan. When Knox remained silent, and even locked his hands behind his back as if awaiting for Al to tie his wrists together, Al realized that _this_ was the plan. After all, Knox could have transfigured ages ago, still could in fact, and could run away without anyone knowing he'd been here but Dominique. But this wasn't about seeing her again or about saving himself. This was about saving Al.

The only reason Al went along with Knox's refusal to fight back was because, at the end of the day, Knox really was the guilty one. Still, it took all of Al's might to stand behind Knox's back, point his wand at Knox's wrists, and force shackles upon them. As he did so, he couldn't help but ask Knox, just in case he could convince him of doing otherwise, "What are you doing?"

"Relax, Black Hawk," said Knox calmly. "She did just what I knew she would."

As Al turned around to face him once more, he asked again, "But what are _you_ doing?"

"This is how you save a life, Al... by breaking your own heart."

Albus stood staring at the man whom his life had seemed to be modeled after until Teddy and Victoire came running through the clearing. By this time, Al had wordlessly urged Zephorien to make himself scarce, so it was only Knox who caught Teddy's attention. He didn't even bother hiding his joy to finally capture Knox as he walked up to Rookwood with bright blond hair, took harsh hold of his shoulder, and whispered slimily in his ear, "You have _no_ idea how long I've waited for this."

Al followed Teddy as he led Knox back to where Victoire was huddled over Dominique, trying desperately to console her younger sister. Dom stood up when she saw Teddy there, handing him the wand that would be their main piece of evidence and standing next to her brother in-law to show that she was ready to accompany him to the Ministry.

Victoire, on the other hand, stayed by Al's side and looked at her husband with eyes that could tell an entire monologue, but that only Teddy could hear. "It's okay," he said to her after reading her thoughts. "James and Lily have gotten her by now; I can feel it. You should go back to the house with Al."

Victoire smiled and squeezed Teddy's hand once more before letting go and allowing him to take Dominique's. Before the two of them and Knox Disapparated, though, Al asked Teddy worriedly, "Wait, what's going to happen to him?"

"With this," Teddy nodded to the wand he'd secured in his belt buckle, "Along with all the other murder scenes at which he's been witnessed, he'll be sentenced to Azkaban for life."

Dominique and Al both grimaced at the thought, but Knox didn't show any reaction whatsoever. Instead, he looked straight at Al as his face gradually faded away, leaving Al with one last crooked smile and signature Rookwood wink.

Once they were gone, Victoire wasted no time in getting back to Godric's Hollow. She didn't seem to be willing to Apparate there with her current level of nausea, which Al was fine with. He just tried to keep her company the whole way back, walking steadily but not rushing and reassuring her time and time again that she wasn't alone and that everything was going to be fine.

Still, she didn't seem so sure as she confessed, "I turned around for a _second_, and she was gone. Then James showed up and practically carried me inside, and for a moment, I forgot about her. I forgot about my own daughter. I forgot what she was capable of."

"Yeah. You forgot," said Al as he stared into Victoire's straight, shiny hair. His thoughts went directly to Harry as he added, "But then you remembered. That's all that matters." Victoire had gone mental once she'd realized that Remy was missing, because she was determined to rescue her. She would never have given up, but Al knew that Harry already had.

Victoire was barely listening to Al, so he wasn't sure if his words were even remotely helpful. But they didn't need to be, since soon he and Victoire could see the village lights between the trees and were jogging to the back door of the Potter house. Victoire was about to pull the handle and open the door when Al looked inside the window screen and saw the living room that was lit with a single lamp illuminating the sight of James and Lily huddled over baby Remy, her normally blue eyes still stuck in a shade of muddy yellow and her bare arms covered in dog fur with piles of thorns and bristles stuck between the hairs. Then Al thought of the tiny teeth that could surprise anyone in that room right now, looked to Victoire and her pure, beautiful skin, and said, "I think you should wait out here. I have a pot of Wolfsbane upstairs in my room, and it'll help her re-transform."

Victoire was more than hesitant to follow Al's advice, but he decided to set the plan in motion anyway, using a defensive charm to create an invisible wall between Victoire and the door so that she couldn't come any farther, than slid himself inside and turned around as calmly as possible so as to address his siblings without unnerving the sensitive Remy.

Unfortunately, his plan was squandered as soon as James and Lily even noticed that he was there, since at that moment the front door opened and a proudly arrogant Mercy came strolling inside with good news that she needed to flaunt in front of her boyfriend.

"I'm sure you'll be utterly shocked to know that I passed the exam with _flying_ colors!" shouted Mercy without even saying hello first, speaking to just about anyone who would listen but directing her attention to James as soon as she found him. "Your father's at the office completing the paperwork as we speak."

"Congratulations," James said with annoyance as he glanced back and forth between Mercy and Lily, who was now sitting on the couch and trying to soothe a crying Remy by bouncing the baby on her lap.

Al tried to tell Lily to be careful, but she didn't hear him when his voice was overpowered by Mercy's fury as she retorted to James, "You are _unbelievable!_ I've just proven to you what you refused to believe, yet you _still_ don't believe it!"

James was irrefutably frustrated now, since he'd had much too long a day to be willing to deal with Mercy's problems. This much became clear when he marched right up to her and said, "You know what, no, I _don't_ believe you! I don't believe that you love me _nearly _as much as I love you, because otherwise you wouldn't have needed to prove this to me at all, because you wouldn't have needed to use my father as a way of getting me back. All you would have had to do was tell me you wanted to be with me for _me_, and _then_ I would have believed you."

Al and Lily had gone completely still as they waited for the break-up to end, though Remy was still crying profusely from Lily's arms. It wasn't until Mercy stormed off, James followed her to get in one last kiss, and she reciprocated wholeheartedly before once again slamming the door in his face just to make some sort of statement, that Al and Lily found reason to move. Because the second that the door closed and sent vibrations across the entryway, into the kitchen, and straight across the couch, Remy's defenses took control and her tiny teeth made a single tiny bite.

The sudden gasp of pain from Lily was enough for Al to yell out to James, who was still standing in the entryway and was unaware of what was happening deeper inside the house, "James, go upstairs to my room and find the jar on the second shelf of my bookcase! It should have a paw on it!"

When James yelled back in questioning, Al merely shouted, "_NOW!" _And then he heard James's feet banging up the stairs without another word.

Meanwhile, Al had his eyes glued to Lily, who had dropped a now completely human Remy back on the couch and was looking down at her hands with crazed eyes and drooling lips. Her ratty nails were quickly becoming razor-sharp claws and her long, ginger hair was shrinking into something akin to a lion's mane. Then her spine was curving upwards and tearing her shirt in two, her legs were growing out of her pants and over the wooden floor, and her golden skin was replaced with loose, puppy dog flesh. Throughout the entire transformation, she was howling with pain, and Al wished more than anything in the world that he could share that pain with her the way he had with Zephorien, but he knew that it would be impossible. Lily was a true night walker now.

With Lily's final, deeply assured howl at the moon that was glowing through the window, Al told himself that he needed to do whatever he could to protect both her and Remy, who was sitting precariously close to the full-sized animal Lily had just become. Determined, Al rushed over to the wolf that was now staring at him with nothing but hunger in her eyes, and tried to reach through all the flesh and blood and bone and into Lily's heart by saying, "_LOOK AT ME!_ Look at me, Lily! I'm right here – your _brother_ is _right here_. Come back to me, Lil. Just resist this urge and come back to me."

Al remembered what it felt like to be placed under the Imperius Curse during all those classes he'd had with Shunpike in his fifth year at Hogwarts. He remembered the pressure that his back had felt to keel over, but he also remembered resisting it. He remembered that all he'd needed to resist it had been the encouraging thoughts of Rose sitting right in front of him. All he'd needed was someone who believed in him.

But Lily was too far gone. She couldn't hear Al at all as she thrashed at him like he was about to become her next meal, and it was highly probably that that was exactly what was going to happen. Al could hear James on his way downstairs, but he also suspected that it would be too dangerous to try to get Lily to sip the potion and he didn't want to let James take the risk, so he decided to take one for the team and used himself as bait to get Lily out of the house.

He ran out the back door, breaking through the wall he'd put up for Victoire and running across the yard with Lily directly behind him. Victoire had seen everything that had happened through the window, so she was smart enough to hide around the corner until Lily had passed her and then slipped inside to reunite with Remy. As she did so, Al ran right back into the forest and, once he gained enough ground to allow him some time to stop before Lily obliterated him into pink mist, Apparated to the first place that came to his mind.

That was how Al ended up in Knockturn Alley, standing in front of the walkway to Borgin and Burke's, the dark artifacts shop that Astoria had turned into her latest headquarters. Like Rose had said yesterday, he had a decision to make, and regardless of all that had happened since she'd given him her ultimatum, it was time for Al to choose. But before he did, he needed to talk with the person all his decisions had stemmed from in the first place.

He was pleased to find that Astoria was alone in the shop, trying not to think about the idea of Ryder, Vega, or Wynn spying from their hiding spots in the wings. If he couldn't see them, he liked to think that they weren't there. And today, Al really didn't want to see any of his Flock colleagues, not after the one of them he'd ever cared about had been taken away forever.

Thinking back on Knox and what he'd done for Al, the latter walked right up to Astoria, who was stationed comfortably behind the old check-out counter as she inspected what looked to Al like a black-stoned ring, or at least the replica of one. But he didn't care much about whatever Astoria was busy doing, so he slammed both his palms against the counter to gain her undivided attention and said, "Tell me _everything._"

Astoria put down the ring and looked at Al with pouting lips and sad eyes as she replied, "Oh, not even a thank you? I'm _deeply_ offended."

"Save the sarcasm," Al told her. "I came here for an explanation, nothing more."

"Yes, Albus, I realize that," spat Astoria. "But the explanation is far simpler than what you're expecting. I needed to make sure that you weren't arrested for a crime you committed for my sake, and Knox suggested to use the evidence he stole from you to protect your fate."

"Yeah, by sacrificing _himself._" Al had been given a glimpse of Knox's extreme sense of loyalty when he'd convinced Al to go back for Astoria as they were escaping the dragon sanctuary in Romania, but he'd never expected Knox to do the same for _him_. In fact, he'd never expected anyone to.

As if she could read his exact thoughts, Astoria said with as empathetic a tone as she could muster, "You really don't know how it feels to be looked after, do you?"

Al looked to her with squinting eyes and waited for her to say what she clearly wanted to. He was waiting for her to tell her another secret, for it was this kind of revelation that always made the truth come out of her.

"You know, I was there the day you were born – the same day your father _wasn't_," Astoria continued, shocking Al with her admission. She started pacing around the counter as she went on with, "Scorpius proved to be a difficult birth, and I was hospitalized all summer to recover from it. I remember sitting in that maternity ward and watching your mother roll in, and the whole time I was _itching_ to get a look at the famous _Harry Potter_. But then he didn't show. The next day, I saw Ginny walking through the hallway outside my room with you in her arms, and you were already a _ticking time-bomb._

"She couldn't handle you, not with that _ridiculous_ older brother of yours running around her heels at all hours of the day. So, you'd just cry and cry, having no _discipline_ – no border or control or even a fuse for your crazed circuit. You were blowing out windows before you were even discharged, so naturally the nurses never did manage to put the Trace on you. And by the time Harry came, you were _uncontrollable_, and you were the _last _thing he wanted to deal with."

Al was holding back tears as Astoria inched so close to him that he could feel the warmth of her breath on his cheeks. "I understand why this is confusing and difficult for you, but don't you see? You are _meant_ to become more powerful than even the Chosen One, and all you have to do is make _one last choice_."

Without letting himself think because thinking always made things worse, Al looked into Astoria's arctic eyes and promised her, "I choose the people who believe in me. I choose you. I choose Knox. I have to; I owe you both my life. I'm in your debt."

Astoria took a single step backward as slowly as her body would allow her to move while she said, "I'm glad to see that we're on the same page." And as she disappeared into the darkness of the back end of the shop, the last words she said were, "I'll see you at the funeral."

* * *

Only moments later, Al was standing outside the shop, back on the streets of Knockturn Alley and watching the sun rise over the roof of the distant Leaky Cauldron. He hadn't realized just how long he and Dominique had been roaming through the woods, so now he was stuck in a deep train of thought, wondering when it had become morning and trying to think of where he was meant to go from here.

"I suppose I should apologize for not cleaning up your mess myself," said a voice from deep within the shadows, and Al turned toward its source to find Ryder Rookwood – just as dark and dangerous as her twin brother ever was – walking up to him in slithering steps, having been trained well by Astoria and her sinister movements. "After all, I am the Flock's designated secret keeper."

Ryder's official role was one of the reasons Al never saw much of her; Knox had been a hit-man, so Astoria had wanted him by her side at all times, but Ryder worked wherever no one would see her.

"But it was rather difficult to keep your secret when you kept trying to give it away," she continued. Al should have expected her to be angry with him, since he was the reason Knox was gone. That was why he didn't argue with her – because he was on her side. Instead, he waited and listened while she said, "Now, my brother's in Azkaban, but _you're_ still here, and you still have _no idea_ what you've gotten yourself into."

At that, Al's interest was piqued, for he had most definitely not expected Ryder to disapprove of his choice to pledge his utmost loyalty to the Forbidden Flock. But he soon realized that she wasn't disapproving of him so much as she was _advising_ him, on how to take Knox's place without ultimately suffering his same fate.

Al didn't need to ask who she was talking about when Ryder told him finally, "There's a reason she needs _you_ and not my brother. There's a reason she mentioned Arthur's funeral. Every word that comes out of her mouth hides a secret. Every sentence she writes hides the truth. So, you had better start learning how to read it." Then she transfigured into a fierce little blue jay and flew off into the light.

It took a while for Al to connect the idea of Astoria having a secret language to the questions he had posed for Knox in their corresponding letters from late last night. At first, all he thought of Ryder's warnings was that he had clearly missed something in his recent conversation with Astoria. But when he didn't remember her mentioning anything too mysterious except for the part about Arthur's funeral, which he had admittedly overlooked at the time, he wondered if maybe Ryder wasn't talking about Astoria.

After all, Knox was her twin brother, so she knew his mannerisms perhaps better than anyone. She knew about the heart he kept in his pocket, and about the nicknames he used only for the people he secretly liked, and about the winks he'd give as goodbyes only when everything was falling into place. And it was when Al remembered the wink Knox had left him with that he came to the conclusion that Knox would never have left him hanging upon asking about Astoria's secret plans, not with how far they'd come together, how much Knox owed Al, and what he was about to do for him. There must have been _something_ hidden between the lines of that heavily practiced handwriting.

With a new goal in his sights, Al set off for Grimmauld Place, Apparating straight to the park across the street from number twelve and running inside before he could risk anyone seeing him. Surely, he was no longer being accused of murdering Arthur since Knox had essentially turned himself in, but everyone still knew that Al had been working with the Forbidden Flock, even if they didn't know to what extent. He didn't want to deal with any more judgment today.

Once inside his old safe house, Al ran through the darkened hallway without bothering to light his wand; he knew every contour of this creaky floor like the back of his hand. Soon, he had made it to the dining room and was walking to the side opposite the kitchen area where the enormous fireplace formed the base of the east-facing wall. Then he began rummaging through the combination of ashes, soot, and litter that sat in its pit until he found the crumpled letter he'd ordered Witherwings to leave here.

Al's hands were shaking nervously as he opened the letter and read with hasty prudence:

_You know I can't tell you that. You know what she'd do. You know what she stands for… Revenge. Obstinacy. Secrets. Exaltation. She's a killer. We all are._

This had been Knox's response to Al's question of who was next on Astoria's list of victims. Much like the first time he read it, though, Al didn't see anything odd about Knox's words, but scanned the page again while thinking of what Ryder had told him about every sentence having a hidden meaning. That was when his eyes narrowed in on the four fragments in the middle of the true sentences: _Revenge. Obstinacy. Secrets. Exaltation. _And with a third viewing, all Al could see were the four letters that spelled the person Astoria was planning to kill at Arthur's funeral: _R.O.S.E... _Rose.

Albus stopped breathing. He stopped moving. He stopped thinking. All he could do was feel, and all he felt was power. Soon, that power was taking control, and fire was burning from the pit in which he'd just found Rose's name. The floorboards he knew so well were cracking beneath his feet. The windows hiding the sunrise were shattering their glass and blowing it in every possible direction. The Elder Wand was not in Al's hand, but was rather stashed away in his pocket, but it didn't matter. He didn't need it. He was powerful enough all on his own. In fact, he was more than powerful. He was _uncontrollable_.

The house continued to fall apart around Al – its outer walls exploding and its inner frame tumbling to the ground – as he stood up and walked out the hallway with as much awareness to what was going on as Lily had had when she'd been transforming before his eyes. It was for that reason that Al didn't even notice when James ran through the door to find Al and started shaking him while yelling, "AL! AL, _LOOK_ _AT ME!_ Look at me, Al! You're okay; everyone's okay. Lily's _okay_; we found her and she's sleeping it off at home. Please, Al, come home! You can come home now."

Al remained oblivious to James's presence, continuing to push past him on his way outside, until shards of stained glass from the window on the staircase near Walburga Black's shrieking portrait flew down in a gust of wind and pierced a set of rugged holes straight into James's left shoulder. James's reactionary grimace combined with the smell of coppery-tinted blood seemed to do the trick in waking Al from his hypnotic trance, but it didn't alter his mindset.

Al only pushed his brother harder as he ignored James's injury and yelled directly into his eyes, "_STOP _protecting me! People who protect me... they end up _dead_." Then the door fell open just in time for him to walk outside and start running, not knowing which direction he was heading and not caring. All he cared about was the pain he'd taken back from Zephorien that had now turned into power. All he could hear was the ticking time-bomb inside his head, pumping wildly at the same pace as his flying feet as they pounded through the mud. All he could feel was his throbbing forehead, and he was quickly growing addicted to the blood rush.

Addiction was a powerful thing, especially when the addictive substance was power itself. But what it gave rise to was perhaps even _more_ powerful: guilt. Guilt was like a time-bomb, escalating with every passing second until, eventually, it exploded. Now, Al's bomb of guilt was exploding, and there was no telling how much damage it could do, but one thing had become undeniably clear: nobody, not even James, was going to be there to pick up the pieces.

* * *

_**Note: **Crazy, right? I'm very curious to hear your thoughts on this, so please do leave a review, either on this chapter or on Part 3 as a whole. I'll reply to all reviews and will answer any questions that you might have, so don't hesitate to comment.  
_

_Obviously, Part 4 will have a lot going on, and I am hoping to upload Chapter 31 around **November 4th**. I realize that this is a pretty long wait, but it's the only weekend I have coming up that won't be filled with schoolwork. Until then, I will be posting spoilers on my profile page, so look out for those, and enjoy this last hint about Part 4's mysterious format (note that the perspective of Chapter 31 will only be revealed when the chapter is uploaded):  
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_**Hint #4: **The title for Part 4 will be 'The Sun, the Moon, and the Truth'.  
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_Again, thank you so much for reading and reviewing throughout the whole of Part 3, and let me know what you thought of Al's last words!  
_

_-Hailey  
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	31. The Weasleys Wilting

_**Note:** Are you ready? Chapter 31 marks the beginning of Part 4 of 'Blood of the Birds', otherwise known as the beginning of the end. This section will consist of fifteen chapters (not ten) that will alternate perspectives. I won't say any more now, except that this is a heavy chapter, but I actually loved writing it, so I hope you all enjoy!**  
**_

_-Hailey_

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**Part 4 - The Sun, the Moon, and the Truth**

* * *

**31 – The Weasleys Wilting**

One dreadful, foggy morning in early September, Rose Weasley woke to the sound of birds crying. She made herself take three deep breaths before she opened her eyes – the first to let her tears swell, the second to hold them still, and the third to push them back. The birds could cry all they wanted, but Rose Weasley would _not_ cry. Not today.

When her eyes finally opened, they instinctively searched for that pure ice that had stared back at her all summer. Of course, her mind knew that Scorpius wouldn't be there, but her eyes had yet to be convinced. Eyes never did understand the difference between a blink and goodbye. That was why Rose had to tell herself all over again that it was just one day she and Scorpius would be spending apart. He'd left for Hogwarts the previous morning, and though Rose had every intention of joining him at school, the Potters had insisted that they wait until September 2nd to bury Rose's grandfather, Arthur.

It had been exactly a month since his death, which was usually much too long a time to wait for a funeral. But ever since Albus had disappeared on the same night Knox Rookwood had been found guilty for the murder, Harry and Ginny had made it their mission to find their youngest son and apologize so that they could bring him home and help him stand tall at Arthur's funeral. The rest of the Weasleys were empathetic to their cause, many of them concerned for Al's safety as well, so the Potters had asked to have until the first of the month in the hopes that they would find Al about to board the Hogwarts Express on Platform 9¾. When he hadn't shown, the train had gone on without him, just as Scorpius had gone on without Rose, and so too would the funeral.

Thinking about the empty space in her bed made Rose want to get out of it, so she quickly slid her bare feet onto the cold, wood-panelled floor and made up both sides of her bed, even though only one side truly needed it. Looking down at the hand-woven blanket that had been made out of the Weasley family's long-standing collection of Quidditch jerseys, Rose managed to stifle a laugh at her own thoughts. After all, Scorpius hadn't technically been allowed to sleep in Rose's room while staying with her family this summer. Ron had been stringent about that particular policy, but Scorpius had easily found his ways around it.

It had become the Malfoy boy's nightly routine to use the Vanishing Spell – a spell very few young witches and wizards could perform, but that Scorpius had mastered almost a year ago now – on himself to sneak out of the second floor guest room and quietly climb the stairs to Rose's attic. She'd usually be in bed already, but she'd never fall asleep without his arms around her. They had too much going on around them to ever consider going further than harmless snogging, but it wasn't the kisses Rose missed now anyway. It was the arms.

Before she could tell herself not to, Rose was crossing her own arms against her chest as she turned around and looked out the window. Her cardinals had already started flying south for the winter, but at least the sun was starting to come up. Rain was the last thing Rose wanted today, though not for the reasons most would expect. For most, rain would be the perfect backdrop for a funeral, but Rose had always loved the rain.

Pleased at the day's forecast, Rose uncrossed her arms so that she could grab the black dress that was ready and waiting on her wardrobe doorknob. Once fully zipped, she put on a pair of dull-looking flats, pinned the rebellious front strands of autumn-colored hair away from her face, took one last look in the mirror at the red patches under her eyes that were finally dimming into pink sunsets – finally, after months' worth of healing kisses from the boy who'd broken her in the first place – grabbed her wand in case of emergency, and started on the long trek to the kitchen.

She was careful to tiptoe down the two flights of stairs so as not to wake up Hugo, who was surely still asleep in his tiny and cramped room on the second floor. At least, Rose _hoped_ he was still asleep, since that would mean her real younger brother was beginning to resurface. A bigger part of her knew that she was just setting herself up for disappointment, though; Hugo would most likely never be able to sleep in again.

Pushing the thought aside just like she had with her tears because Hugo had plenty more reason to cry than she did, Rose marched into the kitchen and let her senses be overwhelmed by the soothing scent of freshly made raspberry scones. Her mother, Hermione, was just opening the oven as Rose's flats slipped over the threshold, and soon Rose was rushing to Hermione's side to help her take out the burning tray.

"It's okay, Rose; I've got it," Hermione shook her daughter's hands away before one more burning freckle was added to Rose's silky skin.

Rose was somewhat taken aback by Hermione's orders, though deep down she understood how idiotic she'd just been. Still, as she leaned against the counter and watched her mother rip all of the scones off their tray by hand and place them on a cooling rack, Rose couldn't help but feel useless. In fact, she hadn't been feeling much else as of late.

When Hermione was finished and turned toward Rose to grab the latest issue of the _Daily Prophet_ that was sitting by Rose's hand, the latter handed Hermione the newspaper as she shot her eyes to the floor and mumbled, "I'm sorry. I was being stupid."

As per usual, Hermione understood what Rose was feeling before Rose did herself, and she ignored her morning staple momentarily to look at Rose with her big brown eyes and tell her, "I know you think you should be doing something, but you're already doing it. You're here; that's all they need."

"They're not ready for this, Mum," Rose argued as her eyes met Hermione's. Her mother was wearing a dress far more beautiful than Rose's, with a layer of flowery lace covering a slip and tied at the waist with a wilting, black bow. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, making Rose think that now no one would have any reason to think that the two of them were related. But then Rose looked at the lack of wrinkles around Hermione's eyes, and she knew that at least for today, they had something in common that was far more important than their bushy hair: today, they were going to be strong for the two men in their family who desperately needed them to be.

Hermione didn't have the chance to respond before one of those men came in through the front door, ducked below the opening to the kitchen so that he wouldn't knock his head on the molding, and walked straight to the sink without a word of acknowledgement to his favorite girls. With one worried glance at each other, Rose and Hermione decided not to address Ron either, but they both watched him closely as he plunged his hands under the running water and scrubbed the wads of grease off his fingers with the fervor of an Unforgivable Curse.

Rose still didn't know where the grease was coming from, though her father had been routinely washing it off himself for nearly two weeks. It was mesmerizing to watch his enormous hands shake uncontrollably while the black rushed out of him like it was bleeding from his suit, and Rose was so transfixed on those hands and that black that she didn't even see Hermione walking toward her husband until her hands were holding his, stopping the water from flowing through their locked fingers and ceasing the shaking that had been in perfect time with Ron's racing heart. Suddenly, they were still.

"We're going to be late," came a monotonous voice from the adjacent hallway. It was quite possibly the only voice that could break up Ron and Hermione's moment, since Hugo was the only person whose heart was beating faster than their own.

Hugo was out the front door without another word, Hermione racing after him so that she could follow him up the driveway but only be a few paces behind. Ron, on the other hand, had yet to move, at least not until he picked up Hermione's newspaper and looked down at its front page – one half adorned with a Weasley family portrait and a gorgeous obituary written by Hermione herself, the other with its permanent 'Missing' notice for Albus Severus Potter.

"He's still gone?" asked Ron.

"Yeah," Rose answered sadly.

"Good." Rose had lost plenty of faith in Al over the last year, but a part of her had still hoped that he'd come back, if not for his family then at least for her, or for Scorpius. Ron hadn't shared such hope, even after Al had been proven innocent, and Rose was beginning to think that Ron was on the better track.

At that, Ron found the courage to walk outside, Rose keeping close to him as they made their way into the tiny town of Ottery St. Catchpole, where the main road led past a series of charming, magical shops until it came to the gray-stoned church at its dead end. Normally, the church was silent and empty – a sacred building that was comforting to have and to look at every now and then, but that nobody ever used. Today, however, it was the exact opposite.

Reporters from the Ministry of Magic were bustling around the building's perimeter, the only thing stopping them from coming closer being the extensive protective spells lining the property and the horde of young Aurors at every double door and stained-glass window. By now, Ron and Rose had caught up with Hermione and Hugo, the four of them stacked up at the bottom of the church steps as they waited to be inspected.

Mercy Golding, the newest appointed Auror and member of the Order of the Phoenix's core alliance, was the one to question Rose and her family, addressing each of them and asking highly specific questions that she already had the answers to in order to assure their true identities. Hermione went first, facing the girl with the long legs that were shining as bright as her blonde hair beneath the sunlight, and saying something about her Muggle parents' dental work. Then came Hugo, who responded to a question about the color of Nigel Creevey's eyes, not hesitating in the slightest to use the words brilliant and blue. All Ron had to do was show Mercy the resulting scars of the Unbreakable Vow he'd made with Astoria last Christmas, since any transitory scar was never included in Polyjuice Potion disguises.

Once it was Rose's turn, she quickly decided that like Ron, she didn't want to be bombarded with some question that Mercy Golding, of all people, had designed for her. Instead, she spoke before Mercy could turn the page of her notes, stating with the utmost certainty, "Scorpius Malfoy has a single birthmark that sits right below his left ear and is in the shape of a snowflake."

Mercy looked down at Rose (she was ridiculously tall in her six-inch heels) with eyes beady from annoyance as she said condescendingly, "I'm sorry Rose, but that sounds an awful lot like something Astoria would know."

Laughing at Mercy's naiveté, Rose replied, "No, she wouldn't." Then she walked right past Mercy and joined her family at the top of the church steps, smiling to herself for taking charge and one-upping the girl who had somehow weaseled her way in to the Order before Rose had turned seventeen and could have her own spot.

Unfortunately, Rose's smile disappeared as soon as she felt the weakening hold of her cousin, Lucy, around her shoulders. Lucy's hair, which was the same color as her dress, was blowing directly past its headband and into Rose's face, but it was the heavy blubbering that really changed Rose's current disposition. She didn't mind comforting her best female friend, but she was admittedly pleased when the Scamander family arrived and Lorcan took on the task of holding his girlfriend.

The Scamanders were neighbors of the Burrow, so they had kindly agreed to attend the funeral. Plus, Lucy clearly needed Lorcan to be there for her, though both Rose and Hugo couldn't help but stare at the couple with envy, wishing each of their own loved ones could be here too. But a distraction came after Ron had finished greeting his older brother and Lucy's father, Percy, when he turned to old schoolmate Luna and hugged her like they'd always seen eye to eye, when really they never had.

While both Ron and Hermione were busy talking with Luna, and as Hugo slipped past the crowd and retreated into the dark confines of the church, Rose was left with no one to face but Lysander. The boy was even more handsome now than he'd been at his graduation last spring, his light green eyes the last speck of life in an already dying fall, and his smile was just as obnoxiously charming as Rose remembered it to be.

"You okay?" he asked as he took a step toward the girl he'd once chased after like no other, and had subsequently been rejected by like no other.

Rose actually had to think about her answer for a minute, since she wasn't used to being the object of concern these days. At times like these, she was always fine; someone had to be. Then again, Lysander had been born a much better liar than Rose, so she decided not to even attempt to lie to him.

"I will be."

"Yeah," said Lysander as if he was agreeing to an already defined plan. With his hands stuffed in his pockets just so that he wouldn't be tempted to touch her, he added, "You will be."

Rose and Lysander's eye contact was broken when the reporters started flashing their massive cameras as they ran into the street where a few Apparition pops had just sounded. Turning toward the noise, Rose saw Kingsley Shacklebolt, the Minister for Magic and an old friend of Arthur's, arriving at the same time as new widow, Molly Weasley herself, carried along the street by her visiting son, Charlie. Before Rose could run toward her to shove the paparazzi away, Ron and Percy were already by their mother's side and got past Mercy's interrogation quickly so that they could lead the slouched-over Molly inside.

Everyone else – Hermione and Luna, Lorcan and Lucy, Audrey and the younger Molly – followed the brigade of brothers shortly afterward, leaving Rose and Lysander alone on the steps as they waited for the one person either of them refused to enter the church without. With each pop they heard, they stretched their neck overs the crowd that was still flocked around Shacklebolt in anticipation of seeing James, but the Potters ended up being the last group to arrive.

Before them came Bill, Fleur, and Louis with the Lupins and Dominique, Victoire looking peaked and understandably nervous for what she was about to walk into, and baby Remy confused and tired from what Rose assumed to be another long night as a werewolf toddler. The final Weasley son arrived next, Angelina, Fred, and Roxanne all keeping close watch over George, who still looked absent even upon being fashionably late. A church was clearly the last place George Weasley wanted to be right now. After all, churches were filled with memories and mirrors, which for George showed a whole lot more than just a reflection.

When the Potters did finally arrive, Kingsley was careful to distract the reporters as best he could so that they wouldn't bombard Harry with questions about Al, but getting past Mercy was another story. Harry and Ginny, still grieving and guilty for what they'd accused of their own son, were barely listening to Mercy's questions of them, while Lily was too embarrassed to face the only girl who had ever been more popular than she was, at least until her legacy as Hogwarts Queen had been squandered by a single bite mark.

Lily, who had always been a natural and obvious beauty, was barely recognizable even to Rose. Last night had marked Lily's second full moon as a werewolf, and it seemed to Rose like her younger cousin wasn't adjusting very well to her other half. In the few glimpses that Rose caught in between Lily's hiding or cowering, she could see the skin around Lily's eyes that was the same brown color as her irises, the long, jagged scars across her cheeks that perfectly matched her oddly ratty hair, and the limp in her step that made her hobble clumsily. Still, none of that was anywhere near as evident as her newfound fearful mannerisms: shoulders hunched instead of broad, chin down instead of up, palms sweaty instead of fisted. Much like what was happening to Hugo, Lily had become a completely different person over the past four weeks.

It must have been her first time out of Godric's Hollow since her transformation, because James too was watching her as if he hadn't seen her in a year. When he noticed how uncomfortable she was as she stood behind their parents, he put a hand on Lily's shoulder and led her past Mercy, glaring contemptuously at his ex-girlfriend along the way. As the two came closer, Rose and Lysander silently agreed which of their friends to look after, and it seemed as if Lysander understood that Rose needed James far more than he did.

Though Lily was still quiet and self-conscious, she let Lysander walk inside with her after he gave a friendly hug to his best mate, and finally Rose was able to let herself feel the things she'd been hiding from her father and brother for so long. James was the one person other than Scorpius or Al whom Rose felt vulnerable around, in the best possible way.

The cousins didn't say a word to each other before they were locked in a tight embrace, for James had been too busy looking after Lily all month for Rose to see much of him. Before that, he'd been shacked up with Lysander in Wales so that he could have a shorter commute to Quidditch practices with the Montrose Magpies, but a mysterious injury to his shoulder had taken him off the team at the beginning of August. Now, though, he seemed to be getting better, since his hold around Rose was stronger than it had ever been.

"It's going to be all right," he whispered in her ear as they slowly broke apart. Then he took both of her hands in his and said, "We don't have anything to fear."

"But _they_ do," Rose told James worriedly. Neither of them would be speaking at the funeral, but five of their family members would be, and Rose was convinced that not a single one would be able to handle the pressure.

James didn't respond, but only sighed as he twirled the ring Rose was wearing around her finger. The gesture made her flinch, since it was something only Scorpius would ever do, causing her to take a step back and hold her hands at her side. Luckily, James didn't have time to get offended, because at that moment Shacklebolt came striding up the stairs and told them it was time to get started. The Minister would be delivering the welcome speech, so Rose and James took it upon themselves to follow him inside as Mercy shut the doors behind them.

The church was the perfect size to fit the rather large Weasley family and a few of their closest friends, with only seven rows of pews that could fit five or six people each. In the front row sat Molly in the center of her six grown children, along with one empty spot meant to commemorate the child she'd already lost. Behind them were all of the Weasley in-laws: Fleur, Audrey, Angelina, Hermione, and Harry. The middle rows were filled with Arthur's grandchildren: Bill and Fleur's clan in the third row; Molly, Fred, and Roxanne in the fourth with Lucy and Lorcan; and Lysander, Lily, and Hugo waiting for Rose and James to join them in the fifth. The last two rows were reserved for Luna and other family friends, as well as some Ministry officials that had worked with Arthur before he'd become a professor at Hogwarts.

The second Rose and James sat down, Shacklebolt stood at a podium in the front of the church – behind which Saint Catchpole himself was stepping off his horse in the colorful glass absconded with light – and addressed the audience. "Today," he said as his purple robes magically turned black, "We gather not to grieve, but to celebrate. We celebrate not what we lost, but what we had. We had not just a man, but a husband, a father, a grandfather, a friend. We celebrate not death, but life."

Then he walked around the podium and toward the center of the front row, where he held out his hand for Molly to take. She would be presenting the first eulogy, but as she batted away the helping hands of Percy and George, it took all of her might to make it to the podium. Holding on to it for dear life, she twisted her body so that her back faced the town founder, but still no words came out.

Everyone was silent as they waited a full three minutes for the family matriarch to open her mouth, but her lips were too dry to separate. Her skin was the color of a new father's mistake for yellow but was actually a sickly green, and her grey hair was static like pine needles in the middle of winter. As Rose looked at Molly from her seat toward the back, she didn't see her grandmother anymore, but rather had one simple thought on her mind: this was what a widow looked like.

The men in the front all seemed to have the same thought at the same time as Rose, standing from their pew suddenly in an attempt to rescue Molly until they were stopped by Harry. He was already half-way to the front, and soon his arm was around the waist of the woman who had raised him when no one had asked her to, holding her steady as he said everything that he knew Molly would have said herself if she wasn't so hysterical.

"I know that I'm not exactly an original member of the Weasley family," started Harry as his brothers-in-law all sat back down. Without their blocking backs in the way, Rose could see Harry now, and she loathed to look at him because of just how much he looked like Al, or rather how much Al looked like him.

"I know that I'm not technically one of you," Harry continued. "And I suppose I never truly realized just how little I fit in until my own son informed me of how _he_ felt in _our_ family – like a black sheep, he said. Now, all you have to do is take one look at me and one look at yourselves to know that I'm the most literal black sheep you've ever seen, standing here in a field of fire."

Rose giggled at that, as did the majority of her cousins. Harry had her full attention by now, so she kept her eyes locked on his spectacles and lightning-bolt scar as he added, "But Mr. Weasley... _Dad_, well he never seemed to care about any of that. He didn't even care about my prophecy. To him, I was simply a stray that needed a home, and that was exactly what he gave me. I ended up doing the same after Remus Lupin asked me to be the godfather of his son, Teddy. But there was something else that Dad taught me – something I was so oblivious to that I never was successful in appointing it to my own life.

"Before I even realized what it meant in this world to be born and raised by Muggles, Dad taught me that Muggles were just as fascinating and important as witches and wizards. He instilled this belief in me so heavily that I _never_ felt even remotely curious to see things from the other side. I never considered giving in to the power of my enemy, and I have Arthur Weasley to thank for that. I just wish that Albus could be here today, and more than anything I wish that he could say the same about me."

At that, it was Molly's turn to hold Harry. She whispered something in his ear as soon as he finished speaking that Rose could only assume was a thank you, and then they were both leaning on each other as they returned to their seats, Harry taking the extra room that Charlie made for him so that he could be next to Ginny.

As Charlie got himself situated, Rose took the intermission to check on James, who looked remarkably calm considering what Harry had just talked about regarding Al. Then she looked at Lily, who had her knees to her chest in a fetal position as if she desperately needed to be held, but didn't trust anyone enough to hold her. Then there was Hugo, who was as difficult to read as he'd been this morning, his posture straight and perfect to contrast his disheveled shirt and crooked tie.

The last thing Rose wanted to do was look away from her brother, but she did just that when Charlie, the second eldest Weasley son who'd traveled all the way from Romania to look after Molly so that none of his brothers had to leave their own families, began to speak. Rose didn't know this uncle very well, but Ron had told her plenty of stories about his Quidditch records and dragon sanctuary, so she was curious to hear what he would have to say.

Still, she wasn't anywhere near as curious as James appeared to be, for he was soon at the edge of his seat, his eyes set on those expressive ones of Charlie's, and even his cheeks looked slightly flushed as Charlie said, "Before most of my brothers even existed, and long before our pesky little sister joined in on the fun, I think I might have been Dad's favorite."

Charlie's voice was light and airy – a calm breeze that was much needed on this sunny day – but Rose could still sense the sadness in his tone, like he was the finest violin that just so happened to have one string out of tune. Such was evident as he continued with, "No offense, Bill, but I was always more trouble than you were even when you _tried_ to make a mess. And Dad _loved_ trouble.

"I remember this one time – I must have been three years old, since Mum was always on bed rest trying to keep the unborn baby Percy from kicking his way into the world too promptly for his own good – I took my pyromaniac tendencies to a whole new level. Somehow, I managed to set the entire kitchen on fire, and of course it was good ol' Bill who saved me from the flames. But since Mum was too busy to give me a decent punishment, Dad had to become the family's new martinet, a role he most definitely hadn't ever had any intention of playing. A few hours after the fire was put out, he walked right up to me and said, 'Son, don't ever do that again. But when you do, make sure you do it as far away from your mother as possible.'

"Years later, I moved to Romania so that I could keep playing with fire without upsetting my mother, and I suppose now I'd just like to say that I'm really glad I listened to my dad. I mean, here I am, away from the dragons and back with my family again, and I can look at my siblings and see all of the fires you've put out while I've been gone. I'm really proud of the trouble you've all managed to stay away from, and I think I can speak for Dad when I say that, because after all, I was his favorite."

Nearly everyone in the church was crying by the time Charlie finished, but it wasn't the kind of crying they'd been doing all day. These tears came with smiles. James even went so far as to clap for Charlie, calling Rose's attention to him yet again. She assumed that James's sudden interest in Charlie was simply due to their mutual talents in Quidditch, however, in order to make herself look back toward the front in anticipation of the next eulogy, which happened to be one of the two she was most anxious for.

Just like his mother had done before, Ron tried to get up on his own, but he seemed to realize before everyone else did that he wouldn't be able to do this alone. Charlie hadn't been here in years, and he also hadn't been there when Ron and Harry had found Arthur's body in the basement of the Rookwood house. Charlie had done this alone, the same way he did everything, but Ron wasn't like that. He could do anything, but only if one particular person was holding his hand while he did it.

Rose doubted that she'd ever felt prouder of her father than she did the moment she saw him turn around to find Hermione and ask for her help. Together, her parents looked out on what was left of their family with two pairs of opposite eyes that somehow saw the same thing as Hermione urged Ron to muster up enough confidence to speak.

After clearing his throat, Ron said with his head hanging down and his hair falling into his eyes, "So, everybody's been saying these really beautiful things, which is why this whole time I've been sitting there wondering why I was even asked to deliver this speech today. Why me? I'm not a good writer or speaker, and sometimes I'm not even convinced that I was all that good of a son." With a squeeze from Hermione's hand, he picked his head up and said with a continuous nod, "But if there's one thing I _have_ ever been good at, I suppose it'd be chess.

"I don't actually remember learning how to play chess, but I do remember every game I've ever won. I remember beating Fred and George first, I think just because they couldn't sit still long enough to make a single move. I beat Charlie and Ginny without any problems as well, and soon I could even win against Bill and Percy. When I got to Hogwarts, I had two new opponents, but Harry was rubbish and 'Mione never did like the violence of wizard's chess. So, I beat them too. The only person I never managed to beat was Dad.

"He might hate me for saying this, because I know he told everyone that he'd lost, but the truth is that he won. He _always_ won, until the day he died. That day was also the first day I felt like somebody else had beaten me at my own game, and I _hated_ that feeling. I _hate_ being second best. So, I just keep trying to think about what Dad would say to me right now, and I think he'd tell me that that loss didn't really count, just like the time he beat me before. I think he'd want me to stand here and say that I want a re-match. I want to play again, and this time I'm not going to lose. I _can't_ lose, because Dad was the only one who could ever beat me."

This time, the reaction was less cheerful with remembrance and more vengeful with determination. All this time, Rose had thought Ron was defeated, but his words were enough to make her see things clearly. After all, he hadn't been sulking around the house like Hugo had; he'd been coming inside early every morning with proof of a full day's work already running through his fingers. He was only glad that Al was still missing because he knew that he wouldn't be able to hold back from killing him if he ever saw the kid again. Ron was just as strong as he'd always been, if not stronger; he was just waiting for the perfect moment to show it off.

Victoire was the next speaker, and she looked nearly as green as Molly had before Harry had held her steady. She, like many of the speakers so far, hadn't volunteered for the position, but had taken on the responsibility because of her being the eldest of the Weasley grandchildren. But as her skin tinted in the way that her hair might be stained from chlorine, Rose began to wonder if maybe _she_ should have volunteered so as this situation could have been avoided.

Rose's worry subsided, though, when Victoire spoke with the steadiest voice thus far, her high pitch smooth and eloquent from hours of preparation as words started to flow from her glossy lips. "A month ago, I lost my daughter. I can't explain how it happened... it just did. I turned around for a second and she was gone. It was unexpected and it was terrifying, and at the time I was convinced that it was my fault. I think that many of us here today feel the same way about what happened to my grandfather. But, you see, the truth of the matter is that his death _wasn't_ our fault. We turned around for a second and he was gone, and now everything is unexpected and terrifying, but it isn't impossible.

"Losing a family member is just like gaining one: everything that happened before seems meaningless, because now they are all you _ever_ think about, and that never stops. But after a while, you get used to the crying, whether it's coming from a screaming baby or from yourself. You learn how to push through it, and regardless of how hard you try not to, you turn around. You turn around, because you don't always lose something; most of the time, you find it. I found my daughter the same day I lost her, and the day after that I found out that I was pregnant again. Granted, it was unexpected and now I'm terrified, but I think it's also a miracle, and miracles are what make me believe that anything is possible."

Most everyone was shocked by Victoire's announcement, since only Teddy and Dominique had known of the news beforehand. Somehow, though, it felt right that the Weasley family would be gaining a new member, even if Teddy and Victoire hadn't intended to have more children since their first had turned out to be a werewolf. The Lupins would deal with the implications of their unfortunate set of genes when and if they had to, but for now their growing baby was nothing more than the promise of spring in an already dying fall.

Rose tried to hold on to that hope as Hugo shimmied past her in their pew and walked up to the podium. He was the last speaker of the ceremony, partly because he was the youngest one to have prepared a eulogy and partly because he had felt the greatest impact from Arthur over the course of the past two years. Arthur had been the one Hugo had gone to when he'd first started questioning his feelings for Nigel, and it had been Arthur who'd supported him through his entire coming out process.

Trying not to let her whole body shake the way Ron's hands had that morning, Rose told herself to be confident for her brother as he said with a voice as squeaky as a rubber duck, "I hate the expression 'coming out of the closet'." Laughing in the least comfortable way, Hugo's head – the head adorned with a face that Rose was literally watching grow older, more tired, and more decrepit with every day that went by – turned to the side so that his eyes were set on the end of the east-facing wall and added, "Look there, that's a closet. You think if I go inside and come right back out, I'll suddenly know who I am?"

Rose's concern was increasing with every word that the normally hyper and happy Hugo said, but she made herself stay seated as he went on with, "I used to ask Granddad that all the time, and he would always say to me, 'Maybe. Maybe you just don't know you the way I do.' So, I listened to him. I went into a closet and then I came out, and for a while it worked. For a while, I knew who I was, the way he always had."

Was this really happening? Was Hugo really okay? Was his speech really going to be a moving and impactful string of thoughts the way everyone else's had? That was what Rose was wondering and praying for at the same time, though her prayers took a turn for the worse after Hugo took a pause and as he addressed his family with fresh streaks of tears.

"Then he died. And let's just all face the facts here: he's not going to be around to take in any more strays, or to set the kitchen on fire, or to beat my dad at chess, or to see his next great-grandchild be born." At this point, Rose wasn't the only one in the church who looked concerned, but she was one of the few who wasn't personally offended. That is, until Hugo added, "And stop trying to sugar coat everything, because his death _was_ our fault. I mean, my own sister had an idea of where he was being held captive, but she didn't say a word about it until it was too late! Uncle Harry went after a false lead based off the word of the Auror he'd been mentoring for a measly _month_, and don't even get me started on _poor_ Cousin Al! Because I don't care if he wasn't the one to do it himself; our grandfather's blood will _always_ be on _his_ hands!"

All the energy Hugo had been holding back this month was suddenly boiling to the surface, making him speak so quickly and harshly that he was sending spit across the podium and his finger was waving in the air, pointing at arbitrary places but causing very particular people to stand up in revolt. Harry was first, along with Ron and Hermione, and then waves of spectators were on their feet and protesting. Rose, who refused to stand herself or give in to the mob mentality that she knew wouldn't help anyone, most especially her brother, could just barely make out Hugo's last words before he stormed down the aisle and out the building.

"So, maybe Granddad was right after all," he said, seemingly ignoring the retaliation. "Maybe he was the only one who really knew any of us, and maybe he did teach me how to know myself better than I did before. But _you_? Do_ any_ of you know who you are anymore? Because I sure as bloody hell don't."

He walked calmly out of the church like he was heading nonchalantly for the burial portion of today's festivities, but soon Ron and Hermione were running after him and James was ushering everyone out in slow movements. Meanwhile, Rose just sat there, watching the confusion settle in on everyone's faces while she wondered to herself why she wasn't even the least bit surprised.

She was so intensely caught up in her own thoughts that she barely realized it when she was the last person still inside, James her only company as he stood by the door that was finally swinging closed. Then he was sitting beside her, staring patiently at her face, which was pointed straight ahead with whatever was the opposite of shock... boredom, maybe, or just blindness.

It was a while before Rose spoke, but James wasn't in a hurry. He was ready and waiting when she said with the same expression she'd had plastered on her face since Hugo had disappeared, "What do you do when things are so bad and so internalized that there's nothing left _to do_?"

James took a deep breath as he turned his head so that it paralleled Rose's, rubbed his glass-cut shoulder, widened his eyes, and answered, "Well, you cry."

And that was all Rose needed: permission. Soon, she was weeping into the crook of James's neck and he was strong enough to hold her up and she was strong enough to break down. For the first time all summer, she wasn't ashamed of her tears, either. She knew that they were no longer a sign of weakness; they were simply a sign of healing.

Once the sobs turned into hiccoughed breathing, and as Rose found herself listening to the steady creaking of the closet door Hugo had pointed to earlier, she confessed to James, "I don't know how to help anymore, but I don't want to give up on him either."

James didn't need her to elaborate to know that she was talking about Hugo, and of course he understood exactly what she meant. He had tried to help Al all of last year, but Al had repeatedly turned his brother away. But maybe that was the problem: maybe it wasn't sibling help that Al or Hugo needed. Maybe what they needed was the chance to finally step out of their siblings' shadows.

This must have been what James was thinking when he told Rose excitedly, "I think I have an idea."

Rose didn't respond before James began to suggest, "Have him try out for the Quidditch team this year."

Trying not to roll her eyes at the idea, Rose sighed and said in the most considerate tone she could manage, "I don't think that would work, James. I mean, you saw what happened last year." It was true that Hugo had always dreamed of playing Quidditch, his eyes locked on Gryffindor's Beater position, but this past season he'd gone through a horrendous try-out and had lost the coveted spot to none other than Nigel Creevey, his best friend and secret crush. Luckily, things had worked out between the lovebirds eventually, but it had ruined any hope Hugo had ever had of becoming the Quidditch star that could make his father proud.

"Sure," James agreed, though he clearly had a counterargument coming. "But this year, he has so much more to prove to himself. He knows what it feels like to lose somebody now, and he's probably going to keep being reminded of that feeling for the rest of his life, because this isn't the end. A lot more people are going to die before this war is over, and Hugo seems to understand that better than anybody. And believe me, there's nothing more powerful than feeling like you've made your lost loved ones proud."

Rose gave the suggestion some serious thought, since she was after all this year's captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team. But most of what she was thinking wasn't really about Quidditch at all, because James had been talking about much more than just the game he missed. That was why Rose asked him in a manner disguised as joking, "And when, may I ask, did you suddenly age twenty years, oh wise one?"

James laughed as he stood up, ignored her question as if it had been rhetorical, and asked Rose, "Want to go for a walk?"

"Don't you think we should be heading to the grave site?" responded Rose. "I mean, people will probably be wondering where we are."

With his eyes squinting at the closet door that somehow seemed to be getting louder and louder as if being banged against from the inside, James said almost sneeringly, "Like I said, Rose, a lot more people are going to die before the year's out. What's the difference if we miss one burial when there are bound to be a hundred more?"

Rose was taken aback by James's words – both literally and figuratively, her neck stretching backward in disgust and her thoughts running circles through all the memories she shared with this boy. It was one thing for him to be pragmatic about the imminent war, but now he was just being cynical, and James was hardly ever cynical. Normally, that was Al's job.

Soon, Rose's arms were shivering as she asked, "James, what is going on with you?"

Laughing again, this time with an obviously sinister hitch in the middle, James answered, "A whole lot more than you know." Then he slowly turned back around as Rose stood from her seat, and she quickly became aware of the skin on James's face becoming paler, his hair growing longer and darker, his eyebrows reshaping themselves into well-trimmed crescent moons. Before Rose could completely comprehend what was happening, _he_ was a _she_ and suddenly all Rose saw were the ice blue eyes she'd been hopelessly missing since that morning.

"Astoria," Rose whispered, more for herself than for the woman standing before her, still wearing James's suit that was far too baggy for her and pulling a thin, white wand from its pocket. It was odd to see Astoria out of her heels, but Rose still somehow felt as though Scorpius's mother was towering over her, even as her own hand clasped the wand she'd had buried behind her zipper.

"Rose," Astoria reciprocated with a smile the size of the Great Wall of China, "The Weasley who _can_ be touched."

The Unbreakable Vow Astoria had made with Ron stated that Hermione and Hugo couldn't be harmed by any member of the Forbidden Flock so long as Astoria maintained the title of Head Auror, which really didn't anything more than gaining access to the department's old files. All of the Aurors had gone underground so that they could keep training without any of Astoria's input, but the files were all Astoria had wanted anyway. Or so Rose thought, until she looked at Astoria now and wondered if it had been the evil witch's plan all along to leave Rose out of her protection order.

Knowing that Astoria wasn't one to attack without warning, however, Rose tried to remain unthreatening by continuing to hide her wand as she inched inconspicuously closer to the double doors at the front of the empty church. This worked well, since Astoria seemed to have plenty to talk about while Rose silently thought up a plan.

"And it was just _too_ easy to be Mr. James Sirius," Astoria drawled on in arrogance. "Too easy to get past that _vapid veela_ who thinks she's saving the world just because she was too fearful to approach an ex-lover, too easy to trap you inside after your little brother drew everyone else out, and _far_ too easy to have you convinced that I was your cousin just by speaking _incessantly_ of nothing but _Quidditch_."

Rose didn't want to listen to Astoria's nonsense, but she couldn't help herself. The whole lie had been right in front of her this whole time, from the abnormal touching, to the obsession with Charlie, to the sage advice. But Rose had been too concerned for everybody else to pay attention to her own instincts, and she had let Astoria _hold_ her and _comfort_ her, and now all she wanted to do was blow her to pieces.

Trying to hold back her anger, because anger never did become Rose, she decided to make a run for it. It was naïve and stupid and she knew it, but she at least wanted to give it a try. She could hear Astoria's childish laughter all the way up until her face was smacked against the front door window, her ring clanking against the doorknob as she twisted it in desperation.

"You _really_ think I would forget to lock the doors?" Astoria yelled as if she was offended by Rose's underestimation of her. But as Rose's anger increased and she found herself reaching for her wand yet again, Astoria said the one thing that was stopping Rose from declaring war right here and now. "Let us not be hasty now, Ms. Weasley. Remember, you won't be of age until the end of the month."

It wasn't as if the Ministry would expel Rose from Hogwarts just for defending herself, even if she wasn't allowed to use magic outside of the designated schoolyear, but Rose didn't want to risk putting her whole family through a trial or even prolonging her return to Hogwarts. After all, that was where Scorpius was, and so that was the only place Rose wanted to be. She wouldn't risk being separated from him again unless she had absolutely no other choice.

She had nearly reached such a conclusion when she leaned against the door in defeat, rested her forehead against the glass, and suddenly saw a flash of black that didn't fit in with the surrounding orange trees or blue skies. Soon, the black was coming closer, and then there was green too, Albus staring at Rose through the window and making her lips tremble with a mixture of love and hate.

Rose had expected that a portion of the Forbidden Flock may have been guarding the church entrance now that the Weasley family had led the Aurors into the graveyard, but she hadn't considered that Al might be one of them. Thinking back now, Astoria must have used him to gain access to James's hair and the Polyjuice Potion she'd used to impersonate him, but there was something inside of Rose – some tethering strand from their intersecting childhoods – that made it impossible for her to see Al as anyone but her absolute favorite cousin.

As Rose looked at the eyes staring through the glass and debated who this particular Al was, she heard Astoria's footsteps growing closer. She was running out of time, but she was also out of options. It was the moment she realized this that she looked to Al and did what her father had done right before speaking his eulogy. She silently told her lips to stop trembling and mouthed the words, _help me._

Al, who was paler and scrawnier than usual, contemplated Rose's request for a short eternity. He looked just as scared as she did, caught between who he thought he was and who Rose knew him to be. But when he saw the tears welling in her eyes, not realizing that this time she was crying on purpose, he jerked his head to the right and vanished from the window just after mouthing back to her, _the closet._

As soon as Al was gone, Rose shot her eyes to the side so that she could see Astoria approaching within her peripheral vision. Astoria was coming from the west, and it was that grating closet on the east side that Al wanted Rose to go to, so as soon as she steadied her heartbeat as best she could, she lunged away from Astoria's outstretched hands and sprinted for the back of the church.

But it turned out that Astoria's reflexes were just as quick as Rose's, since she was blowing up pews and windows in perfect timing with Rose's path. Rose just barely made it through the flying debris, her back earning a few stinging gashes along the way, but it was all worth it when she saw the doorknob shining through the smoke.

She was just about to turn it when Astoria screamed, "_INCARCEROUS!"_

Rose had less than a millisecond to prepare for the ropes that came out of nowhere and were suddenly wrapping themselves around her ankles and pulling her to the ground. But as her screams echoed against the marble floor, somebody managed to hear her.

Still fighting against the ropes that were pulling her in every possible direction, Rose stretched her right arm as far as it could go, but she wasn't able to reach the doorknob from her position on the floor. It was when her hand fell to the ground for the third time that something far finer than a rope grabbed on to it. They were four long fingers that had curled under the door, and this time they weren't trying to play with Rose's ring. Instead, they went straight for her wrist, and only a true Quidditch player would know to lock wrists when catching a falling teammate, because it was the only way to guarantee that neither player slipped away from the other.

Realizing this, Rose went still for a moment as she used her free hand to grab the wand from her back, cut through a few thin lines of rope that wouldn't need magic so much as stabbing, and then sent the piece of wood rolling across the floor and into the hands of the real James Sirius Potter.

As soon as he caught the wand, James let go of Rose's wrist and blasted the closet door open just as Astoria came within a few feet of it. She was knocked to the ground instantly, breaking the binding spell on Rose at the same time. While Astoria struggled to pick herself back up, James came striding out from the closet wearing nothing but a pair of boxers like he'd been kidnapped in his sleep. His lack of clothes didn't seem to bother him, though, since he quickly had hold of Rose's wrist yet again and was soon sending out a warning via a Patronus Charm made by Rose's wand.

Once James's stag had flown through the door, he and Rose could hear the pops of Flock members Disapparating from outside, and Astoria had finally pushed the giant wooden door off her chest and was standing tall. Now, she and James were facing each other in battle stance, but James knew that he had the upper hand and Astoria knew that she was running out of time.

Thinking of creating an escape route, Astoria shot a silent spell at the window of Saint Catchpole that turned him into a downpour of glass daggers all flying in the direction of James and Rose. In a moment of self-defence, James pushed Rose behind him and then pointed his wand toward the glass while yelling, "_Protego!"_

An invisible shield was formed in front of the wand, but it didn't block every piece of glass, since James's outstretched arm was soon covered in a sizable bounty of blood. They also lost Astoria through their attempt to protect themselves, left with the mere sight of a golden hawk flying into the distance through the now wide-open window.

Regardless of their defeat, both James and Rose were glad to be safe, huddled together through the seconds that they had to wait for their family to show. As the rest of the Weasleys slowly took in the sights of the dilapidated church – pews turned into ashes, doorframes busted at their hinges, windows broken and glass covering the floor – and panic struck them all, Rose and James just tried to keep their eyes open long enough so that they wouldn't ever need to know the difference between a blink and goodbye.

* * *

That night, Ron refused to leave Rose's side. He had to convince Hermione to follow Hugo to sleep, doing so by vowing not to lose sight of their daughter until she was boarding the Hogwarts Express next morning. She, along with all of her younger cousins, would be heading back first thing tomorrow, a specialized shortened version of the normal train scheduled to arrive at King's Cross Station as soon as the sun came up.

When Ron had found Rose inside the church, he had held her there for hours and had cursed himself for ever leaving her behind. She'd assured him that nobody could have expected Astoria's attack, though he wasn't entirely convinced until James explained to him and the rest of the Weasleys that he'd been taken by Al in the middle of the night and locked inside the church's broom cupboard since early that morning while Astoria took his place, adapting her voice and character traits surprisingly well.

Before anyone left the property after the attack, Harry made sure to send an Auror home with each of the Weasley families, the only exception being his own and Ron's, since they were Aurors themselves. He even had a long conversation with James and the two of them agreed to stop printing Al's 'Missing' notice from the next _Daily Prophet_ volume onward. Rose never mentioned to anyone that she'd seen Al in the middle of the attack, nor that he may very well have saved her life. After all, he'd also been the one to endanger it in the first place.

But no matter how many Aurors Harry sent out or how much less faith the Order had in Albus, Ron wouldn't trust anyone but himself with Rose's safety anymore. That was why, just as soon as the tortured Hermione and still temperamental Hugo went to bed, Ron took Rose's hand and walked her outside the Bird's Nest and into the shed that sat on the other side of the driveway. He didn't say what he was going to show her, and Rose didn't ask. She was exhausted and was still in a fair amount of shock, but she would follow her father anywhere, tonight of all nights. She would never admit it to him, but she didn't want to leave Ron's side either.

As Ron used his wand to unlock the chains on the shed's door, he told Rose, "Your grandfather once stole a Muggle car – a Ford Anglia 105E Deluxe, as he always called it – from a dump just outside of London." He grunted as he pushed the door open and motioned for Rose to walk inside. She did just that, clicking her deluminator so that a single hanging light bulb illuminated a square room that was completely empty but for an enormous, two square-meter mass in its center that was covered by a giant tarp.

Still confused, Rose listened intently as Ron added, "Then he spent months finding the perfect enchantments that would make it fly, and years later, your Uncle Harry and I flew it to Hogwarts." Once he finished his story, Ron grabbed the tarp and pulled if off the mass to reveal a beautifully refurbished Ford Anglia painted a gorgeous shade of pale blue.

Rose stared down at the car, gingerly running her fingers over the freshly dried paint as her father said, "That car ended up being completely destroyed by the Whomping Willow and later got lost in the Forbidden Forest, but a few weeks ago I found this at the twentieth dump I'd visited, and I've been repairing it and enchanting it ever since."

"Hence the grease on your fingers," Rose commented with the first smile she'd worn since before Astoria's attack.

"Precisely," nodded Ron. "Rosie, I wish that I could keep you here with me or at least stay at Hogwarts with you, because then at least I'd know when you were safe. I don't know what Astoria wants with you, but I do know how hard she'll try to get it."

Rose was standing on the opposite side of the car from Ron, and though she wasn't thankful for even this small distance, she knew that it was necessary. Her father had never really learned how to let her go, since every year when she left for school he'd always known that she'd be coming right back. This year was different, because today had taught them that either one of them could be killed before the month was out.

Even so, Rose needed to be at school right now, where Hugo would be and where Scorpius already was. In an attempt to tell Ron this, Rose said confidently, "I'll be safe with him, Dad."

And much to her surprise, Ron replied, "I know you will." Rose knew how difficult it was for Ron to let her be with Scorpius, let alone to admit that he was good for her and not just the other way around. In fact, Rose was so stuck on this thought that she almost didn't hear Ron say before he opened the car door and sat in the driver's seat, "But I still have to make sure you get to him."

Confused by what Ron was insinuating, Rose sat shotgun, closed the door behind her, and asked, "What do you mean?"

"I mean that I'm going to fly this car to Hogwarts tomorrow," said Ron matter-of-factly.

And that was exactly what he did. The next morning, Rose woke to the sound of her father's snoring from inside the restored Ford Anglia, where she'd fallen asleep with her head leaning on his shoulder. Together, along with Hermione and Hugo, they drove the car to King's Cross Station like any normal Muggle family, then Rose and Hugo bid their mother goodbye and boarded the train alongside cousins Lucy, Fred, Roxanne, and Lily. Then the train departed and the kids waved outside their compartment window at their fading parents, and later they waved to the crazy man who was following them the whole way to school in an old flying car.

Unlike the last time Ron had flew himself to Hogwarts, he landed right in the center of Hogsmeade without even scratching the paint. There, he said goodbye to Rose and Hugo and reluctantly handed them over to Hagrid before flying back home. The giant was thrilled to see every last Weasley student and just as disappointed _not_ to see a certain one of them, but he was careful not to mention Al as he led the clan to an awaiting carriage pulled by thestrals, which they all could now see.

The carriage ride was the longest part of the journey for Rose, but she tried to take in the sight of the castle that she'd only be spending one more year inside, from its windows that shone like firelight to the cliffs that held it high in the clouds. Soon, they were idling at the gates that led into the Entrance Hall, and though Rose was perhaps the most excited of the group, she was the last to walk inside.

Hugo hopped off the carriage first, not taking a single look back at the cowering Lily who needed him. She was walked in by Roxanne and Lucy, with Fred taking up the rear. Once they were all gone, Rose gave a few friendly pats to the thestrals as she waited for Scorpius to come find her. Sure enough, he showed up in less than a minute, having realized that Rose didn't want to greet him in front of anyone.

"Did you find your star?" he asked from behind as Rose stared up at the sky. She'd had a star named after her in Astronomy class last year, and it couldn't have come from a more appropriate constellation.

Turning around to see the boy she'd been missing, Rose answered, "He's looking right at me."

For a split second, the two of them stood completely still so that they could take in the sights of each other, but then they were simultaneously breaking down – Scorpius having heard the news of the attack and Rose beginning to wonder if that same attack had even been real – and decided that it would be best to break down in each other's arms.

Once she was covered by that skin that smelled like morning rainfall and her hands were being held by the ones that liked to play with her ring, Rose searched for the birthmark below Scorpius's ear and asked in hasty whispers, "How are you? Was yesterday okay? Did you see how Hugo looked just now?"

"He's okay; Nigel was waiting for him," Scorpius replied instantaneously as if he'd known exactly what Rose was going to ask. "Yesterday was terrible, but I'm better now."

"Yeah," Rose agreed. "Me too."

Then Scorpius squeezed her tighter against his white, collared shirt and said, "It's okay, Rose. I'll find you. I'll rescue you. I promise." And as a single tear fell from Rose's closed eyes, he said through harshly clenched teeth, "I won't ever let her take you from me. You know I won't."

And as she listened, Rose clutched onto Scorpius's shirt and neck to make sure that he didn't release his arms from around her waist. They could break apart enough to kiss later, but right now what she needed more than anything was his arms. What she needed now was to take three deep breaths – the first to remember all the nights like this that she and Scorpius had already shared, the second to commemorate the one that they were sharing now, and the third to hope and pray that it wouldn't be their last.

* * *

**_Note: _**_Okay, so what did you think? Did you like hearing from Rose again? Did you have a favorite eulogy? Leave a review and let me know - I adore hearing from each and every one of you.  
_

_The rest of Part 4 is going to be seriously intense, and yes, more characters will die, so be prepared for that. But also be excited, because I definitely am! The next chapter will be lighter than this one, and I'm going to try to have it up by **November 25th**._

_Thanks so much for reading!  
_

_-Hailey  
_


	32. The Best Birthday

_**Note:** Hopefully you all got the message I left on my profile page yesterday (about this chapter being a day late). Anyway, it's here now, and I hope you all enjoy it. I know that a lot of you have been missing the character whose perspective this one follows. ;)**  
**_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**32 – The Best Birthday**

Scorpius's hand was sweaty, but Rose refused to let him slip away, and in return, he refused to let her fall. It was Friday morning of their first week back at Hogwarts, and Scorpius and Rose were running down hallways and up moving staircases, past singing portrait people and through looming house ghosts. They were among few students to have woken before sunrise, having just dismissed the fifth and sixth year Prefects they'd hosted in their first Head Boy and Girl meeting together.

The announcement had been made at the Welcome Feast on September 1st, which of course Rose had missed thanks to Arthur's funeral. Scorpius had let McGonagall break the news to Rose of her appointment as Head Girl, as well as to Hugo and Roxanne for being named the latest Gryffindor Prefects. All of the school's student leaders had met in a classroom on the castle's first floor just half an hour ago, and though Scorpius wasn't sure how well he had done in expressing the direness of the present danger in the magical world, Rose seemed to think that the whole thing had gone swimmingly.

At least, Scorpius assumed that was the reason for Rose's sudden blast of energy and excitement as she pulled him along so quickly that, for a while anyway, he wasn't sure where they were going. Of course, she could have been doing this for a different reason, which turned out to be the case when Scorpius found himself in the corner stacks of the still empty library's restricted section. That was when Rose pushed his back against a bookshelf and pressed her lips to his, her breath minty from spearmint toothpaste and her teeth chillingly sharp against his flesh.

"Rose," he mumbled through desperate attempts for air. "Rose, slow down for a minute."

But his plea didn't work. Rose wasn't giving up now, and he hadn't expected her to. After all, she'd been like this all week – mauling him at every opportunity and claiming that she wanted to take their relationship to the next level. She'd never explain _why_ she suddenly wanted this even when Scorpius asked, though he already knew the answer. She wanted them to experience everything they possibly could together before it was too late... before she was gone.

Still, Scorpius knew better than to let her have her way. This was her way of coping after what had happened to her family and what had almost happened to her. She wanted to move faster just so that she could feel like she was actually moving. Scorpius understood that, because he'd done the same thing when he'd pushed her away a few summers ago, running faster than he ever had and going through his transformation far too hastily because it was the only way he felt alive while under a deadly threat. Because of that, he didn't want to say no to Rose now, but he knew that he had to. It would be a mistake for them to make love for the wrong reasons, regardless of how much each of their bodies seemed to be begging for it to happen.

In hopes of distracting Rose as her fingers twisted themselves around his perfectly knotted tie of emerald and silver, Scorpius said, "Maybe we should talk about the meeting. I mean, Hugo seemed a bit off-"

Her lips shut him up rather quickly, and before he opened his eyes once more, his tie was falling onto the floor as the candles in the windows suddenly flickered with fire. Madam Pince must have just come in to open the library for the day, but Rose didn't seem to notice. All she could say in between pecks lining Scorpius's cheekbones was, "He'll be fine. Anyway, he doesn't want my help."

"Yeah, but maybe he needs it," Scorpius argued. Hugo had been quiet and dismissive at the meeting, which was unsettling to see from a kid whose personality was normally so extreme that it bordered on obnoxious. "You know he'd never admit to it if he did."

Rose completely ignored this comment, too focused on the buttons of Scorpius's shirt to administer what he was saying. She hadn't been so aggressive with him – in fact, not remotely so – this past summer, but then again, she'd been preoccupied with her friends' and family's well-being rather than her own. Now, the only person who seemed headed for mortal peril was her, but Scorpius also knew that her friends and family were still the only subjects that could surpass the power of her fear.

So, Scorpius kept pushing Rose in the opposite direction than where she was pushing him. He babbled on and on about Hugo whenever he had the chance, muttering things like, "I could talk to him if you want me to," and, "Maybe he just needs to understand how much he deserves the Prefect title."

Unfortunately, the pushier he was, the pushier Rose became. She made sure to hardly ever give his lips the opportunity to open without her help, and he was having more and more trouble not answering her. At one point shortly after his shirt had been taken off, she had her hands locked with his and steered them to the small of her back, and he couldn't resist any longer. His nose was lodged in the crook of her neck, the scent of raspberries wafting from her silky smooth hair, and his heart was pumping against his scarred chest like a rabbit's foot thumping atop the dirt. Her shirt was off in a matter of seconds.

Once it was over, however, the gesture made Scorpius flinch, and he told himself to lean back and close his eyes, if only to protect her innocence. And as he felt her breath growing hotter, heard her steps growing closer, and sensed her hands reaching for his, he thought back on what he'd said about Hugo and grimaced to add, "You know, I think Lily needs to understand the same thing. We both saw her eyes peering through the door."

Unlike Hugo, who hadn't expected to earn such a responsibility, Lily hadn't earned any but had most definitely expected to. Granted, she was happy for Hugo and Roxanne, who happened to be her two best friends, but it also wasn't hard to see why Lily might feel so scorned. That was what Scorpius wanted to get across to Rose as she made a desperate and attempt to gain enough of his attention to make him open his eyes, explaining, "She's already been through enough, and you know she blames McGonagall's decision on her furry little problem. The rest of the school may not know the whole truth, but there are still plenty of rumors going 'round. And then on top of everything, just imagine how worried she is about Al."

Rose froze at the sound of Albus's name. Scorpius hadn't thought of it before, but of course it made sense that Al was the only one who could tear Rose away from her physical desires. Neither she nor Scorpius had discussed him since Rose had arrived at school, but they could both feel his absence; it was the first time they'd ever been at Hogwarts without him.

As he heard Rose's back thump against the opposing shelf – a sign that she had finally given up – Scorpius hung his head toward the floor and slowly reopened his eyes. The floor's wooden panels were shining beneath a rising sun, looking almost as if they were melting into a river of magma. Two white shirts were floating in the liquid fire, and Scorpius reached down to save them from the flames before their hems were singed. He held the larger of the two in his left hand, careful not to crumple it too much, and used his right hand to bring the smaller shirt back to its owner.

Rose was looking straight at him, and as Scorpius whipped his eyes past her flat stomach and the chest that was covered in a skin-toned bra, and met her gaze like lightning striking a tree branch. Though neither of them blinked, Scorpius saw through his peripheral vision Rose's arms inching upward against the books that were rarely handled, and he gently pulled her shirt back over her head. She had loosened her tie on her own rather than take it off completely, so now Scorpius tightened it, pinning on her Head Girl badge and leaving just enough room between her neck and her collar to kiss her still exposed skin.

As soon as Scorpius looked away from her, Rose's hands were back on his abdomen, but they weren't rough or demanding this time. Instead, they were light and fair, as was her soft whispering in his ear. "He was there, you know... At the funeral. Al was there. He told me where to find James. He helped me."

This was the first Scorpius was hearing of Al's presence at the recent funeral, but he didn't question why Rose had waited so long to tell him, nor did his assume that she'd just been seeing things. He believed her, so he didn't need any proof. The only thing he wanted to know was if any of the Potters had been informed of Al's whereabouts, so he asked simply, "Did you tell anybody else?"

"No," Rose shook her head before adding, "And I don't plan on it. He wouldn't want me to. I'm not exactly sure why I still feel like I need to abide by his wishes, but I do. I suppose I just want to hold on to the few parts of him that I still understand."

They said no more to each other, Scorpius nodding as Rose let her confusion sink in. Before long, the first period bell was ringing, and though Scorpius never had class on Fridays, Rose had to head off for Arithmancy. They said goodbye in a long hug, Scorpius's bare arms flexing against Rose's shoulders. Next time they'd see each other would be at the Quidditch team captains meeting during their lunch hour, and Scorpius only hoped that this meeting would be better than their last.

In the meantime, Scorpius got himself fully dressed and made his way out of the restricted section and into the study area beside the library's Transfiguration section. Once there, he sifted through some shelves until he found a couple of books that McGonagall had recommended for him and tried to dive right in. His mentor had instructed him to do some research on both registered and unregistered Animagi to see if there had ever been one to practice magic while in transfigured form. Scorpius's training in the area had been going well so far, though he'd had some difficulty with the Patronus Charm. Still, that was nothing compared with the dead end he'd come to as soon as he'd tried the Vanishing Spell on himself, which had been the long-term goal since he'd first started learning from McGonagall last fall. He could perform it perfectly as a human, but his falcon wasn't so keen to disappear.

However, reading about Falco Aesalon and Morgan le Fay was far easier said than done. Scorpius couldn't keep focused with his thoughts rushing from Rose's half-naked body that he'd barely let himself see, to Al's unfathomable loyalties, to Hugo and Lily's obvious depression every ten seconds. Within twenty minutes, Scorpius's books were laid across the floor and his head was buried in his lap, his forehead rubbing against those sweaty palms of his.

"Scorp, are you okay?" said a voice in a low register, sounding much like a young boy who was still in his last stages of puberty. Realizing this, Scorpius didn't need to look up to know that it was Nigel who'd taken a seat at the other side of the desk.

When Scorpius did manage to look up, Nigel's giant blue eyes were staring through red-tinted lashes at the already exhausted boy across from him. In hopes of comforting Scorpius, whom Nigel had grown to be friends with late last fall through a terrible Quidditch blow-up, he said almost squeakily, "You know, it'll be the weekend really soon."

With a laugh, Scorpius reached across the table to pat Nigel's shoulder in thanks, but didn't admit to feeling so lost, changing the subject by asking, "How are you doing, Nigel Creevey the Beast?"

"I'm all right," Nigel lied. He too seemed to want to change topics, leaning forward to tell Scorpius secretively, "Actually, I was hoping to show you something I've been working on this past month."

"Oh, great!" exclaimed Scorpius, thankful to have a reason to procrastinate a little longer. But when Nigel looked around the rest of the library to see a few curious Ravenclaws staring at them, Scorpius lowered his voice to say, "You have my full attention."

In response, Nigel sat up so that he could take something out of his back pocket and then placed a narrow stick of wood on the table. The wand was about a foot long and had a grip that protruded in rows with sharpened ends that looked an awful lot like talons, its exterior painted a shade of white as pure as snow. When Scorpius looked to Nigel for permission, the boy granted it willingly, allowing Scorpius to pick up the wand and see how it felt with his hands clasped around it.

Nigel seemed just as curious as Scorpius was to see the latter's fingers touch the white wood, and they were both surprised by the way the air suddenly shifted around them. Holding the wand, Scorpius felt as if all gravity had disappeared, like he was flying through a sky that had no pressure whatsoever, knowing that he could go as long and far as he pleased and that there would be absolutely nothing to barricade his path.

"This is incredible," were the only words Scorpius managed to speak, but they were also the only ones Nigel needed to hear. He was smiling from ear to cherry-colored ear as Scorpius asked, "How'd you do this? I mean, I thought you were still tinkering with the ownership problems."

Scorpius had asked Nigel if he could try to make a few wands last spring, in the hopes that they could garner enough replacements for everyone who would potentially be fighting in a battle against the Forbidden Flock. Nigel had been excited to give it a go, since he'd always been fascinated by wandlore, but for most of the summer all of the wands he had made only seemed to work for Hugo. That is, until he'd accidentally given one to Al, who must have passed it on to Knox to use to murder Arthur.

"I am," Nigel replied, "But after everything that happened with Al, I realized something. I'd already been carving different woods and infusing different cores into the wands, but I'd always use the same tools to make them, and I'd always have them varnished in that same potion Hugo gave me from his dad's broom polishing kit. So, that varnish helped them all work for Hugo, and I think Al's worked because I'd given him the one made of dragon heartstring. Once I figured that out, I decided to do things a bit differently, and that's how I made this one – one that's meant for you."

Scorpius had known that the wand would be his as soon as he'd touched it, but he was still taken aback by Nigel's gesture. All he could do was stare at the thing that looked so simple yet felt so powerful as Nigel explained, "The core's white unicorn hair that Holly found for me, the wood's from that maple tree outside the Bird's Nest, and the varnish was made with the simplest base yet: rain."

It was perfect. It was, quite literally, _made_ for him, and Nigel had done so brilliantly. The last thing Scorpius wanted to do was part with it, but he and Nigel had agreed a while back that any wand Nigel made would be kept by him and only him until a war broke out, just to make it easier to keep track of them all. But as Scorpius held out his hand with the wand sitting on his open palm, Nigel didn't take it.

Instead, Nigel closed Scorpius's hand around the wand and told him, "Keep it. Lately I've been thinking, and regardless of how many people seem to disagree, I'm pretty certain that two wands would be stronger than one."

Scorpius had never considered such a notion, nor had he ever heard it from anyone else, which immediately seemed ridiculous considering how logical it was. It especially made sense when Nigel added, "I mean, that's true about people, right?" His tone was downcast and dejected like a fresh pile of mud still recovering from a blast of pounding pellets.

"Speaking of which, how are you and Hugo doing these days?" asked Scorpius. He was trying to be sensitive while at the same time empathetic, because the last thing he wanted to do was make Nigel uncomfortable, though he could sense that Nigel needed to talk.

"He's fine," Nigel replied, immediately changing the subject to just Hugo rather than the two of them as a couple. "Not sure how he feels about being Prefect, but I know I'm happy for him. Mostly, I'm just worried about our big Patronus lesson coming up, because he's been having so much trouble thinking of happy memories ever since Mr. Weasley died."

Scorpius had nearly forgotten about the fifth year Patronus lesson, as well as Harry and Ron's arrival that would come with it. Maybe it would be good for Rose and Hugo to see their father again, considering how each of them was coping in such unpredictable ways. Such was evident when Nigel sighed deeply and said, "I just don't know what to do anymore."

"Yeah," agreed Scorpius. "I don't know what to do either."

It was another hour before lunch started, but Scorpius and Nigel didn't say anything else to each other. Scorpius was too busy trying out simple charms on his new wand, and Nigel only had a few more minutes to waste in the library before he headed off for Muggle Studies, his least favorite class as of late. Still, the lonesome hour passed quickly enough, and soon Scorpius was on his way to Katie Bell's office, eager but even more anxious to see Rose again.

Rose was already there by the time Scorpius arrived in the cramped room, filled with miniature pitches on every surface and broken brooms hanging from the high ceiling. There were four chairs facing Bell's desk, and Scorpius took the one beside Rose without question. He had known she'd be early, since for as long as he could remember Rose had held the unique philosophy that if she wasn't five minutes early, she was late.

"Scorpius, good to see you again!" exclaimed Bell as she held out her hand for him to shake. Scorpius hadn't been looking at her, since he was too focused on Rose's pale and silent disposition, but he responded to his old instructor nonetheless. Bell had always liked him, and he was the only captain who'd had any experience with these meetings before.

Pranav Patil, seventh year Keeper for Ravenclaw, and Roddy Matheson, fifth year Chaser for Hufflepuff, would be replacing Lysander and Lorcan, respectively. They sauntered inside a few minutes later, one of them dark-skinned and distant, the other fair and over-excited. Once Bell calmed Roddy down, the four captains silenced and waited for Bell to pull out her scheduling boards. Across the table from her, Scorpius stole Rose's hand from atop her thigh and squeezed it tight. She smiled ever so slightly, but he saw it and he knew that it was enough.

"All right, so the first order of business is going to be rather unfortunate for some of you, but it seems we must deal with it," Bell announced, peaking Scorpius's interest immediately. "Apparently, Neville – er, Professor Longbottom, I mean – and his fiancée would like to marry here at Hogwarts, on the Quidditch pitch at Christmas time."

Scorpius had already heard from the Potters that Neville and Luna were planning a winter wedding, but this was the first he was hearing about it taking place at Hogwarts. It was most probably a good idea, since the castle would be the safest place from Astoria for the couple as well as their guests, though Scorpius realized faster than his fellow captains what this would mean for the year's games.

"We'll have to move up the first match to the end of this month to give them time to prepare the space," continued Madam Bell. "September the twenty-ninth looks like our best bet. That way, the second match can take place toward the end of October, and we can hand over the pitch before any snow falls."

September the twenty-ninth was Rose's seventeenth birthday. Scorpius had been too busy trying to think of how to pull her away from thoughts of Astoria that he hadn't started planning a surprise, but now he wouldn't have the time to anyway. The first match was always Gryffindor versus Slytherin, and he had three Chasers to find at try-outs before he could even start training his team.

Discouraged, Scorpius sunk into his chair and rubbed his forehead with his free hand. He didn't know how he'd manage his own team, let alone what this would mean for a day Rose had been looking forward to for years. After all, this meant that they'd be competing against each other, and they'd never done so as a current couple or while both captains. This time, it was Rose's turn to squeeze Scorpius's hand.

Sensing his worry, Bell asked concernedly, "How much time will you need, Scorpius? Realistically, I mean."

For a while, Scorpius thought about his response. He figured that he might be ready by the second match, but surely not beforehand. If he were to switch with another team, it would also mean that Rose wouldn't have to worry about competing against both her boyfriend and the toughest team to beat. She'd still need to find a new Seeker in time, which was arguably the most difficult Quidditch position to fill, but Scorpius could help her with that. Surely, there were plenty of underclassmen who'd be rearing to replace the infamous James Sirius Potter, and possibly even a few older students who hadn't made it through try-outs in previous years.

At that precise moment, Scorpius's mind was flooded with a brilliant idea. Sitting up in excited anticipation and thinking aloud, he said, "I can do October, but there's no way I can find three Chasers in three weeks, even if I split the try-outs with Arnia." Arnia Samuels was his sub-captain this year – a tiny fifth year Beater he'd been pleasantly surprised by last season – but she was still new to the sport, and the last thing he wanted to do was give her too much responsibility too quickly.

Bell understood, since she and Scorpius had been working together for years. With his word, she turned to Pranav and Roddy and waited for one of them to volunteer their team for the first match. Pranav was a bit of a coward and was far too concerned for his team to do so, but Roddy was more than willing to take on the challenge. Thus, it was decided that Gryffindor would compete against Hufflepuff first, followed by Slytherin versus Ravenclaw in October.

The captains were dismissed to organize their teams as soon as they came to a conclusion, but Rose walked out of the office looking even more distraught than she had when Scorpius had found her inside. Leaning against the railing of a moving staircase, she looked to him helplessly, her blue eyes absconded with light shining through the stained glass windows that made up the hall's ceiling, her hands shaking with nervousness.

"Rose," said Scorpius calmly once her hands were back in his, steady as could be. "Hey, you're all right. Everything's going to be fine."

She met his eyes as he willed her to, but she wasn't seeing all that he was hiding in them. "I can't form a team in a _month_, Scorpius!" she claimed, but she was wrong. "I don't even know where to start," she added, wrong again. "I mean, I won't even have time to host a try-out!"

Scorpius's lips curled up at the corners upon hearing her last statement. When she asked him why he was smiling, he twirled the ring on her right hand and directed it to his neck so that he could put his own hands around her waist to say, "Because you're right. You won't have time to host try-outs, and that's exactly why your new Seeker's going to have to be the one who came the closest to making the team last year, regardless of what position they were trying out for."

It didn't take long for Rose to understand what Scorpius was insinuating. "Hugo," she gasped after little more than a moment of thought. When Scorpius nodded, she argued, "But he could never play Seeker; he's not a good enough flier!"

"Which is why you and I are going to spend all month training him." It was the perfect plan. Rose needed something to distract her from worrying about Al and herself, and Hugo needed something to look forward to. Best of all, Ron was going to be here at the end of the month, which meant that he'd probably stay to see the match, and the only thing Hugo had ever wanted more than Nigel was to play Quidditch with his father cheering from the stands.

Rose seemed to calm down just thinking about it, whispering to Scorpius with a tone as sincere as a promise, "Thank you for helping me – for helping everyone, even when we're too proud to ask you to."

"You don't need to thank me, Rose," Scorpius told her. "I'm the lucky one here, because your pride is one of the many things about you that I still seem to understand. And I plan on understanding _every_ part of you for a _very _long time." When she smiled, he leaned down to kiss her, and this time she was listening to all of what he was trying to say. She understood that, so long as he was around, he would make sure that she had the best birthday ever.

* * *

Over the course of the next three weeks, Scorpius taught Rose what it was like to be a Seeker, and in turn she relayed the training on to Hugo. The youngest Weasley had been hesitant about taking on yet another time commitment (since he too had started using his mother's old time-turner just so that he could attend all of his classes), but he'd nervously agreed at the mention of his father's name. Ron's presence would add a whole new level of pressure, but if Hugo was anything like his sister, he'd work well under such circumstances.

Now, Scorpius just hoped that his and Rose's preparations had been enough and that Hugo was ready, because it was already the day before the match. Yet again, Scorpius had woken up early that morning, though not for any sort of meeting. Today, he was headed into town to meet Harry, who'd just arrived for the Patronus lesson that would take up most of the day, in a shadowy corner of the Hog's Head Inn. Normally, Scorpius had private lessons with McGonagall scheduled at this time, but she'd cancelled on him for the second week in a row. He would have been concerned about such, especially considering Astoria's recent attack and just how much Scorpius was struggling with the Vanishing Spell, but the prospect of seeing Harry was enough to focus on for now.

Harry was seated in a small room just off the entrance, where there sat a single wooden table with nothing but two candle stubs atop it, a stone floor so dirty that it may have just as well had no floor at all, and two small windows covered in dust that were separated by a portrait of a young girl Scorpius didn't recognize. She looked to be an early teenager – striking cheekbones around still rosy cheeks, long blonde hair pinned back the way only mothers could pin it, in a blue dress that was traditional yet flat-chested – and her sweet smiles were all Harry could see as Scorpius walked in.

When he did manage to catch his attention, Harry stood up and gave Scorpius a grand old hug, then ordered them both some crumpets before sitting back down and asking anxiously, "So, how've you been?"

Scorpius saw right through Harry's fake interest, however, as soon as he felt the floor shaking beneath Harry's tapping heel. Cutting straight to the real question, Scorpius answered, "I haven't heard a word from him."

The tapping stopped instantaneously, along with Harry's curiosity. Scorpius had been surprised that Harry had even shown up for the Patronus lesson with Al still missing, but he probably felt as though he needed to be here for Lily's sake. She was who Harry asked about next, clearly concerned what with the upcoming full moon, but Scorpius assured him that regardless of how worried she was about her image, her safety was being well looked after by both Neville and McGonagall.

"And she's still planning on flying in the match tomorrow?" asked Harry.

"Oh, definitely," Scorpius stifled a laugh. He hadn't talked much with Lily this year, but that didn't mean that he'd forgotten who she was. "She wouldn't miss Quidditch for the world, and if anything, people are even more scared of her now than they were before."

Unfortunately, Harry didn't take that joke so well. His sense of humor was nowhere to be found as he muttered, "Mmm, that seems to be a theme in our family these days."

"What, fear?" asked Scorpius.

"People fearing _us_. After what happened at the funeral, people see James and wonder if it's really him. The Magpies wouldn't have kept him on the team even if he hadn't hurt his shoulder again, and now he doesn't know what to do with himself. Lily still thinks she's a monster, as does the rest of Hogwarts I'm sure, and Al's spent too long running to have any hope of retribution. The worst part is that I don't even think he wants it, no matter how many times I try to get it for him."

Scorpius couldn't look at Harry like this. His idol, his mentor, his _father_ in so many ways, was as broken as he'd ever been. All the Potters were, and it was the fault of _Scorpius's _family. But no. No, he wasn't part of Astoria's family anymore. If he was part of any family, it would be the Potters or the Weasleys, because they had trusted him when few others had. The least he could do was return a bit of that trust.

"He does want retribution," Scorpius announced after a minute of stretched-out silence. He knew that Rose didn't want anyone to know what he was about to tell Harry, but she was just being stubborn. She wasn't here now to see Harry's sunken eyes that had turned the color of overcooked peas, or the black hair that was now half grey. Rose couldn't see how much Harry needed just a speck of hope to hold on to.

"I thought you said you hadn't heard from him..." Harry's tone wasn't accusatory, but was rather cautionary. He didn't want to jump to conclusions too quickly, especially when they had to with his youngest son.

"_I_ haven't, but I think Rose has." Harry was half-way out of his seat as Scorpius explained, "She didn't want anyone to know, but apparently he was at the funeral. I mean, obviously he played a part in kidnapping James, but Rose seems to think that he also _helped_ her. He showed her where James was being kept so that she could let him out to help her escape."

As soon as Scorpius had said enough for him to get a clear picture of what had happened, Harry was on his way out of the inn, bumping past a waitress who was babbling grumpily about not having crumpets in such an establishment and slamming the front door in his wake. Scorpius was about to run after him, however, when the girl from the portrait said to him rather dreamily, "Don't bother with him. He's never been one to give up once he's set his mind on something, even worse his heart."

Sure enough, the girl was right, since the next sound Scorpius heard was a Disapparition pop from the other side of the window. Still, he was curious to know what Harry's plan might be, so he turned to the portrait and asked, "Where does he think he's going to find him? And how do you know anything about Harry, anyway?"

"I suppose he'll start at the church and go from there," the girl replied. "And as for how I know so much about the Potters, well, being a wallflower has its perks. For example, I know just as well as you do that Harry will never find his son before his son finds him, but I also see what you can't. I see the powerful pathway that your friend has already found, but that you haven't even started looking for yet."

Before Scorpius could ask what she could possibly be referring to now, the girl was gone, disappearing into the depths of her frame down a road leading straight for the horizon. Trying not to think about her riddle, Scorpius left the inn without even touching the toast that was brought in place of the crumpets and ran back to the castle, where he blasted through the front doors and into the emptying Great Hall just in time to warn Ron of Harry's departure.

Ron seemed nervous enough as it was before Scorpius gave him the news, but luckily Rose was there (she'd had breakfast with her father) to reassure him that he didn't need Harry and could perform the lesson all on his own. Once he regained his confidence, Ron ordered all of the fifth years to gather round, so Scorpius and Rose left the hall, wishing luck to the Gryff Group on their way out.

"Why exactly did Harry have the sudden urge to run off somewhere?" asked Rose once she and Scorpius were back outside, having decided to use their mutual study period for one last pep talk on the Quidditch pitch before tomorrow's match.

"Oh, I dunno'," responded Scorpius. He hated lying to Rose, but he also wasn't prepared to explain why he'd gone against his word just yet. Coming up with an excuse that would hopefully satisfy her curiosity, he said, "I think Mercy needed his help with something."

Rose groaned at the mention of Mercy's name, which secretly pleased Scorpius. Rose hardly ever disliked people so blatantly, but when she did, it made her seem more human, and in that sense even more perfect, to him. But when she didn't stop glaring at the sky and kicking at the grass, Scorpius took her hand and said, "Sorry I mentioned her. And don't worry; you'll get your turn soon enough."

"Yeah, so long as I make it through the match tomorrow," she said as they stepped onto the field. The day was warm and bright and everyone else seemed to be in class, so they had the place to themselves. Still, the goal for today wasn't so much to enhance Rose's flying skills, especially since she wouldn't have time to relay them to Hugo. If anything, Scorpius just wanted to help put her at ease.

So, when Rose grabbed her red Nimbus 2021 from the shed beside the Gryffindor locker room, Scorpius stopped her from mounting it and said, "Actually, I was thinking we might ride my broom today."

"The both of us?" Rose asked. They'd never flown on the same broom before, but Scorpius had been thinking lately that it might be a good idea to try out. Practically, it would take Rose out of her comfort zone in terms of flying, and then of course, there was the less practical reason for sharing a ride.

Shrugging, Scorpius told her, "Yeah. So long as you don't pounce on me mid-flight, that is."

Biting her lip, Rose pushed his chest so hard that he might have fallen to the ground if she hadn't pulled him back by his tie to whisper in his ear, "I make no such promises." Then she grabbed the Falcon Flyer from his hand, wrapped her leg around it, and leaned forward as if to take off.

Her feet were just about to push off the ground when Scorpius hopped on behind her and said hastily, "Well, I suppose I'll just have to take my chances then!" and wrapped his arms around her so that they surged forward simultaneously, headed for the clouds.

After only a few seconds flying with Rose, Scorpius found himself wondering why he'd never done this before. The extra weight was hardly noticeable, but what he did notice were the windy strands of hair that were fighting their way out of Rose's tightly knotted braid and the way she'd speed up and lose control ever so slightly whenever he kissed her neck. The best part came when he moved his hands up her sides and then brushed the length of her arms until his own hands were clasping hers, which were tightly wrapped around the tip of his broom. As soon as their skin touched and his hands connected to the Flyer through hers, they started moving ten times faster than they'd been going before, but because the magic was coming from the both of them at once, this time they could control it.

They flew all around the castle and across the whole of the Black Lake, where Scorpius steered the broom close enough to the surface for Rose to reach toward the water and shoot splashes at his face. When she took back the reigns, she led him into the Forbidden Forest, gliding a few feet atop the floor so that Scorpius was caught in the middle of a runway of thestrals about to take off into flight.

Soon, they were following the whole herd out of the forest, with the smallest newborn too curious about these mysterious humans to stay away from biting the broom's plumage every so often. For a while, Scorpius and Rose made a game out of it, slowing down to let the horse get close and then speeding up before she had the chance to actually munch off a piece of the broom. They didn't turn back around until they came to the border of protective spells that McGonagall had warned Scorpius not to pass. He pulled them back once he noticed the marked treeline, though he idled for a while before reaccelerating just to see if there was anything waiting for them in the distance. Luckily, the only thing they could make out was the giant bulge of grey and black that they assumed was made up of the thestrals, not even considering that it could be home to something much darker than the skeletal horses.

The ride back was slow, neither Rose nor Scorpius wanting the morning to end. It was the first moment they'd shared since the summer in which they both felt so incredibly free, and they wouldn't trade that feeling for anything. Scorpius had accomplished the impossible by getting Rose to feel freedom again, but he had only done so because she'd let him. Just like Nigel had said, they were twice as strong together as they were apart. Nothing could stop them now.

That is, nothing but the thought of the third wheel they were missing. They hadn't had any reason to think of Al until they flew past McGonagall's office window and Rose screamed at Scorpius to stop moving. He had been steering them home, so Rose had been able to watch the castle take shape around them, and she claimed to have seen something, or rather some_one_, in the Headmistresses' quarters.

"What is it, Rose?" Scorpius asked as he backed up, looked through the window, and saw nothing but a darkened, empty office filled with old portraits of sleeping Headmasters.

"I thought I just saw Al," she admitted.

Scorpius took one more look through the window, but once again he was sure that no one was there. When he saw Rose begin to question her own sanity, he tried to console her by saying, "Maybe you just saw the black of Severus Snape's hair."

"Yeah. Maybe." Rose wasn't convinced.

She still seemed shaken by the time they were back on the ground. Scorpius hated to see her mood change so suddenly, and when she refused to talk more about what she'd claimed to have seen, he assumed that she had been caught in a spiral of Al thoughts all over again. It wasn't her responsibility to worry about him anymore, nor was it Scorpius's, but he knew that they would both continue to do so anyway. They would worry about their friend until it started to mean something.

That was what made Scorpius admit to something of his own. He hadn't been planning to tell Rose until after her birthday, if at all, but he didn't want to keep such a little white lie from her. He just wanted them both to be free. So, as he ordered his broom to fly back to the Slytherin common room, he gained Rose's attention so that he could say, "Look, I know you miss him. I do too, and I think we always will. But I don't think we'll be the ones to find him this time, Rose, no matter how much you want us to. That's why I told Harry about how you saw him at the funeral."

Rose had had her head hanging down, but she looked up as Scorpius finished speaking. "You did _what?_" she asked through squinting eyes that were filled with the bluest betrayal.

Scorpius didn't repeat himself, instead just waiting for the magma to flow over once more. It came in due time, with Rose soon putting the pieces together and asking as she shook her head in disbelief, "Blimey, that's why Harry left this morning, wasn't it? Because you gave him a reason to!"

"I gave him _hope_, Rose!" Scorpius talked back at her, trying and failing not to raise his voice. "I gave him what he needed."

"That doesn't change the fact that you did it behind my back!" Her hands were gesticulating through the air with fury, her legs slowly backing away even though Scorpius wasn't attempting to come any closer to her. He was fine right where he was.

Sighing, he replied, "Only because I didn't want you to feel like you'd lost that last part of him you were trying to hold on to. I wanted you to keep the promise you made to yourself, even if I had to be the one to break it."

"Except that you didn't," stated Rose sadly. Before she turned around to walk back to the castle by herself, she added, "_I_ broke it the moment I told you."

Scorpius stared at the track of footsteps she left behind until the closest one to him dried up in the dirt. Then it was his turn to trudge up the hill to the castle, dragging his feet across the courtyard like there were twenty pound weights attached to his ankles and only stopping in the Entrance Hall because he saw the two Weasleys he had yet to hurt arguing by the double doors.

Fifth years were filing out of the Great Hall around them, but Ron and Hugo didn't pay them any mind as the former said in his most fatherly form of advice, "You'll get it tomorrow, Hugh. You just need to get some rest first, that's all."

"No, Dad," Hugo fired back at Ron, his eyes teary and his arms limp at his sides. "I'm _not _going to get it, because I _suck_ at applied magic. You know what Professor Smethley told me last week when I couldn't think of a memory that was happy enough? She told me I was _trying too hard._ I mean, what kind of criticism is that? What does it mean to want something _so_ badly that you push yourself further away from it?"

Hugo was gone before Ron could respond, though he did run down the hallway to see if he could find him. He wouldn't, though; only Rose knew where Hugo would be going now. In the meantime, Scorpius noticed that the only fifth years left at the entrance to the hall were what remained of the Gryff Group, Roxanne and Lily hesitantly heading off for their dormitories and leaving Nigel glued to the marble floor.

Scorpius didn't give his actions a second thought before he approached the kid whose overgrown hair was blocking his vision and asked, "Nige, are you okay? You know, it'll be the weekend really soon."

Nigel met Scorpius's gaze with a courteous smile as he slumped his back and said pitifully, "My Patronus was a koala. It was quite ferocious, actually." That made Scorpius smile too, until Nigel added, "But it didn't feel very powerful without its kangaroo."

"Come here, Bud," Scorpius told him as he pulled Nigel in for a hug. It was going to be a long night for both of them, and an even longer day tomorrow, but all they needed was a moment of hope to carry them through.

* * *

Scorpius was the first person in the stands the next morning. He hadn't slept at all, since he knew Rose wouldn't have wanted him to fly through her window last night, and the Room of Requirement had been closed. It was never easy for him to fall asleep without her there, especially when he was lying next to Al's deserted bed.

Breakfast had been taken off the table as well, because Scorpius dreaded the idea of ruining Rose's day before it had even started. He knew that she needed time, so he intended to give her as much of it as he possibly could. Still, that didn't mean that he was going to miss the game. He already had the perfect seat: the front row of the tower closest to the Gryffindor goal posts, the perfect view of Rose.

Rose was the first player to show up on the field, though she didn't see Scorpius staring down at her. She was too focused on sneaking Hugo inside the locker room. Keeping new players a secret from other teams was tricky but well worth it, because that way the opponents would have no idea what to expect, just like what had happened last year when Slytherin had lost terribly in the face of the Gryffindor Beater who was just as teasingly ferocious as his Patronus animal. Plus, Rose and Hugo didn't want Ron to know that both of his kids would be flying until they soared onto the pitch.

As the rest of the Gryffindor team arrived – Lily wearing buckets of make-up to cover her scars and not looking at all proud to be wearing the sub-captain sleeve on her red jersey, Fred and Roxanne blowing dung-bomb bubbles from their father's joke shop into the air, Nigel with his cheeks and ears so red they looked like they'd been painted, and Bert McLaggen taking up the rear as the team's newest Chaser – so did Ron, and it turned out that he and Scorpius thought alike.

Ron found him in his tower seat and took a place beside him, saying, "Thanks for letting me spend the morning with our girl. I wanted to give her the watch before the game started." It was tradition for witches and wizards to receive watches when they came of age, but because Scorpius had been estranged from his mother and since his father was never one to give gifts, he hadn't ever gotten one himself.

"Oh, it's no problem," Scorpius shrugged as he looked at what Ron was wearing. He was red enough as he was, but he'd added an old scarf from his days at school, as well as what must have been George or Ginny's knitted sweater with the 'G' now meant for Gryffindor, and had a giant foam finger that yelled out cheers all by itself.

Smiling, Ron peered over the edge of the tower to make sure he wasn't missing anything (he wasn't; the Hufflepuff team and a few eager viewers were just striding in) before he pulled something from his back pocket and said, "Well, that reminds me: I actually have one for you as well – a watch, that is."

Scorpius couldn't believe what he was hearing, and so he was shocked to turn to his side and see the watch Ron spoke of held flat in his open palm. Ron had never even liked him, and though he hadn't been frugal ever since he'd started earning his own money, he still didn't spend easily. For a minute or so, Scorpius wondered if he should even take it, but then Ron said, "It was Hermione's idea. She figured you might not have one of your own."

Pulling up the sleeve of his red shirt to show Ron his naked wrist, Scorpius raised his eyebrows and said, "She was right, as always." Then he turned his hand over and let Ron drop the watch into it, clasped the silver chain above his left hand, and shook Ron's hand with his right.

They both then turned back to the pitch, which was now slowly filling with the rest of the student body as well as the Hogwarts faculty and staff. Soon, Ron and Scorpius were joined by Lucy, Holly, and Colin, all of them but the latter decked out in Hufflepuff colors, and just as Ron began to ask where Hugo was, the players started circling around a risen quaffle.

All anyone could see from the tower were the players' backs, so Ron didn't yet know that the tall, lanky Gryffindor flying just above his teammates, with the number two plastered to his uniform, was actually Hugo. It was a clear day again, though, so by now the Hufflepuff team would have been able to recognize him. If anything, that would just make them more confident, but like what had happened with Nigel, they didn't know what they were in for.

The screaming started as soon as the whistle blew, and as Lily took the quaffle for Gryffindor, Rose and Hugo staked out their territory in the high skies. It was when Hugo flew up to the goal post on a rusty old Cleansweep that Ron finally made out his face, and once he regained consciousness after going momentarily speechless, his cheer was louder than any Scorpius had ever heard.

Watching the game through Ron's eyes made it even better than Scorpius could have hoped for. Gryffindor was ahead by thirty points within the first ten minutes thanks to the free pathway the Hufflepuff team always made for Lily, and anyone who did dare to go near her had to answer to Fred and Nigel, who when combined with bludgers were arguably even more frightening than a rumored werewolf.

"And that makes _forty points_ for Gryffindor as Chaser Lily Potter scores _yet_ another goal against Hufflepuff!" announced Lila Jordan from the commentating tower as Lily threw the quaffle through a ring from behind, making the ball hit Hufflepuff's clueless Keeper on the head before rebounding into Roxanne's waiting arms.

Not much was happening on the other side of the field, though Rose had made a couple of impressive saves from Roddy Matheson earlier on. Hugo was still keeping a close eye out for the snitch, doing exactly as Scorpius and Rose had taught him by waiting in one place for the tiny ball to find him, though on second glance Scorpius could see why Smethley may have accused him of trying too hard.

With every gust of wind or sudden gasp from the crowd, Hugo would turn his entire broom around, paranoid that the snitch was right in front of him. Scorpius knew how much pressure Hugo felt at this moment, for he remembered his own first game vividly. He remembered how young he'd felt in his second year and how impressive James already was as Gryffindor's MVP. He remembered twisting and turning on his unsteady broom and being pounded by November hail. He remembered seeing the snitch and reaching for it, only to be blindsided by Sam Thomas's bludger before waking up in the hospital wing next morning, a terrified Rose and highly entertained Albus at his bedside. Scorpius's first game had been bad enough, and his father _hadn't_ been there.

Hugo lucked out for another hour or so, though, during which time the snitch wasn't spotted by either of the Seekers or Scorpius, who couldn't help but scout from the stands. Meanwhile, Rose only missed one attempted goal from Hufflepuff while Gryffindor continued on their scoring streak, so now the match was one hundred to ten for Gryffindor. It was as soon as Lila announced such that Scorpius and Hugo spotted the snitch at the exact same time.

It flew right past Ron's oblivious ear, and he only noticed the buzzing ball when Hugo came rushing straight toward him. He turned just in time to avoid hitting his father in the face, and then Ron started cheering again as Hugo followed the snitch out of range, the Hufflepuff Seeker not far behind. The crowd went silent with anticipation as everyone waited for either of the Seekers to return from the horizon from which they'd disappeared, and even some of the remaining players went relatively still, but whispers started once people began to realize that the boys had been gone too long.

A good twenty minutes had passed, Bert McLaggen had made his first goal, Rose had been too distracted to block Roddy from making his second, and still there was no sight of Hugo or his fellow Seeker, whose name Scorpius didn't know. With every passing moment that they were gone, the area they'd left behind grew darker, both figuratively and literally. Not only did Ron's fists clench tighter together and Nigel inch ever closer to the sidelines, but the sky also went from blue to grey and Scorpius could feel goose bumps growing on the skin underneath his long sleeves.

Undoubtedly worried now, everyone from the pitch to the stands went frozen as the chill spread, and just about every head turned toward the Hufflepuff goal posts when a scream came from the area. A few seconds later, the yellow Hufflepuff Seeker came zooming back toward the stands, but he didn't look excited enough to have just caught the snitch and won his team the match. He merely looked scared, and his teeth were chattering even more than Scorpius's were.

Ron was the first to mumble the word 'dementors' under his breath, but by that time Scorpius had already realized what was taking place. Hugo must have broken the protective perimeter when he'd gone after the snitch, and that grey blob Scorpius had seen with Rose just yesterday wasn't the herd of thestrals they'd been flying with after all. The worst part of everything was that even though some now understood what was happening and would be able to run away before the creatures found them, Hugo had already been found.

Panicking, but coming across as quite calm thanks to his bounty of experience with high-pressure situations, Scorpius turned to Ron to talk through a plan. But of course, by the time he looked for him, Ron was already gone, and a minute later his voice was announcing through Lila's megaphone, "EVERYBODY REMAIN _CALM_! All those able, including uniformed players, please evacuate the site in an orderly fashion and head for the castle _immediately_. Those of age, prepare to perform the Patronus charm. We are currently under attack from the dementors of Azkaban Prison. I repeat: we are under attack from dementors."

People listened without question as McGonagall took the microphone from Ron to let the Auror organize everyone so that they would have the best aim for their charms. There were only a few underage wizards who remained in the stands, including Lily, Roxanne, and Nigel, who flew to Scorpius's tower and joined Lucy as they awaited further instruction. Scorpius had to convince Holly and Colin to leave, eventually giving in since they knew that Colin wouldn't be able to defend himself, but Scorpius wasn't planning on heading for the castle or staying in the stands.

Rose was still on her broom when Scorpius looked toward the goal posts to find her. She had been looking for him as well, and all it took was one nod from her to know that he had the right idea. With her permission, he started to climb on top of the tower barrier in front of his row, but Nigel was quick to try to stop him.

"_What do you think you're doing?"_ he yelled as Scorpius stood atop the fencing like he was about to jump off a cliff.

"Just trust me on this," replied Scorpius. Looking down at Nigel so that he wasn't staring at the long fall to the grass, he added, "Two wands are more powerful than one, right?" Then he winked once and jumped.

Nigel leaned over the fence just in time to see Scorpius land on the back of Rose's broom and fly off in the same direction Hugo had gone. If anyone in the stands was protesting their idea, neither Scorpius nor Rose could hear them. All they could hear was each other's hitched breathing, the howling wind, and the quiet murmuring of the hollow ghosts that were currently sucking out Hugo's soul.

Just as Scorpius had suspected and as Rose had correctly assumed, the dementors were stationed right inside the protective border, fifty or more of them floating eerily around something Scorpius couldn't see as if they were a hurricane and the invisible prey was its eye. Rose stopped flying once they were around ten meters away from the cloaked guards, and Scorpius rubbed her arms in hopes of warming her up while also reassuring her that she was doing the right thing. If they waited long enough, the dementors would be able to smell them.

The first to leave the group was on the far outside, and it looked almost as if it was communicating with another across the crowd as it turned its hood toward Rose and Scorpius and then back to its companion. This went on for a while, with more and more of the dementors abandoning their current prey in the hopes of feasting on double the meal. Once ten of them had set their sights on Rose and Scorpius, they started to fly toward them, and Rose's furious shivering grew worse as she said confidently, "Tell me when."

"You'll know," said Scorpius. He waited for ten more dementors to look their way, the first ten only a yard away now, before he grabbed his two wands and slid one into each of Rose's hands, then covered his hands around hers like he'd done when they'd gone flying yesterday. Slowly, so as not to make the broom swerve, he directed Rose's arms into the sky and pointed them at the dementors. Together, they remembered how they'd felt flying above the lake yesterday and yelled, "_EXPECTO PATRONUM!"_

Two birds came flying from the wand with more determination than Scorpius realized he had, one of them grand and white and the other dark and quick. The songs of Rose's cardinal filled the air and warmth gradually returned to Scorpius's purple fingers, but he was focused on the victim who had suddenly become visible beneath this newfound shield.

Hugo was lying limp on his broom, his head falling onto its end and the snitch fluttering in the hanging hand that was pulling his body toward the ground. The most disturbing part of this sight, however, was the snow-like sphere the size of a golf ball that was hovering just above his open mouth. He didn't have much time.

Trying to hold on to the happy memory, Scorpius closed his eyes to block Hugo from his mind and yelled at Rose, "KISS ME!"

She didn't ask why he needed her to do so before she turned her head and met his lips with the flavor of the ripest, most pungent wild raspberries. Their Patronus charm strengthened with the kiss, and Rose was sure to keep it going even after they broke apart and Scorpius let his now sweaty hands slip away. Her safeguard allowed him enough time to leap off the broom, transform mid-air into his falcon self, fly below Hugo just as his broom stopped floating, and push him up toward his hovering soul before dragging him back to the pitch by his talons. Rose flew alongside him the whole way there, even after Scorpius used the Vanishing Spell on himself to make sure that Ron's awaiting army didn't see him. As it turned out, Scorpius didn't need any wand at all to perfect the spell. He just needed reason.

* * *

Just like what had happened to Scorpius following his first Quidditch match, Hugo woke up in the Hogwarts hospital wing, this time with his father, sister, and boyfriend at his bedside. He didn't have any external wounds, but internally he looked to be on the verge of death. Even so, his exhaustion didn't stop him from asking if Gryffindor won the game, to which Rose and Ron nodded while rolling their eyes. There was no way Rose was keeping him on the team.

The only thing Ron could think of to ask through his tears was, "Why did you do it?" Hugo hadn't needed to keep going after the snitch. He hadn't needed to break that barrier. He hadn't needed to bring in the dementors that Ron had had to lead off the premises as soon as Hugo had been rescued.

With his hand in Nigel's, Hugo looked straight into his father's eyes and responded, "I needed to be good at something. I needed you to see."

Scorpius was standing in a far-off corner so as not to interrupt, but as Hugo admitted his best-kept secret – better kept than even his love for Nigel, the boy he'd pushed away upon wanting him too much – Rose turned around to lock eyes with Scorpius for a moment. He knew then what she was trying to tell him. She was sorry for ever blaming him; she had just needed him to see.

It was finally Ron's chance to set Hugo straight, and he wasn't taking the responsibility lightly. With one giant inhale, he started crying again as his jaw quivered to say, "Hugo, I want to tell you something, and I want you to listen as closely as you possibly can, and I want you to remember every word of it."

When Hugo nodded okay, Ron went on with, "Now, I remember how much I used to think of myself as second best – never as funny as my brothers, never as smart as your mother, never as brave as your Uncle Harry. I even used to wonder why I was so bloody awful at Quidditch." He paused before putting a hand on each of Hugo's resting shoulders and saying with eyes wide open, "I hope you know that I _never once _wondered that about you."

They must have hugged for hours, though Scorpius would never know for sure. He left the hospital wing as soon as Rose felt ready to go, squeezing Nigel's shoulder on the way out. Once they were alone in the hallway, Rose and Scorpius had the chance to hug each other as they verbally apologized for ever having fought the day before, going on to promise to be completely honest from now on, regardless of any protective motives. Then Scorpius wished Rose a Happy Birthday and asked, "You want to see your present?"

Sighing, Rose laughed and said, "_So_ badly."

With a wide smile, Scorpius led her up seven flights of stairs until they were pacing in front of the wall that opened into the Room of Requirement. Unfortunately, it was closed yet again, but Scorpius tried not to question it as he decided to give Rose her present right then and there. It was a simple piece of paper, folded in half along a perfectly straight crease, but the words printed on it were exactly what Rose had been waiting to hear.

"_To Miss Rose Weasley_," she read aloud, "_Scorpius Malfoy, leader of the Order of the Phoenix, and his counterparts are ever so pleased to invite you to join his core alliance, made official upon the eve of your seventeenth birthday."_

Rose wasn't able to express what this meant to her, but Scorpius didn't need her to. He knew how powerless she'd been feeling this past month. That was why she'd distanced herself from the title she'd been waiting for her entire school career, why she'd pushed Scorpius so far physically without discussing it beforehand, and why she'd grown so angry with him when he'd done what he determined was the right thing to do by telling Harry about Al. She just wanted to feel strong for herself the way Hugo had wanted to for Ron. Now, she could be strong for everyone.

The three words she did manage to say to Scorpius in response to the letter he'd given her were, "I love you."

"I love you, too," he replied as he leaned down to kiss her. Then he pulled away, jerked his head toward the entrance to McGonagall's office that sat at the other end of the hall, and asked, "Now, how about we go host our first official Order meeting... together?"

Scorpius had his arm outstretched, and Rose took his hand willingly as she nodded and repeated, "Together." Then they walked down the wall, stated the password to the gargoyle guarding the revolving staircase, and made their way up the tower.

McGonagall's doors were closed, but that had never stopped Scorpius from barging in before. He didn't even bother knocking before he opened to doors to let Rose inside, but he froze when he practically ran into her atop the threshold. She hadn't stepped all the way into the office, and when Scorpius looked toward the center of the room, he could see why. Standing across from McGonagall's desk was Albus Potter, and the sight of him made Scorpius's hands start sweating, because no matter how much power Rose and Scorpius could create together, Al still had the power to make them slip away. He still had the power to make them fall.

* * *

_**Note: **Thank you so much for reading! Did you like it? Were you surprised? What do you think Al is up to? Let me know in a review! The next chapter should be up as soon as my finals are over, so sometime around **December 16th**._

_-Hailey  
_


	33. Wolf Tales

_**Note:** So, this chapter ended up a bit differently than how I'd planned it, which is pretty rare for me. I'm very curious to know what you guys will think of it, and I hope the time jumps aren't too confusing for you. Thanks for reading!**  
**_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**33 – Wolf Tales**

_September 29__th_

"What is he doing here?" asked Scorpius. He still had his hand on one of the griffin-shaped door knockers, and Al could feel the fury in his fist from all the way across the office. He also couldn't ignore the fact that Scorpius wasn't addressing _him_; if anything, he was pretending that Al wasn't even there.

Professor McGonagall walked slowly around her desk and through the empty circle of space until she was close enough to Scorpius to pull his hand off the door with her own, telling him in the meantime, "Albus is aiding me in a most difficult task. Do not worry; he has left his wand behind."

Scorpius seemed to require a more thorough explanation, since he turned his eyes away from Al to look up at his tall, gangly mentor with a volcano's worth of anger and a spark of betrayal. As soon as he looked away, Al found himself facing Rose, who was standing on the threshold with just as much silence as she'd shown when the doors had opened.

It was the first time Al had seen Rose since their grandfather's funeral, which he was never supposed to attend. He'd gone against Astoria's orders because he'd suspected that she didn't trust him around her family and he wanted to prove her wrong. Or at least, that was what he told Astoria after the fact, all without mentioning that he'd actually helped Rose find the hidden James by steering her toward the church closet. Really, though, he'd protected Rose because he secretly knew that she was who Astoria would be going after next.

Looking at his cousin now was like looking at a fully formed, beautiful, yet fragile snowflake that was destined to melt on a road much warmer than the frozen sky. She was currently in more danger than anyone else in the magical world, but did she even realize it? By the look she was giving Al now – smiling, hopeful, relieved – she had no idea. She had no idea that this evening, which just so happened to be the night of her seventeenth birthday, Astoria was busy planning her next attack just like she'd been doing all month.

All Rose knew was that Al had saved her. She didn't know why and she didn't know if he'd ever do so again, or if he'd ever even need to, but she knew that he had. That was why she whispered to him now, in the midst of her own confusion, "Thank you."

Al couldn't say anything in response. Instead, he turned his eyes toward the floor and waited for McGonagall and Scorpius to sort things out amongst themselves. They too had only been whispering, so Al hadn't been able to overhear their conversation, until Scorpius sighed heavily upon hearing McGonagall say, "Nobody needs to know that he's here, Scorpius. He's not going to hurt me. He's not going to hurt _anyone_ on my watch."

Using McGonagall's claim as his cue, Al took a few steps toward the doorway and announced, "But there is somebody who might hurt another if I don't get going." Outside the office's west-facing window, the sun was beginning to set and the full moon was slowly revealing itself.

McGonagall understood what Al was insinuating, so she nodded and motioned her hand toward the staircase before saying, "Try not to be seen."

Al took one last glance at all the sleeping Headmasters in their portraits on the far-side wall before he told McGonagall jokingly, "I wouldn't dare," and then stepped over the threshold. He could hear Scorpius protesting from behind him, but there was nothing that boy could say to make Al turn back around. He had different priorities tonight.

Once downstairs and standing behind the gargoyle on the seventh floor of Hogwarts castle, Al was careful to check for a clear coast before walking down the hallway. It was about time for most students to be eating supper in the Great Hall, but that didn't mean that there wouldn't be a few stragglers going in and out of the Gryffindor common room. Plus, the Fat Lady and Peeves needed to be avoided at all costs; the last thing Al wanted was a school-wide uproar over his harmless presence.

He made it safely through the left corridor and to the entrance into the Room of Requirement, though he had to narrowly avoid a lone Roxanne by hiding behind the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy and his dancing trolls. She seemed to be looking for Lily on her way back from supper, and Al had to wait a while for her to end her search and return to her dormitory. As soon as she was gone, Al shimmied out from behind the tapestry and took a few paces in front of the opposite wall to open the doors into the Room of Requirement.

Rose and Scorpius had told him about the hidden room during their fifth year at school, but he'd never had any real reason to use it until recently. This year, he had found himself unable to return to Hogwarts as a student, but he couldn't stay home either. So when he ran into his little sister the morning of the funeral – exactly twenty-seven days ago, on September the second – as she was waking up in the middle of the woods from her first full night as werewolf, he knew without question that Lily was where he needed to be. After all, he was the only one who might be able to help her resist her own instincts.

It had taken a fair amount of research and snooping for Lily to pry the necessary information out of Ginny to figure out some way to get Al inside the castle. Both Ginny and Harry had wanted to help Lily through her transformations themselves, offering to visit Hogwarts every month and watch over her in the Shrieking Shack just as Harry's father had once done for Remus Lupin, but Lily never wanted their aid. As a compromise, she promised to work with McGonagall – something Al had since started doing for her – and to use a secret passageway through the Room of Requirement to get herself into the far side of the Forbidden Forest.

Meanwhile, Al had moved into the room that he was now standing inside, which had taken the shape of a small home complete with a kitchen and dining area by the entrance and a bed and curtain-closed bathroom on the other side, the former sitting beneath the most important facet of the room and the one thing Albus truly needed from it: a life-size hanging portrait that was really no portrait at all.

"Where have you been?" came a voice out of nowhere, Lily suddenly jumping off her seat on the bed so that she could hit her brother straight in the chest while yelling in her signature growl that had recently been intensified by her wolf-blooded behavior. "I have ten minutes at most!"

"Yeah, and that's _plenty_ of time to get out of here," Al replied with his hands in the air. "I came as soon as I was done with McGonagall, which admittedly took longer than I had anticipated."

"What do you need to be doing with her, anyway?" asked Lily as if she'd already forgotten the promise she'd made to her parents only a few weeks ago.

Al answered even though Lily didn't need him to, explaining, "I stay with you through your transformations so that she doesn't have to give up any of her own time, and in return she informs me of your and others' safety within the castle." He wasn't looking at Lily as he grabbed the Elder Wand from a safe he'd made and packed his old rucksack full of potions ingredients and bandaging supplies.

"So, I suppose that means she told you about the dementors that broke through this morning?" asked Lily while Al was zipping his bag closed, causing him to look her straight in the eye as she stood in front of the bed with her lips pursed and her arms crossed. Her clothes were all black and stretchy and her hair was tied up in a Dutch braid that started at her left eyebrow and ended in a pinned flower just above her neck. Al was too focused on the one strand of hair that had ruined her perfect 'do to reply, and soon Lily's patience had disappeared and she was asking, "Al, who sent them here?"

Al and Lily had been walking a rather thin line on the subject of Al's loyalty. She of course knew that he was still working with the Forbidden Flock, and she was even helping to protect him from getting caught, but that didn't mean that she supported what he was doing. It all went back to what she'd expressed to him the night he was convicted for Arthur's murder: Lily would rather know the truth, however despicable, than continue to be lied to.

After reminding himself of this, Al responded, "They came from Azkaban, Lil. Who do you think sent them here?" The truth was that Al had had nothing to do with the dementors' arrival, though they'd been stationed at the school borders for weeks now. The only member who could have had any control over them from his prison cell next-door to Vincent Goyle's was Knox.

Lily understood right away, so she didn't ask any more questions. Instead, she followed Al as he stood up on the bed, swung the portrait open to reveal the entrance to a tunnel that his father had once used but that wasn't even on the Marauder's Map, and hopped inside. The walk through the narrow passageway was long and dark, and they only had one wand to light their way, since Lily had left hers under her bed to make sure she didn't lose it while transformed.

They didn't say much to each other while walking through the tunnel, though Al could hear Lily's breaths escalating in both pitch and rhythm. She was nervous, which was understandable, but Al didn't dare point it out by asking if there was anything he could do to help. He decided to just wait it out and let her speak first, which eventually she did by asking, "You still haven't brewed any more Wolfsbane?"

Wolfsbane Potion wasn't a cure for lycanthropy, but it tended to help with control. In fact, it was rumored to give the werewolf complete awareness for the entirety of his or her night under the moon, so long as it was brewed and drunk correctly. Al had bought a pot of some once and had kept it in his bedroom in Godric's Hollow, but apparently James had given it all to Lily for her last transformation. It hadn't worked.

"No, I haven't," answered Al. "I still need to get my hands on the main ingredient, and that herb is not the easiest thing to come by."

"But do you have any idea where you might find it?" asked Lily, her anxiety reaching a whole new level of squeakiness in her voice.

"Yes, actually, I do. I know exactly where to find it." But it just so happened to be the last place Al wanted to visit.

Lily's eyes shifted back and forth as she waited for Al to explain _why_ he couldn't get the herb if he already knew where it was, but she never got her answer before Al changed the subject.

They were reaching the end of the tunnel when he ordered, "Tell me again how much you remember from last month." Part of the training process Al was helping Lily through was to learn how to recall events that occurred during the full moons. If she could remember them, then maybe she could learn to control them too.

"Like I said before, not much," Lily replied as Al held the second swinging portrait open for her. She jumped down and onto an unevenly varnished wooden table in the middle of the Hog's Head bar while adding, "I remember the sight of the moon and then I remember the pain from transforming, and I remember waking up and seeing you there, looking down at me."

In other words, all she recalled were the moments she was in human form, which didn't help them move forward. Trying to get something else out of her, Al waved a thank you to the portrait's subject – a girl named Ariana Dumbledore – as he walked out onto the main road of Hogsmeade and asked Lily, "But what about that scar on your leg? Do you remember how you got it?"

Lily sighed in exasperation. She was already tired of Al's questions, even though she knew he was only trying to help. They were at the edge of the Forbidden Forest that stretched all across the Hogwarts grounds and around the tiny town when she said, "Only that it came from some sort of animal... an animal I seemed to really want to eat."

They both stopped walking at that, Lily looking at Al with nothing but worry in her eyes. Al knew what she was thinking: what if this 'animal' had actually been human, and what if she ran into a human tonight? Because Al didn't have any way of refuting either of these possibilities without lying to his sister, something he'd promised himself not to do, he merely put a hand on Lily's shoulder and said after a moment of silent consolation, "We should probably run."

Above them, the moon had taken its full shape and was seconds away from reaching its highest point in the star-spotted sky. Al and Lily had only just made it across the forest borderline, and soon their legs were flying atop the dirt that was littered with twigs and branches, Al just trying to keep up as Lily began to transform mid-step. Her feet and legs turned first, her shoes flying off to uncover giant paws beneath long, skeletal legs patched with fur smelling of wet dog. Then came her abdomen and her arms, and soon she was on four legs and was out-running Albus like he was the tortoise and she was the hare. By the time she was fully transfigured, Al could hear the distant howls but couldn't see the wolf anymore. This was most probably a good thing, since the farther away from her he was, the safer he'd be. Still, he needed to keep an eye out for her somehow.

Thinking fast, Al circled back and grabbed Lily's leftover shoes before heading for the forest's mid-line just north of the Hogwarts Quidditch pitch. He walked the whole way there regardless of his urgency, his hands tightly gripping at the stitches that had taken over the sides of his stomach. Luckily, he was able to be distracted by his own pain because he didn't actually need to pay much attention to where he was going; the branded tattoo on his chest would lead him there.

He found Zephorien, the Hebridean Black dragon who must have been fifty times Al's size, jumping atop the forest floor and opening his fiery mouth wide to let in a swarm of bats that were flying through the night. As soon as Al made his presence known, Zephyr turned away from his meal and approached his master with a deep bow.

"Ugh, you smell terrible," Al grimaced at the scent of his pet's breath.

Zephyr straightened his neck quickly and pretended to slouch in defeat, making Al reach out his hand for comfort before the dragon coughed right onto the top of Al's head.

Stumbling backward, Al admitted, "All right, all right, you win!" After laughing off the joke, he turned serious once more as he stepped forward and put his hand on one of Zephyr's scaly wings while the other held Lily's shoe to the dragon's nose and said, "I need your help tonight, Oreo. Keep an eye out for her, you hear?"

Zephorien took a deep breath of Lily's scent, then nodded to Albus and flung his wing over his master's head as he ran into the forest at full speed, eventually leaping off the ground and scouting for Al's werewolf sister.

Once Zephyr was gone, Al walked around for a bit until he found the group of dementors that had broken the Hogwarts property line earlier that same day, but that had since retreated to guard the Forbidden Flock headquarters. They hovered around Al skeptically, not knowing if it was worth going after a boy who already refused to focus on anything but his worst memories, but he warded them off anyway.

"_Expecto Patronum!_" he pointed his wand at the cloaked figures, producing a charm headed by a dark hawk that was so strong it spun all of the dementors out of the vicinity by an entire mile. Al had always been good at that particular spell, though he could never understand why. Perhaps it was _because_ of the fact that he spent so much time thinking about the worst times in his life, making the few moments he thought of the good memories that much more powerful and that much more real.

With the dementors gone, Al had free access to the tree they'd been surrounding before. It was an old, giant oak tree with a trunk as thick as a small home and branches that bulged into the clouds before sinking back to the floor. Against its greying bark was an almost imperceptible outline of a tongue-shaped door, beside which was a mold that only fit to a select few wands. One of those wands was Al's.

The door swung open as soon as Al placed his wand into the mold, and soon he was led deep into what had been named the Forbidden Cave, Astoria's latest home. Really, though, the place was no cave at all. It was much like the tunnel Al had been using to get into Hogwarts: claustrophobic, wet, and dusty with microscopic invertebrates. There were just a few rooms inside, enough to house Astoria and maybe two or three other Flock members at a time. Today, those two members were Ryder Rookwood and her latest tease.

Ryder was currently half-lying on a magically-made sofa in the corner of the small room that was closed off from Astoria's lair. She was so busy snogging a boy who couldn't be much older than Al, and who looked remarkably similar to Knox but for his awkwardly long neck and the streaks of white in his black hair, that she didn't even notice Al was there. When he announced his presence by clearing his throat, Ryder pushed the boy off of her and smiled proudly at Albus.

"I see you've rebound," said Al casually to Ryder while gesturing at the boy who was still trying to get at her neck. The morning Ryder had given him a clue about reading between the lines of Knox's final letter, Al had run from Grimmauld Place with nowhere to go, so of course he'd ended up at the recently abandoned Rookwood house. Much to his surprise, Ryder had been hiding out there as well, and their mutual loneliness upon losing Knox had led to more than one night of regretful indiscretion between the two of them.

Chuckling to herself, Ryder fired back, "I see you haven't." They'd broken off their escapades once Al had found Lily the night he'd broken in to Godric's Hollow and had subsequently found Lily alone in the woods, but really, nothing had ever started... at least, nothing that had ever mattered.

That was what made Al say in response, "Actually, I already did. _You_ were my rebound." Not needing to wait around to know how she'd react, Al walked right by the raging Ryder and into Astoria's room, slamming the door shut on his way out.

This next room had been remodeled to look much like the office Astoria had used while hiding out at the Rookwood house: walls covered in maps, the most prominent one showing the extensive Hogwarts grounds around a highly inaccurate blueprint of the castle, a large circular table in the center of the room with papers sprawled across its surface, and the head chair opposite the door seated by a woman with long, raven hair. The only difference was that this room didn't have a single window inside, and instead of hovering over maps and records alongside Knox, Astoria was pulling the cuticles off her nails and letting them fall onto an old, crumpled picture of a young Charlie and Tonks with their arms around each other in front of the Great Hall.

"Albus." Astoria always addressed him before he even had time to say her name aloud, though like today, she hardly ever actually looked up at him. "I see that you have met Calder."

"Who?" asked Al as he took a seat across from the witch.

"Calder Anhinga," replied Astoria, finally meeting Al's gaze as she hid the photo underneath a map of the Ministry of Magic. "Ryder's new friend."

"Oh, him," Al grunted. He already didn't like the boy, but was suddenly curious to know why Astoria felt that he was important enough to mention, making him ask, "Why, what's his deal?"

"He happens to be my ticket into the Ministry. Before being easily seduced by our beloved Rookwood girl, he was working as an intern for Kingsley Shacklebolt himself. As of today, he has begun work on securing a freezing charm on the whole of the Ministry, able to be activated at my convenience."

Freezing charms were quite literal in that they could temporarily paralyze their victims, usually only for a couple of hours. In other words, they were large-scale versions of Body Freezing Spells, but less intense than full-blown petrifying. Astoria having one ready and waiting on the Ministry would allow her to keep all officials in the building away from a battle, if and when one were to occur. All Al could say in response was, "Impressive."

"Now, I just have one more task to complete before we'll be ready," continued Astoria. The Forbidden Flock itself was the size of Great Britain by now, Astoria having recruited any wizard with a blood prejudice alongside Al's dragon, Knox's dementors, and the few giants Hagrid hadn't corralled into the Order of the Phoenix. The 'one task' Astoria had yet to complete, however, didn't entail the enlarging of her army. All it entailed was Rose.

When Al didn't say anything for a while, Astoria seemed to sense his lack of interest in the subject and moved to something more pressing. "I assume you have come to proceed to the next phase of your training," she suggested.

"So long as you'll have me," Al replied. Astoria had been personally training Al in the Dark Arts since he'd promised his loyalty to her back in early August. He had decided against using his precious time to become an Animagus, mostly because he was still terrible at Transfiguration, but in its place he'd gotten to practice the Unforgivable Curses and try out all of the mysterious spells he'd found in his potions book over the years. He wasn't entirely sure what the 'next phase' of his training would entail, but he wasn't about to back down now.

"Well, that depends," said Astoria, surprising Al with her hesitance. She'd promised to train him; the ultimatum had already come and gone. "You see, in order to move along, you need to rid of _all_ your weaknesses."

Al had no idea what she was inferring until she stood from her chair, walked toward him and sneered, "Including the two that are sitting in your back pocket."

Al practically flew over his chair as his hand shot to the pieces of paper that had been a part of his outfit for a grand total of fifty-seven days – the same number of days it had been since Al had last seen Ilana Higgs. One of the papers was stained with the goodbye poem she'd written him; the other was an unsent letter that he was in the middle of writing her. Whenever he thought of something poignant to say, he'd write it down on that letter, so it was really just a series of unconnected, fragmented thoughts, but in a way, those thoughts were all he had.

"I don't know what you're-" Al tried to deny the papers' existence, but Astoria interrupted him.

"Don't _play_ with me, Albus. I don't need Knox here to be able to see right through you." She was standing only half a foot away from his chair now, staring down at him from above with a smile full of browning teeth and hips that bounced atop her heels. "Two months ago, I had to drag you away from your _whore_ house, and now you come to me willingly nearly every day, yet you are still reserved and resistant. I'm afraid it's time for you to let go."

Al didn't want to hear any more of her nonsense, so he soon found himself running out of the Forbidden Cave without looking back. He ran all the way to Hogsmeade, where he waited on a bench at the end of the street for Zephorien to return Lily to him, and he took out Ilana's poem, read it over for the thousandth time, and then grabbed his own letter and quill. In jagged cursive that was barely legible, he wrote in the remaining blank space, _I'm not sure which is worse: the fact that you are my greatest weakness, or the fact that I'll never know if I'm yours. _Then he re-folded the paper and slipped it back into his pocket, right where it belonged.

Al had never planned to be one of these people – the people who pine over loved ones for years to come – but he'd also never planned on falling in love. Maybe his fragmented thoughts were the same as those rare memories of happiness he used to produce the Patronus Charm. Maybe writing them down was the only way he could remember all the nights in which he had let go of his control.

* * *

_October 27__th_

Ilana's house was made of the same light brown bricks, had the same single green hedge beside its first floor window, and sat in front of the same empty driveway as all of the ones right next to it. One of those neighbors was the Dursley house, which Al had visited on occasion when he'd been younger. Today, though, he was visiting Privet Drive, Little Whinging for the Higgs house, or more precisely, for its backyard.

With a deep breath, Al told his feet to move and was soon climbing over the fence and walking into the yard that he'd come to for the first time at the beginning of the month. The wolfsbane bush was right where he'd found it the last time: just outside the dining room, in the middle of a giant herb garden in all different shades of green, and as far away as possible from the sleeping golden retriever whose name Al had never known.

Unfortunately, the dog must have heard Al's plucking at the bush, for soon he or she was rushing up to Al and trying to jump on his back. Swiftly stuffing the ingredient into his rucksack, Al gave the dog a few friendly pats and then ran off, this time opening the gate and getting far enough onto the main road to be able to Disapparate. He didn't do so right away, however, since he was easily distracted by the sight of an open window on the second floor.

He couldn't exactly see what was inside the room, nor could he have known if it belonged to Ilana, but something told him that it was her bedroom. Something else inside him said that he should climb up the wall of the house and jump through her window right this second, even though Ilana clearly wasn't home. The only thing that stopped him from doing just that was when he pulled one of the papers from his back pocket and wrote, _It's taking all the power I have not to go running after you. I swear that every time I don't, I almost do. _Then he turned on the spot and landed in the depths of the Forbidden Forest.

With the help of the Elder Wand, Al shot a few red sparks into the sky as a signal that would help Lily find him. As he waited for her to show up, he wondered to himself why both times he'd broken into Ilana's stash of home-grown wolfsbane herbs, she and her family had been out. He didn't let himself stay on the subject for very long, but he hoped that Ilana had followed her dream of going to Muggle university just like her sister had done.

Lily showed up in a matter of minutes, giving both of them plenty of time to prepare before the sun sank beneath the horizon. Still, Al was quick to hand over this month's final dosage of the Wolfsbane potion he'd brewed for Lily; a few sips needed to be taken every day leading up to the full moon. Then she threw him the journal he'd asked her to keep, full of recordings from her last transformation.

Last month had gone surprisingly well, considering neither of them had truly known how to prepare for the night. Lily had woken up in the Room of Requirement after Al had carried her there from Hogsmeade, and he'd been able to erase all of the small scratches and bruises she'd earned while in wolf form. Her journal was filled with visions of bats and sounds of scurrying mice, most of which she'd recalled at random times through her dreams.

"This is great, Lil," said Al once he finished reading, holding onto the journal for her. "And to think: last month, we didn't even have the potion yet."

Lily didn't appear to be as enthused as Al, however. She had taken a seat on a fallen tree branch next to her brother, and while she'd normally by jittery with nervousness around this time of the night, now she was simply still. Noticing this, Al couldn't help but ask, "What's going on in that head of yours, Night-Walker?"

Her eyes burning holes in the ground, Lily sighed and answered, "I'm tired. I'm tired of trying to remember every detail of a night I'd rather forget. I'm tired of people whispering about me behind my back. I'm tired of everyone looking at me like I'm about to break." She turned to look at Al when she finished with, "Because honestly, Al, I think you might be the only one who doesn't."

Laughing slightly out of the corner of his mouth, Al asked, "Since when does Lily Potter let people talk about her behind her back? When has she ever even been _close_ to breaking?"

When Lily didn't respond, Al added, "And anyway, I'm not going anywhere."

For whatever reason, that particular statement was the only thing that _did_ make Lily respond. As soon as she heard Al voice his promise, she was on her feet and was pacing in front of him, apparently having regained her usual anxiety as she rambled, "Blimey, Al! Do you have any idea why I asked you to meet me out here tonight instead of in the Room of Requirement where we always meet? Why I asked specifically that you not go to McGonagall's office at all this week?"

It was true that Lily had asked Al all of this recently, though he hadn't thought much of her request. Lily had struggled with her own self-esteem her entire life, regardless of how confident she liked to behave, so Al had assumed that she just hadn't wanted him discussing her school life with her Headmistress anymore.

"It's because Scorpius told Dad," Lily answered the question for him. Al was paying close attention as she explained, "Scorpius told him that he'd seen you at the castle, and now he has Aurors stationed all around the entrance to McGonagall's office."

"And what does McGonagall have to say about this?" asked Al. He wasn't all that surprised that Scorpius had tattled to Harry; the two of them had always been close. Plus, Scorpius wasn't like Rose; he didn't believe that _any_ of Al's motives were pure anymore, nor did he want to.

Lily shrugged. "I dunno'. She's tried to talk to me a few times, but I've never really been in the mood." Truthfully, that meant that Lily didn't want anyone else in the vicinity to overhear her discussing her other half out loud. "But, I mean, it's McGonagall – she may be bloody harsh sometimes, but she always does what she thinks is right. She knows that this has nothing to do with Astoria. Not _everything_ in this world does."

Though Al would never have admitted it aloud, it was relieving to hear someone say such a thing about Astoria. Sometimes, Al forgot that he lived for anything, or anyone, else.

"The point," Lily cut off his thoughts, "Is that you _need_ to be careful. Or, you know, maybe if you just came home..." her voice wandered off as she kicked at the frosty dirt.

Al didn't let himself even consider the notion before saying, "Lily, you know I can't do that. McGonagall may be okay with letting me into the castle without my wand, but Mum is never going to forgive me for playing a part in Granddad's death. And anyway, Astoria is the only person who's ever pushed me at something. She's the _only_ one who's ever even been curious to see what I am capable of, and I have to know if her belief in me is really worth anything. I _have_ to know how strong I am."

Lily was nodding as she took it all in, but Al could tell from her squinting brown eyes – their mother's eyes – that she didn't fully believe him. Soon, her eyes were facing his – their father's eyes – and Lily was asking, "But what if that strength ends up killing somebody? Or worse, somebody you care about? What happens then?"

She was asking him the same question she'd been asking herself ever since she'd been bitten by Remy. All a person would have to do to provoke a werewolf would be to step into its path, which meant that accidentally killing a person was a perfectly legitimate worry for Lily to have. _Purposefully_ killing a person was just as legitimate a worry for Al, too, especially since Astoria's hit-man was locked up in Azkaban.

But the truth was that Al didn't know what would happen if he was asked to kill someone. Would he find a way out of it the way he'd tried to with Arthur? Would he just not go through with it, sacrificing himself in the place of his victim? Or would he close his eyes and say the two words that Astoria had made him practice hundreds of times before?

He was about to say that he didn't know what would happen when Lily's pants started to morph into fur. Both she and Al had lost track of time through their conversation, but now the moon was bright, and within seconds, Al was standing in front of the fallen trunk and was staring at a four-legged creature with reddish coloring and wads of drool running down her open mouth.

Al was about to run from the beast that looked nothing like his sister when the wolf closed her mouth, backed up a few steps, curled into a ball on the ground, and fell asleep. She stayed that way the rest of the night, Al listening to her heavy snoring from only a few meters away. Apparently, Lily was in complete control, and if not, at least she was exhausted.

* * *

_November 24__th_

The next moon wasn't so kind to Lily. She had had more energy this night than she had on the last, and though her human confidence had lasted all month long, her wolf side had caught a scent of something soon after transforming and had tossed such confidence aside to head after it. Al had followed her himself, tracking her paw prints all through the forest until they disappeared into the depths of the North Sea. That was where he was now, having just looked up from the water to see a vaguely familiar town stretched out across its bank.

Montrose, Scotland stared back at Al in a spectacle of lights. Its houses and bridges reflected against the water with certainty, but it was the giant steeple that intensified the view. Behind the church were rolling hills exactly like those Al had walked in on, and the sound of crashing waves absconded any terrible thoughts in Al's head. Lily had found her way into a town, but at least Al knew whose scent she was now following. After all, there was no better prey than that of one's own blood.

Al had never actually been to the apartment that James had started renting with Lysander this past summer, so it took him a while to find the building that matched all the pictures he'd seen. The flat was located downtown on Murray Street and sat above a Muggle music shop. Al hadn't seen any sign of Lily on his way to the place, nor did he sense her presence now, but he figured that he'd have to go inside and wait for her to show.

The last time Al had spoken to James was just before he'd thrown shattered glass at his brother's shoulder, destroyed their mutual getaway house, and proceeded to run from the sight without looking back. The last time he'd _seen_ James hadn't been much better – it was when he'd intercepted the older Potter on his way to Arthur's funeral so that Astoria could take James's place beneath her Polyjuice Potion disguise. Naturally, Al was nervous to face James after all that.

But then again, James had always been the only one who had refused to give up on Al, making sure that he was there for him no matter how far Al ran. That was what Al reminded himself as he ascended the staircase and arrived at James's front door, which he was sure was the right one when he saw a poster of Persephone Eider, a half-Veela Seeker for the Holyhead Harpies Quidditch team, plastered against the wood.

James opened the door after only two knocks, but he shut it just as quickly. Caught off guard by the sudden banishment, Al placed his ear against the door and overheard what he guessed were two or three muffled voices conversing inside. He didn't know what any of them were saying, but he could only assume that either James was lying about who was at the door, or he was forewarning Lysander and company about the presence of his most dangerous family member.

Because surrendering his wand seemed to have worked with McGonagall and because he needed to talk to James to see if he'd heard any howls tonight, Al decided to take out the Elder Wand and roll it under James's door. As soon as he did, he was let inside.

It would be quite the understatement to call the flat _small_. If the average home was an ocean, James's apartment was a puddle, and a muddy one at that. The doorway led straight into a cramped kitchen, complete with a single countertop littered with open boxes of half-eaten pizzas and a tile floor taken up mainly by a recycling bin overflowing with empty bottles of butterbeer. On the other side of the counter was the living area, consisting of two chairs and a stained sofa less than a foot away from the coffee table made of broken broomsticks. The table was covered with copies of what Al could only assume was the Marauder's Map beneath tiny figurines in groups of white and black.

"Military strategy," said James when he saw Al staring at the table. His maps looked a whole lot like Astoria's – both potential game plans for their respective armies. James had never seemed interested in helping Scorpius lead the Order of the Phoenix before, but now it looked as though he'd taken up the hobby full-time, which was confirmed when he added, "It turns out it's a lot like Quidditch, which of course means that I'm bloody brilliant at it."

Al actually managed to stifle a laugh at James's joke, though the air was still awkward around the two of them. Al was also wondering where Lysander was, a question that was answered when the tall blond came stumbling out of his closed bedroom with his twin, Lorcan, not far behind. They were each wearing a well-tailored suit that differed only in color, Lorcan's a deep red and Lysander's a pine tree green, and they were in the middle of a rather ludicrous spat.

"Lor, I'm _not_ wearing this!" Lysander was yelling behind him. "And you're not opening that box again – not for anybody."

"Oh, come off it. I know we're young, but-" argued Lorcan, stopping just as he ran straight into Lysander, who'd halted in his tracks upon laying eyes on his visitor.

After a short minute of staring, Lysander turned to James, who was leaning on the kitchen countertop, and asked monotonously, "You let him in?"

"Yeah," James said, looking at Al to add, "He's my brother."

These words must have been magical (and if not, at least of Al's wand twirling in James's hand was), since upon hearing them, Lysander and Lorcan returned to their squabbling, walking into the kitchen as James led Al over to the sofa and took a seat, Al dropping into the chair across from him.

"So, no more small talk," said James as he grabbed a pile of old _Quibbler _magazines and laid them atop his maps so that Al couldn't peek at the strategy he was planning. "I don't need to know what you're doing out there, Al, but I do need to know what you're doing _here_."

"I'm looking for Lily," Al answered succinctly and honestly. He went on to explain that he'd been helping Lily through her monthly transformations and that he'd followed her here tonight. James listened closely until Al was finished, then told his brother that he hadn't heard or seen anything out of the ordinary, and it was already well past midnight.

Al was about to get up to leave, seeing as James hadn't been all that helpful, when the latter said, "Why don't you stay? None of us are headed to bed just yet, and you're right: she'll probably be able to sniff me out. I think it's best if we just wait for her here."

Nodding, Al sat back down, and soon all four of the boys were crowded around the living room, drinking butterbeer and firewhiskey and trying to see how much of it they could spill on Lorcan and Lysander's ridiculous groomsmen suits. The few hours that Al spent in James's flat were uncannily normal, and though he didn't understand how he could feel this way, he was comfortable with it. He felt comfortable joking around with people his own age, laughing about his nights with Ryder as James reminisced over the time he'd slept with Cassidy Finnigan, and even listening to Lorcan gush about his long-time relationship with Lucy. Of course, there was always that underlying topic that none of them would mention, but the Scamanders understood that Al's loyalty wasn't their problem. They had each dealt with their own criminal father, Rolf Scamander, in different ways, so they understood that James might deal with Al differently than they would.

The sun was rising and the boys were drifting in and out of sleep by the time any of them heard scratching at the door. Lysander was sitting at the edge of the sofa closest to the flat's entrance, so he heard the noise first and ended up being the one to find a freshly human Lily lying on the welcome mat at the top of the stairs.

She was unconscious as Lysander scooped her up into his arms and carried her into the living room, James hopping off the couch to make room for her to lie down. James was also the one to take on the leadership role, catching a single glimpse at Lily and proceeding to order Lorcan to run into town and look for medical supplies. Magic wasn't going to be enough tonight.

Al threw his rucksack at James to let his brother look for any supplies he already had, but he had yet to actually see the extent of his sister's injuries. Once James busied himself with the backpack, Al pushed the coffee table out of the way and took a seat on the floor beside Lysander, both of them facing the horizontal, fifteen year-old girl who looked like she'd been beaten for ten hours straight.

"Bloody hell," whispered Al as he took in the sight of the nails literally hanging from Lily's fingers, the torn sleeves that barely hid the red scars reaching all the way up her arms, and the fist-sized black eye that had embedded itself all the way from her broken nose to her fractured hairline. At least that hair didn't look so terrifying, since the blood wasn't differentiable against the natural red.

Since Al didn't have access to his wand, it was up to Lysander to try to heal some of Lily's wounds, which he actually did rather well. First, he whispered, "_Episkey!_" at her nose and Al watched it pop back into place as Lily groaned in her sleep, then he produced some water and gently pat it against her stained skin, then he worked to subdue the scratches and bruises. They were still visible even after Lysander had done all he could think to do, but they looked ten times less gruesome than they had before.

James threw back the bandages for Al to wrap around Lily's arms, and eventually Lorcan returned with some Muggle ointment that was supposed to help with her eye. "What d'you reckon happened to her out there?" he asked as he rummaged through the kitchen and started making some soup for the patient.

Al assumed that he was the one being asked, since he had had the most experience with Lily's werewolf side, but it was Lysander who answered, "Townspeople happened. Dumpster trucks happened. Boats happened. Welcome to the Muggle world. I'd suggest someone get out and Confund any witnesses before there are articles about a rabid dog in tomorrow's paper."

"I'm on it," offered James, who threw the Elder Wand back at Al and was out the door in seconds.

Meanwhile, Lysander and Al stayed put, the former petting some of Lily's hair back and whispering that everything was going to be fine. Al was mesmerized by how well Lysander was dealing with both the pressure-filled situation and his caretaking role. James may have recently turned into a strategist, but Lysander was a soldier.

Leaning back upon hearing Lysander's reassurance, Al thought about everything Lily had already been through with her peers at school and said solemnly, "She's not going to be happy about this. Whatever she did out there, it hurt. It _always_ seems to hurt."

Lysander was shaking his head before he responded, "It only hurts if it matters."

As soon as they'd brought up the subject of pain, Al could feel his chest beginning to throb. The screaming came soon afterward, followed by the jolting migraine that was impossible to ignore. Al had only ever felt this way once before, so he was fairly certain that he knew where the pain was coming from, and therefore he also knew how to stop it.

"I have to go," he announced while standing from the floor, being careful not to clutch his wand too tightly. He didn't want to cause any sort of stir; he just needed to get out of there.

Lysander didn't understand what was happening to him, but he still promised to follow Al's request when asked to make sure that Lily was back at Hogwarts by late morning. Then Al squeezed his sister's limp hand, said a sincere thank you to the twins, left a note for James explaining his disappearance, and locked the door on his way out. Once on the street, he Apparated back to the Forbidden Forest, landing right next to the source of all the pain and collapsing in its company.

"_Finally!"_ sneered Astoria from behind Al. "It took you long enough."

In front of him was Zephorien, breathing heavily and keeling over just like Al was as Astoria tortured him. She couldn't very well send owls or Patronus messages anymore, and she knew just how connected Al was to his dragon. This was apparently the only way she could gain Al's attention so quickly.

But Al wasn't taking it very well. Momentarily pushing the pain away, he wrapped his hand around his side and shot a silent disarming spell at Astoria. She defended herself from it, but it still worked to make her stop using the Cruciatus Curse on Zephyr. Then he pet Zephyr's nose and told him that everything would be okay the same way Lysander had with Lily, turned around completely and stood up straight to face Astoria head-on.

The literal pain may have been gone by now, but Al was still fuming as he pointed his finger at the scared dragon and screamed, "He is _not_ your personal experiment! _I'm_ the one who made it possible for us to use him in the first place!"

"Well," Astoria started with innocently drawn eyebrows and an upside-down smile, "I needed some way to get you here. It was an emergency."

"Like hell it was," Al seethed, taking a few steps to the side so that Zephyr could throw a little fire his enemy's way.

Astoria blocked this attack as well, but Al wasn't the least bit scared of trying again. The only thing that stopped him from such was when Astoria actually provided an explanation. "Calder has secured our plans at the Ministry, and I need to make sure that my best ally is prepared in time for battle. I can't predict when Scorpius may call one to the castle."

Al hadn't been going through much of Astoria's training ever since heir debacle at the end of September. Lily had been giving him plenty to do, not to mention the fact that he wasn't willing to recycle Ilana's letters. Still, that wasn't an excuse for Astoria to use Zephyr as bait to lure Albus to her cave. He tried to tell her this when he said, "I am loyal to you, Astoria. I shouldn't have to prove it anymore."

"Then tell me where you just came here from. Tell me where you've been spending all your time the past four fortnights. Tell me who is so much more important than your own training."

Al was rolling his eyes as he listened to her, and when he didn't answer right away, Astoria pointed her wand at Zephorien once more. That made the fury return to Albus in full swing, provoking him to jump in front of Astoria's wand and ask, "You want to know where I've been the past two months? Hell, you want to know where I've been the past _four_ months, ever since Arthur Weasley dropped dead at my feet?"

When he was sure that he had Astoria's attention, he said, "August fourth, full moon – the day my little sister was bitten by a werewolf. September first, full moon – the day I found her outside Godric's Hollow while I was breaking in to pluck off some of James's hair. September twenty-ninth, full moon – the day _you_ threatened to stop training me unless I got rid of my weaknesses. October twenty-seventh, full moon – the day I used my so-called _weakness_ to give my sister strength. And that brings us to last night, November the twenty-fourth. _Full_. _Moon_.

"Now, I'm going to leave before I let you tear me apart the way my sister now does with the local bat population," Al finished as he began to walk away. Before he ran out of sight, however, he addressed the now smiling Astoria one last time with a threat of his own. "And if you _ever _try to torture _my_ dragon again, I'll see how Lily reacts to a nice big golden hawk!"

The run back to Hogsmeade was refreshing. Al was easily tired out when arguing with Astoria, often even when working closely with her, and though he didn't need to wait for Lily thanks to Lysander's promise, he found himself halting at the forest border before heading back through Ariana's tunnel. The sight that caught his eye was a shadowy silhouette of two people standing on the shores of the frozen Black Lake.

At first, he didn't know who the early-birds were, but the longer he stared, the surer Al became of the flashes of white and red reflected against the ice. By the time he heard the echoing sniffles bounce off the surface and when the snow started to fall in big, gently floating flakes alongside the blond boy's tears, Al knew that it was Rose and Scorpius. He also knew why they were there and what Scorpius was crying about. This morning marked the one-year anniversary of Narcissa Malfoy's death.

Al knew that he should be feeling empathetic for Scorpius and the grandmother he'd lost, but all he could feel as he stared down at the huddled figures – so close to each other that their individual bodies were barely discernible – was his own pain that still fluttered lightly against his heart. With hands shaking from the cold, he pulled the paper from his pocket and wrote messily, _I know why it hurts so much, Higgs. It hurts because it matters. _We_ matter._

* * *

_December 22__nd_

Hogwarts always felt twice as large as it normally did when the holidays arrived. Every year, the majority of the students headed home on the Hogwarts Express the week before Christmas, and only those who had no home to return to would stay at school. Al had only done so once himself, during his first year when Scorpius's father had told him he shouldn't board the train. Harry had offered to let Scorpius join the Potters for Christmas, but Scorpius hadn't wanted to impose.

That year, Al and Scorpius had explored more of the castle than they would have ever dared to at a normal time. Together, they discovered the house-elves in the kitchen across from the Hufflepuff common room, the Prefects' bathroom that had opened willingly thanks to Al's snatching of Victoire's Head Girl badge, and the underground tunnel leading from the Whomping Willow to the Shrieking Shack. They were tiny ants a giant world and they wanted to see it all.

This year was different. This year, more students than usual were staying at the castle, since those who had been invited to the Longbottom wedding were helping Neville and some of the other professors to set it up. That included all of Al's cousins (Rose, Hugo, Lucy, Fred, and Roxanne) along with Lily, Scorpius, Colin and Nigel Creevey, and Neville's daughter, Holly. With such close watch being kept by her family and friends, Lily had to be extra careful to meet Al every day, and similarly he had to be careful to watch out for any of Scorpius's recruits.

But on the day of the full moon, Al was getting antsy. He hadn't seen Astoria since their confrontation last month, so he didn't know what she was planning anymore. He only knew that she was ready for the end, and that couldn't be good. Meanwhile, Lily was healing more slowly than she would have liked, but she refused to talk to Al about the rumors that were surely spreading regarding her appearance. Instead, she'd just bring him food, sip her potion, and sulk.

For these two reasons, Al decided that it was time to pay another visit to McGonagall's office. He set out for the other side of the hall in the early evening, guessing at what time everyone would be at supper and hoping that no one would see the Room of Requirement's door open. They didn't, and he even made it all the way to the revolving staircase without running into a soul. (Harry must have released his Aurors by now.)

Unfortunately, the emptiness continued all the way into the Headmistress's office, since Al didn't end up finding her anywhere either. He was met only with her usual office, though slightly cleaner than usual. The desk that was normally cluttered had been removed of its files, while the animal cages against the walls no longer emitted the smell of dung through their bars. Al even spent a few minutes looking around at all the nooks and crannies to see if McGonagall was taking a nap in tabby cat form, but he still didn't see her.

Having accepted defeat, Al was about to leave when he heard one of the old Headmaster's portraits speak to him from a slightly left direction above McGonagall's desk. "_Don't_ be a _coward_, Potter," said a slurred voice that was soft and contained, but somehow also commanding and authoritative.

One of Al's three namesakes met his eyes with deep pits of black to match the greasy, shoulder-length hair atop his head. Severus Snape was the only Headmaster who appeared to be awake, though Al could have sworn that he was the one who tended to sleep the most. But anyhow, that wasn't what was on Al's mind upon meeting the true potions master. All he could think about was something his father had told him about Snape over six years ago: that he had been the bravest man Harry had ever known.

Speechless, Al stood still as he listened to Snape say, "This path that you're on – _my_ path – will not lead you anywhere worthwhile. Darkness is never worth it, but love – love _always_ is."

As if hypnotized, Al looked away from Snape and the silvery portrait in which he was hanging so that he could walk back to the desk in the center of the room, take out his wand, and use it to carve the words, _Protect Rose_, into the wood.

Then he made his way back to the double doors, but stopped before his hand was on the knocker. Without fully facing him, Al asked Snape from afar, "Sir, how did you know who I was?" He was sure that Snape had been asleep during all of his previous meetings with McGonagall, and Al had stopped wearing his signature Potter glasses almost a year ago.

"You have your father's eyes."

At that, Al hurried to take out his letter to Ilana before Lily arrived in the Room of Requirement. Today, he wrote her, _A very brave man just told me that darkness isn't worth it, but that love always is. So, here's my question: what if love is the darkest thing in my life – the most painful, the most confusing, the most rewarding in the end – is it worth it then?_

He left as soon as his hand finished tracing the last question mark, the doors to his hidden room shutting closed only moments before Lily walked inside. Gulping back a glass full of pumpkin juice, he turned to Lily and prepared himself for more of her quiet brooding. But to follow the pattern that this day had undergone so far, Al was surprised to see that Lily wasn't feeling so quiet after all.

She stormed across the room like a hurricane demolishing everything in its path, all the way onto Al's bed and up into the tunnel, leaving the portrait door hanging wide open in her wake. Al had to run just to keep up with her, accidentally leaving behind the last dosage of Wolfsbane Potion in his rucksack by the door.

Al must have asked Lily what was wrong a hundred times before she finally said to him on the way out of Hogsmeade, "I thought that things would get better once everybody else left, but _of course _all the other fifth years had to give a nice going away present, complete with fake admittance tickets to St. Mungo's and a spiked _collar_. You know, Hugo and Roxanne can try to ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist, but they have no idea how _impossible_ it is to hide a secret that's written _all over_ my face!"

"Lil," Al shot a hand at her arm to try to stop her, since she'd been walking in swift paces this entire time. She just shrugged him off, though, having gotten used to doing anything to avoid showing her face to every sort of company. The black eye was easily the worst injury she'd sustained, and though she covered it well with her makeup, there was no mask for insecurity.

"Look, I don't want to talk about it anymore," she said with a sigh. "I needed to get that out, and I knew that you wouldn't coddle me the way Roxy did, but I don't actually want to have a discussion, okay?"

"Okay," agreed Al. He kept his promise; they didn't say anything more to each other until Lily transformed in a clearing deep in the black woods, by which time Al had remembered the forgotten potion and Lily had yet to calm her frustration. This proved to be a fatal combination, evidence of which presented itself when Al's cheek was met with one of the wolf's healed claws.

Lily attacked Al shortly after she turned, and when the sound of his voice didn't infiltrate her brainwashed mind, he knew that tonight, something was wrong. He had to blast her away with his wand upon tasting the blood spilling into his mouth, and then he ran to find Zephorien. Al had moved the dragon a couple miles east of the Forbidden Cave in order to protect him from Astoria, but he still had no trouble finding him. Once there, Zephyr read Al's mind and knelt down so that Al could climb onto his horned back. Suddenly, they were flying atop the forest, going as fast as Al commanded, and they found the golden hawk in the air just as soon as Lily set her sights on a grounded bird.

Al didn't have a great view of the forest floor, but he could hear Lily's growls echoing the frog-like croaking of a water turkey, otherwise known as an anhinga. The bird was running awkwardly to the Black Lake beach on the other side of Hogwarts castle, but Calder was much slower than his werewolf predator. By the time he made it to familiar ground, Lily was in a pouncing position only a few feet away.

In perfect unison, Zephorien and Astoria flew downward to hover just above the scene, Zephyr flying around in circles as Al considered stepping in to save Ryder's tease, and Astoria taking watch on a nearby tree branch. Al didn't understand why Astoria wasn't rushing to protect Calder, but he didn't have time to dwell on the fact when his attention was focused on Lily. His sister, the werewolf, was going after this gangly bird with as much hunger as the human Lily had ever displayed before. She wanted Calder more than she'd wanted power over the fifth years, more than she wanted her own secret to keep, and even more than she wanted Scorpius.

That kind of hunger needed to be quenched. Lily had no choice but to give in to it, leaping across the snowy beach and thrusting her claws into Calder's feathers, causing him to cry out in pain and unwillingly transform back into his human shape. Al was hoping that seeing him in such form might make Lily reconsider her attack, but it did no such thing. If anything, the human seemed tastier to her than the bird had.

Calder tried to shoot a few spells at Lily, some of which worked for a moment, but none for long enough. She bit the spot behind his giraffe-like neck in between his exposed shoulder blades, and at that point he was in too much agony to defend himself. Zephyr lifted his wings as if to glide down and save the boy, but Al decided not to let him. He didn't want to risk his dragon or Lily's safety for a man he barely knew. And anyway, if Astoria had wanted to protect Calder, she would have swooped in a long time ago.

It didn't take long for Calder to die, but it took an eternity for Lily to kill him. Al could see the juxtaposing thoughts in her mind as she tore into his flesh and then retreated to the ice, only to come right back after licking the blood off her fur. By the time she was finished with him, Calder was nothing more than a pile of broken bones and ripped-up flesh. Werewolves didn't _eat_ people; they destroyed them.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the night, however, came after Calder was gone, when Lily decided to bury him. She spent hours digging through dirt and stuffing what remained of her prey into a deep burrow, the whole time completely oblivious to the three pairs of eyes that were watching her from above. When she was finally finished with the funeral, she whistled one last howl – this one sad, lonely, and terrified – before the moon disappeared and the red-haired girl returned.

For whatever reason, that was when Astoria decided to interrupt. Just as Lily was becoming her normal self again, Astoria dove from her place in the trees, transfigured into her own human body, grabbed onto Lily's forearm, and Disapparated.

Panicking because he didn't know where they'd gone, Al rode Zephorien to the Forbidden Cave and ran inside with abject haste. His instincts had been correct to look for Lily there, since of course Astoria had intended for him to follow them. She _always_ had a plan. But for the first time in a long while, Al hadn't known the plan in time to thwart it.

"Welcome, Albus," said Astoria as she walked out of her office and into the main room, lit only by a single lamp floating above Lily's head. Lily was on the floor, panting heavily as she tried to catch her breath and wrap her mind around everything that had just happened.

Al ran to Lily's side, kneeling on the ground and rubbing her back in an attempt to show some comfort as he listened to Astoria continue, "Your sister and I were just about to discuss our agreement."

Lily was looking at Al helplessly as she tried not to look at Astoria. Al decided to do that for her, asking his leader, "What agreement?"

Laughing, because of course to her it was the most obvious answer in the universe, Astoria replied, "Your dog just _killed _one of my men. I do believe that she is in my debt."

Debt was something that Al was horribly familiar with. Knox had told him all about the way Astoria gained most of her followers: by indebting them to her for the rest of their lives. Al himself had later become indebted to Knox, so he had learned first-hand what it felt like to belong to someone else. He wasn't about to let his little sister be placed under the same curse.

Standing up so that he was nearly as tall as Astoria, Al spat at her, "But you _planned_ this! You didn't need Calder anymore, not after he'd already secured the Ministry for you. You _wanted_ this to happen!"

"So what if I did?" asked Astoria. Al hadn't expected her to confess so quickly, so he knew that the counter-argument had yet to come. "Dead is _dead_, Albus, and the common rules apply: an eye for an eye."

Al didn't quite know where Astoria was going with her latest ultimatum until Lily lifted her head from the ground and asked desperately, "You want me to kill someone? Someone in the Order?"

"Precisely," answered Astoria with a pleased smile. "Details on who and when will be provided at my convenience, and if you decide not to comply, feel free to blame your brother for your death."

Al was fuming. He couldn't let this happen. How had he _already_ let this happen? Clenching his jaw until his teeth were grinding against each other like improperly matched gears, he told Astoria with forceful conviction, "She is _NOT_ murdering Rose Weasley!"

It was the first time either Astoria or Lily were hearing of Al's knowledge about Rose's impending death, and as Lily lost her will to understand, Astoria gaped with wonder. "Well, you must think you have it all figured out, don't you?" she asked. "You can read me like a _book_."

Circling him and Lily in steady steps, Astoria leeched their mutual power for herself as she said, "If you must know, I have no intention of ordering Miss Potter to kill her own cousin. You see, the Weasley girl is _mine_, and I want her alive. The victim I speak of is a different kind – the kind that is going to get in my way if I don't rid of them first."

"Fine." Astoria was back to facing Al now, but he wanted her to see that two could play at this game. "Then let me do it."

"Al, _no!"_ Lily pled from below, having regained her voice upon needing it. "This is _my _mess!"

"No, Lily, it's _mine!"_ yelled Al, still looking at Astoria. "She's only using _you_ because she thinks I'm too _weak_ to do this myself. But she has no idea just how strong I am." To go along with his statement, Al curled the fingers on his right hand around the bubbly grip of the Elder Wand and let it play its course. He let the wind flood into the cave from the cold night outside and encircle the trio with gusto and clout. He let the snow pound against Astoria's ears like the sounds of black piano keys. He let the lamp floating in the room burst into a thousand fireflies that sparked and burned upon landing on Astoria's skin. Then he let it all disappear just like he'd done with the love of his life, who was anything but a weakness.

In the aftermath, Astoria brushed off the snow and used her wand to mend her burns before she said with barely any of her normal intensity, "It doesn't matter how strong you are; you have lost your ability to break through the Hogwarts barrier, but your sister still can. That is what I need her for." She glanced down at Lily one last time before turning around to retire to her office, saying on her way out, "You may both leave now."

The walk home was cold. Al couldn't describe it any other way; it was simply cold, in every sense of the word. Lily seemed to feel it, too, and soon the siblings found themselves sitting on a bench at the edge of the main road in Hogsmeade, watching the sunrise just like Al had back in September.

Al was the first to speak, looking straight ahead as he appreciated the fact that they Potters weren't all that prone to tears as he told Lily, "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for dragging you into all of this. I never meant to cause you harm, but I _will_ find a way out of it. I can promise you that."

"Don't," Lily replied. Al was about to argue when she creased her forehead in thought and reminisced, "I remember. I remember every moment, whether I was in control or not. Your potion, your journal, your training – it all worked, because I remember. I remember how he looked at me as soon as he became human again. I remember the exact color of brown that his eyes were – deep in the center but soft around the edges. I remember him telling me his name – Calder Anhinga – like he thought it might break through. And I remember the taste of his blood on my lips. I remember liking it."

She took a deep breath then, finding the courage within herself to look at Al as she told him, "See, this isn't your fault. _I _did this, whether Astoria set that bird up in my path or not. I was there to see how scared, how helpless, how _broken_ he was, but that fear didn't make me feel strong. It only made me weaker. Al, why is it that those who are weak are far more feared than those who are strong?"

It was a question Al had been unable to formulate over the past three months, though he'd been longing to answer it for just as long a time. After all, Astoria had threatened him before, when she'd thought that he'd been weak, but as soon as he showed her his strength, she had no longer had anything to say. She wasn't scared of him anymore, but for some reason, he felt more scared than ever.

"Because only the weak have reason to fear themselves. And the only way you learn not to fear yourself is if you can give your heart away to someone else. That way, only they can break it."

After taking in his theory, Lily stood up and told Al that she was going back to the castle, though he wanted to stay outside a while longer. The last thing she said to him before leaving was, "What if I can't do it? What if my own fear consumes me this time?" She would most likely not be in werewolf form when Astoria called on her to pay her debt, which meant that Lily would be fully conscious of her own behavior, as well as her own guilt.

"You won't have to do it." Astoria may have believed that Al didn't know a way onto the Hogwarts grounds, but of course he did. "I'll be there."

Lily didn't argue with him this time. She knew there was no point.

Alone amongst the morning frost, Al thought about what he wanted to tell Ilana after everything that had taken place tonight. He thought it through in his head for more than ten minutes, finally settling on something and reaching his arm around to grab the paper. But it wasn't in his pocket. It wasn't anywhere. The last time he'd taken it out, he'd been in McGonagall's office, and he could have dropped it or somebody could have stolen it at any point since then. It was gone, and with it went the words that he'd been waiting four months to send:

_To answer my own question, yes, it's worth it. _Love_ is worth everything. It must be, because here I am thinking about you, and I finally realized that I don't wish you'd never left. I wish I'd never let you._

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_**Note:** Please, by all means, let me know what you thought of all that in a review! I realize a lot went on in this chapter, but it was definitely necessary. Next chapter, however, will be much simpler, since it will take place over just one day: Neville and Luna's wedding! Since their date is set for Christmas Eve, I will try to upload the corresponding chapter either **late evening of the 24th or early morning on the 25th**. Until then, thank you so much for reading/reviewing, and Happy Holidays!_

_-Hailey_


	34. The Bride

_**Note:** This one's a big one, guys. Hope you like it and Merry Christmas!**  
**_

_-Hailey_

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**34 – The Bride**

They were surrounded by waterfalls. The sound of rain was heightened into hurricanes, pummelling against the water's surface, invading it with gravity's force, and then bouncing back up into a splash that never seemed to end. Each separate stream of water was a different color – pale pinks and oranges, with hints of bright greens and blues – but somehow they combined to make a translucent bath topped with bouncing white bubbles. And underneath it all, in the depths of that water, were even more hurricanes that were even more magical.

Rose and Scorpius were swimming together in the pool-sized bath of the fifth floor Prefects' bathroom. Only starlight was infiltrating through the mermaid's stained glass window above them, and the only sound came from the roaring faucets at the edge of the tub. The two teenagers were on the other side of the basin, their exposed bodies more connected than they'd ever been and their smiles wider than they would ever be.

"Are you sure?" Scorpius kept asking her, even after it was already happening.

"I am. You know I am," she'd always reply as she left trails of kisses across his chest that, for some reason, didn't seem to be nearly as scarred as it should have been. She never opened her eyes to expect them, though he never closed his own. He just stared at her with absolute, pure fragility... a fragility that she was rupturing the more she pushed and pulled him closer to her.

Scorpius had his arms around Rose's back, but they didn't feel tight enough. She wanted him to hold her, _really_ hold her, like he might never hold her again, but all she felt now was that he was about to let her go. And of course, that worry only made her push him further, digging her nails into his shoulder blades and pulling her hands all the way down to his hips, whispering the whole time, "I know you want me, Scorpius. So, please, _show me._ Show me you want me!"

Within seconds, he was doing exactly as she wanted, making her realize that she should never have wanted it. He was holding her so tightly that her back was bruising, and his teeth were biting into her neck until she bled, the red slowly sleeping into the water and turning the bath into an ocean of blood. The worst part was her core, her stomach feeling like it had was being pulled out through her belly button and her pelvis breaking into miniature pieces that kept rubbing against each other like pinching nerves and sending chills all the way down her legs and into her feeble toes.

She had her eyes shut closed and was breathing heavily as she pushed Scorpius away from her. He was too busy to notice her fear, however, his hands wrapped sinisterly around hers and pulling the black ring off her cracking fingers. Subconsciously, all Rose seemed to care about was that ring, so once Scorpius was outside of her again, she opened her eyes to threaten him and screamed upon seeing who she was now staring at.

Astoria, with the same icy eyes as Scorpius but everything else about her a thousand times darker, was fighting Rose knowing that she would win. That didn't mean that Rose was about to give up, though. Telling herself to look away from the black monster, Rose turned her eyes to the ring on her finger, which was oddly on her left hand rather than the its usual spot on her right, and kicked and splashed through the water to try to distract her opponent. As expected, none of that worked on Astoria, and soon the witch had Rose's ring in the palm of her hand, and it was at that moment that Rose took her magic to the next level.

She couldn't be sure where her wand came from, but in the exact moment she needed it, it was sitting in the palm of her hand. Rose didn't give herself the time to think about what the spell she was about to perform might do to her psyche, instead just pointing her rosewood wand at Astoria and yelling as loudly as her lungs allowed of her, "_AVADA KEDAVRA!_"

Rose must have meant it, because it worked. In an instant, Astoria's body was hardening in response to the lightning bolt of green that had hit her chest, and she was falling backwards into the water until she was immersed in it completely and Rose couldn't see her anymore. All Rose had left was the ring that she was cradling in her shaking fingers, and as the guilt of sending the curse sunk into her skin, she curled into a fetal position with her back against the wall of the tub.

As the waterfalls stopped pouring and the hurricanes disappeared, so too did the water in the bath. The basin was slowly clearing itself, draining a millimeter or so per second, until both Rose and the tub were quiet and still and dry. Even her eyes were a desert as she found herself looking across the floor of the bath in search for Astoria's body. But it wasn't Astoria whom she found.

The tall, blond boy with the snowflake birthmark, Malfoy necklace, and chest scarred with Quidditch and transfiguration injuries was lying on the red-stained tile that was as cold as his stilled blood. Panicking, Rose leaped off the bench seat and crawled over to Scorpius's body, pulling his head into her tortured arms and begging for him not to be gone. But nobody was there to listen to her screams and not even the most powerful wizard could bring back the dead, which was all Rose could think about as she stared down at Scorpius's closed eyes and realized that she would never see his ice blue again.

Sky blue opened to face the crimson canopy of Rose's four-poster bed, but unlike with her other nightmares, this time she wasn't sweating or crying. She was merely paralyzed with shock. She remembered every moment of the terrible dream, her head quickly turning to her left to look for Scorpius, who'd been spending most of his nights in Rose's Gryffindor dormitory since the beginning of this school year. She remembered falling asleep with his arms locked around her pajama-covered stomach late last night, neither of them trying to hide his presence since all of the other girls who usually shared the bedroom had already headed home for the holidays. This morning, however, Scorpius was not laying half-awake in Rose's bed, and in his place was a straightly folded note covered in his stunning handwriting.

Telling herself not to panic because surely everything was fine, Rose picked up the letter and opened it to read:

_Rose,_

_ I had to head off early for a meeting with McGonagall. She sent me a Patronus to say it was important, but I didn't want to wake you. Don't wait up for me before meeting with __Neville __Professor Longbottom, though. I probably won't be able to make it, so say hi to Lucy and Holly for me, and I'll meet you on the Quidditch pitch to start setting up for tonight._

_Yours forever (you know I am),_

_Scorpius_

Rose let herself sigh in relief upon finishing, especially since Scorpius's last line made her heart melt just like it did every time she saw him. Of course, that line also reminded her of what she'd said to him in her dream, which she desperately wished she could talk to Scorpius about now. Knowing that that wasn't possible, though, Rose picked herself up off her bed, got dressed into some casual pre-wedding clothes, and raced out of her dormitory until the silence couldn't haunt her anymore.

She was on her way to the portrait hole when Rose caught a glimpse of a lonely Lily sitting in one of the common room's windowsills and looking down at the sun rise over the Quidditch pitch outside. It wasn't all that early for either of them to be awake, but Rose still found herself concerned about her younger cousin as she changed course from the portrait to the window.

Tonight would be Christmas Eve – the day of the Longbottom wedding – and though Rose hadn't been keeping exact tabs on the lunar calendar, Hugo had mentioned Lily being 'out' only a couple of nights ago. Preparing herself for the sight of flesh wounds and a hostile attitude, Rose greeted Lily and leaned against the wall beside her.

Lily didn't turn around completely, her thoughts far too focused on the outside world, but eventually she did hunch her shoulders beneath her Gryffindor blanket and say, "Big day, today."

"Yeah," Rose agreed as she took in the surprisingly few scars on Lily's face, not nearly enough to match the scars in her heart. "I just hope everything works out. If anybody deserves his happy ending, it's Professor Longbottom."

Lily nodded in agreement, but Rose could tell that she wasn't fully listening, especially when she said again, "Big day, today."

Rose was at a loss at this point. She of course knew that Lily was a werewolf, but that didn't mean that she had any understanding of what Lily was going through. No one did, really. And Rose didn't want to pretend to be the one Lily needed, because clearly she wasn't. So, she was thankful when the rest of her Gryffindor family who was still here – Hugo, Nigel, Fred, and Roxanne – came thumping down the stairs and walked straight over to Lily in an attempt to help cheer her up.

Deciding to leave them all be, Rose turned around and walked out of the common room, smiling sadly to Hugo on her way. Once in the hallway of the castle's top floor, Rose was tempted to stop by McGonagall's office tower to see if Scorpius was still there, or even to try to get in to the Room of Requirement (though it had been locked or somehow occupied every time she'd walked by it since September), but she was already running late. Lucy, who happened to be Professor Longbottom's favorite Herbology NEWT student and who was in close contact with Luna thanks to her relationship with Lorcan, had been putting all the wedding plans into place. Rose had taken on the role of her assistant along with Neville's daughter and Luna's bridesmaid, Holly, and this morning marked their final meeting together.

Once on the main floor, Rose didn't even stop at the Great Hall for breakfast before heading past the Charms corridor that led to the greenhouses. Neville's office was on the other side of the third greenhouse, which was the one used for most upperclassmen Herbology lessons and which had recently become stuffed with bushels of fresh mistletoe. As expected, Lucy and Holly were already there, the former sitting in one of two chairs on the door's side of Neville's desk and the latter sitting on the armrest of Neville's chair, as close to her father as possible. Around them were potted mandrakes and small grey cactuses that Rose had been told time and time again were _Mimbelus mimbletonia_, Neville's favorite plants that were often used as an antidote for shyness. Even more noticeable than the plants, however, was the giant glass case pinned to the wall above Neville's head and below a shelf upon which sat the Sorting Hat. In that case was the shimmering, goblin-made silver of the Sword of Gryffindor.

"Oh, that's been there forever. Nobody's seemed to need it since I did," said Neville upon noticing Rose staring at the sword. She'd never actually been in her teacher's office before now. The best NEWT students were often mentored on a weekly basis by the professor of their chosen field, so Rose had been busy meeting with Flitwick most of the year, and the meetings she'd had regarding Neville's wedding had all been outside until now.

The sword, however, Rose had seen many of times in a number of different books. She'd read about Neville wielding it in the Second Wizarding War, but she hadn't realized that that made him the sword's current owner. Still, she tried not to think about what might make somebody need it in the first place as she took her seat next to Lucy and got to the real work at hand.

"So, everything's going really well," said Lucy in an attempt to change the subject. "We're meeting the rest of the kids on the pitch in an hour for the final set-up, but the weather worked out perfectly. There's fresh snow on the ground and more to come later this evening."

"Brilliant! It'll make us all look like we're floating," said Holly enthusiastically. She was the only one in the room who was already dressed, all decked out in a long-sleeved, silky red dress that swished down to her covered knees and was tied at the waist with a sparkling white bow. Rose was blown away by how beautiful, and oddly even normal, Holly looked. At least, that was until the girl jumped off Neville's chair in excitement and allowed Rose a glimpse of the pine needle sandals on her feet, which looked exactly like miniature Christmas trees.

Rose was still staring at Holly's feet, thinking about the undecorated Christmas tree that was currently sitting in her living room back at the Bird's Nest, when Lucy turned to her and asked, "Did you get a chance to talk to Aunt Ginny, Rose?"

Ginny was Luna's Maid of Honor, and because Neville didn't seem to trust the twin groomsmen to keep his rings safe, Ginny had taken on that responsibility on top of all her other ones. Back in the conversation, Rose answered, "Yes, she sent me a letter yesterday. She found the ring shop in London and will be arriving today around noon."

Lucy was pleased to hear it, but it was Neville whom Rose looked to in response. He was very still in his chair, but his shaking hands and reassuring nod didn't go unnoticed by Rose. "Professor Longbottom," she started to ask, "Are you nervous?"

Both Lucy and Holly were looking to Neville alongside Rose as they waited for him to reply. "Me, nervous? Nah," he said. Looking straight at Rose, he continued, "Actually, I feel quite a lot like I did when I first picked up that sword, or when I fought with your parents in the Department of Mysteries, or even in our first year, when I tried to stop them from saving the world. I feel fairly certain of myself."

All the girls were smiling by the time he finished, and Lucy and Rose looked to each other and mutually decided to leave Neville and Holly to get themselves ready, congratulating their professor and promising that it would be the most magical night of his life as they left the office. They had to stop in the greenhouse momentarily, collecting all of the mistletoe and stuffing it into Rose's charmed rucksack before moving on.

During the long walk out of the castle and across the snowy grounds, Rose became entranced in thought, her mind running through images of her nightmare and Scorpius's naked chest and Neville's assuredness. She wasn't about to let herself believe that anything she'd seen of Astoria or the dead Scorpius could possibly be true premonitions, but there was one part of her dream that had seemed incredibly real.

That was what made Rose ask Lucy just as the castle's double doors were closing behind them, "How are things going with Lorcan?" She wasn't actually that curious, since Lucy's relationship with the Scamander tended to be nauseatingly blissful, but Rose hoped that Lucy wouldn't see through her ulterior motives right away.

"Never better!" answered Lucy, Rose's plan working perfectly so far. "I mean, it's of course been hard being apart from in; I can't tell you how excited I am to see him tonight. But I think the distance will just bring us closer together, you know? After all, it seems to have done so for you and Scorpius."

She was bumping Rose with her hip as she mentioned Scorpius, causing Rose to blush uncontrollably and smile in a half moon. But Rose didn't actually comment on the summer she and Scorpius had spent apart and how much they'd grown together since then. Lucy started to sense that there was more to Rose's curiosity than she let on, asking, "What's wrong? Everything's okay between you two, isn't it?"

"Yeah, of course, everything's fine," said Rose, her eyes on the footprints that were currently ruining the ground's blanket of white. Lucy wasn't buying it anymore, though, stopping in her tracks to make Rose confess. Raising her eyebrows, Lucy made Rose give in eventually, the latter explaining, "Everything _is_ fine. It's just that all this stuff that's been going on around us – Scorpius leading his army and Al going rogue – has been so distracting that we've sort of stopped moving forward. And I suppose that I just don't know if or when we should take that next step."

Her cheeks were frighteningly red as she spoke her last words, so Lucy knew exactly what Rose was referring to. Even so, she wasn't quite getting the whole story, which was made clear when she asked, "He's not pushing you, is he?"

"NO!" Rose practically screamed at her, shocked that Lucy could even consider Scorpius doing such a thing. "If anything, I think I might be pushing _him_. I want to be sure that we experience everything we possibly can in case something happens to one of us in the not-so-distant future, but he always finds a way of pulling me back to the present."

Lucy was looking at Rose as if she was her younger sister or even a daughter, lovingly but protective, as she took a deep breath and said, "Lorcan and I slept together for the first time this summer. We were just at his house one night, but Lysander had already moved in with James and their mum was out with Professor Longbottom. It wasn't planned or anything, but I knew that he'd been waiting for a while. For the longest time, I'd always thought of my virginity as something I would lose – something that he would steal. That's how everyone describes it, at least. But it can't be stolen if you give it away, and I've never been more proud of a gift in my entire life."

That was what Rose had wanted to know. She hadn't spoken to a girl about how she'd felt lately. In fact, she'd barely spoken to Scorpius about it. She'd needed to hear that her feelings were justifiable, and she needed to know that making love with Scorpius wasn't something she would need to be ashamed of. They_ were_ in love, just like Lucy and Lorcan were, so they had no reason to be so scared of each other.

The only question Rose had left was, "So, how are you supposed to know when it's the right time?" She'd heard the 'you just know' explanation a thousand times before; that wasn't what she was looking for now. Rose understood why Scorpius had been hesitant every time she'd pushed him; he didn't want to do something for the wrong reason, especially if that reason was solely the threat of war. What she didn't understand was what the _right_ reasons were.

"The right time is when you're both on the exact same page about it. It's when the gut-wrenching fear turns into just your average anxiety. It's when he kisses you and you can't stop kissing him back, no matter how hard you try." Lucy was smiling, and at this point, so was Rose.

"You miss him, don't you?" asked the fairer of the two girls.

"Every moment of every day," admitted Lucy. Then she continued walking, heading past Rose and down to the Quidditch pitch where Hagrid was dragging a ten-foot Christmas tree through the snow while the other students started to unpack the boxes of ornaments provided by Hogwarts.

Though Rose was urging her legs to move forward so that she could join everyone, her mind seemed to want her to stay where she was. The snow was seeping through cracks in the leather boots she'd begged her father to buy a few years back, and her unkempt hair that she'd always refused to straighten was blowing every which direction. She was always so sure about things, from her clothes and hair to her loyalties and morals. But now, things were different. Now, here she was, cursing both her decision to ever buy these hopeless boots as well as the wild, Granger hair she'd been born with. Now, she was annoyed, frustrated, and angry, and it wasn't because she wanted what she couldn't have. It was because she didn't like what she wanted.

"Sorry I'm late," said an out-of-breath voice that Rose would recognize anywhere, because of course it sounded just like rain.

"_Nine minutes_ late, to be exact," Rose teased him without looking at her watch or even turning around to face Scorpius. She knew just as well as she knew how to count that if she didn't go to him, he would come to her.

Sure enough, that was exactly what Scorpius did, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind and kissing the soft skin where her earlobe met her jawbone. "Actually, I'm only _four_ minutes late, if you don't count 'on time' as being five minutes early. And I don't, you see, because I'm not the one who grew up with a father who was always _late_."

Rose couldn't explain how happy she felt every time Scorpius told her something about herself. _She_ of course already knew of such habits and traits, but it was different to know that somebody else noticed and understood them, especially somebody who was so important to her. For example, she prided herself for knowing that Scorpius was claustro_philic_, meaning that he was actually quite fond of tightly enclosed places; it had something to do with his growing up in a wide-open mansion that had very few hiding spots. Knowing a person, _really_ knowing them, was about more than just loving their strengths and weaknesses. It was about knowing where those strengths and weaknesses came from.

Turning around within his arms so that she could see the sunlight in those blue eyes she'd missed every moment since she fell asleep, Rose was surprised to find the normally very clean Scorpius smelling a bit like bacteria-filled grindylow tanks. When he saw her scrunch up her nose, he explained, "I've just come from the Owlery. Want me to give you some room?"

"No," Rose said before he could loosen his grip on her. She could deal with the scent of owl dung as long as her other senses were filled only with Scorpius. "What were you doing at the Owlery?"

He was supposed to be returning to the Bird's Nest with Rose as soon as the reception ended later tonight, so surely a letter could have waited a day. But Scorpius didn't seem so sure as he answered, "That note I found with Al's handwriting on it – I sent it to Ilana. She deserves to know that he's been thinking about her."

Scorpius had found a paper full of Albus's fragmented phrases and thoughts, all of them addressed to Ilana, in McGonagall's office only yesterday. He'd told Rose about it right away, and though Rose hadn't wanted to do anything with it, she'd decided to let Scorpius decide what was right. They'd already fought over Al's best interests enough for a lifetime, and they each knew where the other stood on the matter. Scorpius would tell Harry each time he found any sort of evidence of Al's whereabouts, but Rose wouldn't tell a soul. Scorpius would write to Ilana to try to mend her broken heart, but Rose refused to believe that Al had been the one to break it. Scorpius liked to pretend that he had given up on his best friend, but Rose would never admit that she already had.

Nodding, Rose didn't ask anything more about Al or Ilana, instead changing the subject with, "Speaking of McGonagall, how'd the meeting go?"

"Well, I'm still angry with her, if that's what you mean. Harry's not very pleased either, but I think she's been open with us since you and I ran into Al that time. She even told me today that she thought Al had broken into her office recently."

_So much for changing the subject_, thought Rose. Reminding herself that Scorpius wasn't talking about Al on purpose, though, she asked, "What makes her think that?"

Scorpius ran a hand through his perfectly smooth hair – yet another trait that Rose always recognized because it paralleled his nervousness – before saying, "Apparently, he left her a message, meaning that he _literally_ carved something into her desk."

"And what did the message say?" Rose no longer cared so much about the subject of discussion; her curiosity was far too strong for that.

It took a while for Scorpius to respond, now even more nervous than he'd been before as his hands moved up Rose's back and onto her shoulders. "It said 'Protect Rose.'"

Rose backed out of Scorpius's grip, stumbling slightly as she wrapped her arms around herself and tried to look anywhere but at Scorpius's shadow-cast face. He shouldn't have to worry about her this way, and if she was being completely honest, she shouldn't need to worry either. She was _seventeen_ years old, and Lucy was right: figuring out the right time to sleep with her boyfriend _should_ be her only problem. But of course, magic always had a way of complicating things.

"Look, Rose," Scorpius was telling her as he cautiously approached and clasped his hands around hers, "I don't want to be overbearing or possessive, you know that. But after what happened at the funeral, and now with Al's message, it honestly _kills_ me when I don't know where you are."

"I don't want to be away from you either, Scorpius. Believe me, that's the _last_ thing I want right now." She wanted to be as close to him as she possibly could.

Scorpius was relieved to hear it. Smiling crookedly as if he had been questioning her feelings beforehand, he said, "Good. So, tonight, let's just stay close to each other, no matter what. Because even if Astoria still wants you, we have tonight. We'll deal with tomorrow when it comes."

"Deal," Rose promised with a kiss. Once she broke away, however, she bit her lips and added, "But I do need to get dressed before the ceremony."

"Right. Well, you'll be happy to know that so do I. It looks like my 'suit problem' has been solved," said Scorpius, much to Rose's surprise. He'd been fretting over the fact that he didn't own a suit for a month now, and Rose had suggested that he ask Harry for one, but of course Scorpius had been too proud for that. She had been planning to have her father bring him one this afternoon, but now it seemed as if that wouldn't be necessary either.

When Rose raised her eyebrows in question, Scorpius told her, "Eldritch – that old black owl my father owns – delivered a package while I was at the Owlery. I haven't actually looked at it yet, but it was wrapped in a huge box with a bowtie on it. I just hope it matches whatever you're wearing."

Rose had never been more thankful for Draco Malfoy's existence in her entire life. He had finally realized that Scorpius needed him, and that it didn't matter what for. Smiling about such because she couldn't help herself, Rose pulled away from Scorpius and said, "I suppose we'll just have to wait and see."

"That we will," agreed Scorpius while watching Rose slowly walk away, headed back for the castle to get ready. "I'll meet you in the Entrance Hall in an hour, and by that, I mean fifty-five minutes."

During the whole walk up to her dormitory, Rose's smile never faded.

* * *

Exactly fifty-five minutes later, Rose found Scorpius at the bottom of the staircase leading into the Entrance Hall at the front of the castle. She had an aggregation of whistling ghosts trailing behind her, Nearly Headless Nick and the Bloody Baron pretending to duel for her affections as the Fat Friar drawled on and on about her timeless beauty.

"You will be sublimely ethereal beneath the twilight," said the Hufflepuff house ghost, though Rose wasn't paying him any mind. She had her eyes locked on the very real man who was waiting in front of the double doors, staring dumbfounded as if he was seeing her for the very first time.

"He's right, you know," Scorpius said as he offered Rose his arm, which she took willingly. "I don't think I've ever seen something more beautiful." He was blushing like a small child, and Rose couldn't help but adore the red on his cheeks. Two years ago, he had needed all the courage in the world to tell her that she looked beautiful, and it seemed as if a part of him still needed it.

Laughing through her smile, Rose replied, "You look quite dashing yourself." He was wearing white from head to toe, the only color the light blue of his bowtie. That blue was the exact same shade as Rose's dress – a long-sleeved gown with sequins covering its chest like Jordan almonds and strings of sparkle running down its length, all the way down to the silvery, short heels that Rose prayed wouldn't make her trip. Her hair was tied to the back of her head like a wreath, with white and blue jewels holding it in place. Scorpius was a frozen ocean, and she was his reflecting sky.

Rose needn't have worried about tripping. Scorpius held her steady the whole walk to the Quidditch pitch, the ghosts all sending them best wishes as they closed the castle doors behind them. Fred had been in charge of magically shovelling paths to and from the pitch, replacing the snow with red carpets that bled underneath the giant white tarps that covered the entirety of the old Quidditch field.

It was only early afternoon by the time Rose and Scorpius walked into the stadium-turned-hall, so most of the guests had yet to arrive. Rose almost thought she liked the place better empty, for this way she had a perfect view of the recently decorated pine tree in the center of the pitch, a mound of beautifully wrapped presents growing beneath its branches. The tree also served as a natural partition between the ceremonial and reception halves of the pitch. The former side held rows of white chairs facing a rather odd-looking platform that rose off the floor like a radish root, while the latter had been made into a dance floor with circular tables positioned all around its perimeter. No doubt the radish had been Luna's idea, and that that half of the pitch would be transformed to look like the other once the ceremony was over.

Rose was about to walk up to Lucy, who was talking to a dapper Flitwick while pointing at the tent's ceiling, when Lysander and Lorcan got there first. They rushed inside from the Hogsmeade entrance and were then corralled into a designated locker room to get changed, Lorcan embracing Lucy before taking her hand and pulling her inside with him. Luna was there too, though she seemed to be in less of a hurry than her twins were. She was walking around with her head swerving up at the ceiling, Holly by her side and copying her every movement.

"I think I'd be all right with just standing here for the rest of the night," Scorpius thought aloud, reading Rose's mind. And for a while, the two of them did just stand there, taking in the sights as Fred and Hugo replaced the bottom layer of the red velvet cake with canary creams and fainting fancies, as James arrived and attempted to cheer up the still distraught Lily but failed just as everyone else had, and as Harry, Ron, and Hermione showed up and were immediately caught in a group huddle with Hagrid.

But they didn't stand there forever. Guests straggled in in all forms – old friends like Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas, past students like Teddy and Dominique (Victoire had decided to stay home with Remy and her unborn baby), and Neville's professor colleagues like McGonagall and Smethley alongside Luna's Quibbler writers – and soon everyone had seated themselves in anticipation of the ceremony.

The sun was setting as a little tufty-haired man took his place in front of the platform atop which Neville now stood. Rose and Scorpius were seated on the groom's side, with Ron and Hermione on Rose's left and Harry with James and Lily on Scorpius's right. They were all in the second row behind an ancient woman whose tall stature and hat stuffed with a vulture was blocking Ron's view of the front.

When Rose's father patted his hand on the woman's shoulder and asked quite politely if she could take the hat off, she turned around and snapped at him, "That happens to be my grandson up there, you _wanker!_" before slapping Ron straight across the face with a bright red handbag.

Everyone within earshot burst into laughter at that, with the exception of a clueless Neville and worried Hermione. In fact, Hermione's shushing was the only thing that seemed to silence the rest of the row as a string quartet started playing in the background. That was the cue for the audience to turn around, and in that moment strings of light suddenly lit up from every direction, illuminating the aisle in tiny yellow stars.

Lorcan was the first to walk to the platform, an overjoyed Holly on the arm of his black suit and matching perfectly with his skinny red tie. Rose watched him wink to Lucy, who was sitting in the front row on Luna's side, before taking his place beside Neville and shaking the hand of his soon-to-be step-father. Next came Lysander, wearing the same suit as his twin but with a green tie instead of red, alongside a similarly green Ginny. She may have been Luna's chosen Maid of Honor, but it was clear to Rose that Ginny didn't exactly fit in with the procession. She was much older than her groomsman, much more beautiful than Holly, and much sadder than the upcoming bride. Rose couldn't help but wonder if her aunt would feel anything other than sadness ever again.

But Luna was stunning. Her father, Xenophilius, was on the verge of tears as he walked her down the aisle, both of them looking gorgeous in the most bizarre ways. Xenophilius wore a suit to match Luna's gown, its skirt a melting igloo that stretched all the way to the high-placed, strapless bodice, which was covered in a mosaic of jewels that Rose eventually realized were silver-colored, antique keys. Her long, dirty blonde hair was the only veil she needed, a strand tied back at each side and cascading down her back in a peaceful waterfall. She was a hidden treasure waiting to be unlocked, and only Neville held the key that would fit.

The ceremony was short and simple. First, the dwarf-sized official said a few words of welcome, then Neville and Luna each made one-worded vows, _forever_, before kissing beneath a bushel of mistletoe with plenty of invisible Nargles in it. And just as Rose had expected, her seat flew out from under her just as Neville and Luna broke apart, moving itself to a table and making room for the dance floor that mirrored the pitch's other half.

The reception was long and lovely. Toasts were made as soon as everyone finished eating, Scorpius and Rose stationed with Ron, Hermione, Hugo, and Nigel just a few tables away from that of the wedding party's. Luna spoke first and barely made any sense, and then the shameless Neville brought everyone to tears. Ginny found it within herself to tell of nothing but happy memories she'd shared with both Luna and Neville, and Holly talked about seeing light in her father's eyes for the first time since her mother's death, looking to Colin Creevey as she hoped to one day to find a love as strong as her father's for Luna. Still, it was Lysander and Lorcan's conjoined 'Best Men' toast that Rose was looking forward to the most.

Silence swam across the pitch as the twins stood up tall and cleared their throats with as much thunder as Ron's infamous snores. Lysander was the first to speak, pointing his wand to his neck in order to magnify his voice as he said, "I was quite excited when Professor – er, _Neville_, I mean – proposed to my mum on the day of my graduation this past spring. It was a beautiful proposal. But since then, I must admit that I've felt quite disappointed with the nuptials."

Beside Rose, Scorpius was furrowing his eyebrows as he wondered where Lysander was planning to go with such a speech, but Rose had more faith in the Scamanders. That faith was solidified when Lorcan joked, "Yes, well, you see, here we are having to perform this ridiculous speech _together_, because we're _both_ somehow Neville's Best Man."

"All I wanted was for Mum to choose me as her favorite," said Lysander, his shoulders hunched and hands in the air. "That's all I wanted – to know that _I_ was the best twin."

"Exactly!" exclaimed Lorcan, crossing his arms in defiance. There was a moment of silence then as the boys each groaned in disappointment, then turned to each other and finished the act by giving each other a friendly push rather than swallowing their respective pride.

Everyone was laughing by the time the boys cut the act and Lysander addressed the guests through his chuckles. "No, no, but we really are happy for our mum. You know, I think I can speak for Lorcan and myself when I say that we didn't have the easiest of childhoods. It's hard enough growing up in a house shaped like a dirigible plum, and it's even harder when you can't for the life of you figure out what 'dirigible' even means."

"And even though Dad was a great guy, he didn't turn out to be such a great man," continued Lorcan, Lysander dropping his head to his chest at the mention of his father. "But luckily, I had Lysander here to help pick me up from that mess, and then Neville came along and did the same for our mother."

Lysander then took another turn, saying, "To be honest, Lorcan didn't need all that much picking up. See, he's always taken more after Mum than I have. We may be technically identical, but my brother has Mum's ears; I swear he does! I'll admit that I was the one to inherit her embarrassing knack for honesty and maybe some of her wit, but he got her loyalty. He got her kindness."

Blushing, Lorcan started walking away from his brother as Lysander finished with, "And I hope to the stars above that the world will return that kindness to my brother today, because he's about to display one of our mother's most redeemably insane qualities: unabashed, _fearless_ guts that must be ten times larger than he is."

Guests' heads turned in unison with Lysander's, all eyes now directed back at Lorcan, who had walked over to one of the many Weasley tables and was pulling Lucy up off her chair. Guests gasped in unison with Lucy, all watching Lorcan kneel down to the ground and stare up at his girl through fair green eyes that blended beautifully with Lucy's pastel-pink dress. Guests' stomachs twisted into knots in unison with Lorcan's, all feeling nervous about what Lucy's answer would be to his upcoming question.

With shaking hands, Lorcan reached into his coat pocket and said, "Lysander's been trying to change my mind about this for weeks, but the more I watch my mum and Neville together at home, the surer I become that forever is exactly what I want." He had the small box in the palm of his hand by the time he said, "Lucy Blythe Weasley, you are the dirigible to my plum. You are the lyrics to my melody. You are the waterfall to my river. You are what makes me the _best man_ here, and so long as you say yes, you always will be."

Rose didn't see Lucy start crying. She didn't see Lucy nod her head just enough to provide Lorcan with an answer. She didn't see Lorcan slide a ring onto Lucy's finger and then stand up to kiss her, literally sweeping her off her feet. She didn't see any of it because she was too busy looking at Scorpius and thinking about waterfalls.

The dancing started once the cheering stopped, Neville and Luna giving their son a giant hug before taking to the floor alongside the younger lovebirds. Soon, other couples were joining them there, including Ron and Hermione, Harry and Ginny, and Colin and Holly. Even Hugo mustered up the courage to ask Nigel to dance with him, making Rose laugh from her adjacent seat as he stood up and told Nigel abruptly, "Cop hold and dance with me, Squirmsnail."

Scorpius and Rose were perhaps the last couple on the dance floor, but Rose didn't mind being late now. She understood what Scorpius was waiting for when he looked on at the other couples, all of them happy and in love beneath the freshly falling snow, and said to Rose, "You know, I'm not so much afraid of tomorrow as I am that tomorrow won't change."

They'd been living in fear for long enough as it was, and neither of them wanted to do it anymore. That was why Rose ended up being the one to drag Scorpius away from the table, telling him as she swayed to the music, "But you said it yourself: we have tonight. So, stop thinking that this could be our last dance, and start thinking that it's our first."

It was true that they'd never actually danced together before. The only opportunity Rose had ever even had to dance at an event like this had been at the reception following James's graduation, but Scorpius hadn't been invited after losing his title as Prefect. Dancing with Scorpius now made Rose regret that she'd never done so before, though. In these moments that seemed to go by far faster than they should have, Rose had everything she'd ever wanted: his arms around her, his voice in her ears, his lips on her neck. This was all the protection she needed.

Rose stopped counting how many songs had played past seven. She could have kept dancing, too, if it weren't for Scorpius noticing Lily sitting alone at a table in a far-off corner. "Is that firewhiskey?" he asked, more to himself than to Rose. Still, it was the first thing he'd said since they'd started dancing, so Rose found herself pulling her head off his chest and stretching her neck to get a look at Lily as Scorpius spun her in the right direction.

He was right. There Lily was, hunched over an open bottle of firewhiskey without a care in the world, and with nobody seeming to care. She wasn't looking on at the dancing couples with jealousy as Rose had suspected she might be; she was merely drowning in some unknown glassful of grief. Rose didn't need to convince herself to tell Scorpius to go to Lily. They had promised to stay with each other all night, but sulking werewolves always had a way of complicating things.

Scorpius kissed Rose goodbye before he turned around, and once she was alone, she found herself searching for a familiar face amongst the crowd. That was when she found James peeking into the bags of presents by the Christmas tree. Rolling her eyes, she approached skillfully so that she made him jump up in fright when he found her standing only inches away.

"Blimey, Rose, you sure do make it difficult for a poor wizard to steal a bit of loot, don't you?" he laughed. He was the first person Rose had seen all night who hadn't immediately complimented her on her dress, and she had to admit that she liked knowing that James would always see her the same way, regardless of what she might be wearing.

"First of all, you're not _that_ poor," Rose jabbed right back at him. "And second of all, you shouldn't ever steal something that could be given away."

"All right, I see your point," conceded James, leading Rose to the closest table so that she could give her throbbing feet a rest. "So, what are you planning to give away this Christmas, cousin?"

Rose blushed as she thought about James's question. Truthfully, she would give away everything if it meant that she could share a forever with Scorpius, but she knew that no such ultimatum existed. That was why she told James with a shrug of her shoulders, "All I know is that I'm not giving away anything I can't get back."

James looked at her in admiration, almost as if _she_ was the older and wiser of the two of them, and perhaps at least one of those claims was true. Thinking this, James asked, "When did you become so strong?"

"I dunno'," Rose answered honestly. "Maybe since you showed me how." Her first instinct would always be to blame Scorpius for her best traits, but the fact of the matter was that it hadn't been Scorpius's presence that had made Rose so strong. It had been his absence, and during that absence, the two role models she'd been influenced by had been Albus and James.

Rose and James smiled at each other for a while, but it didn't seem like enough. Sensing this, James stood from his seat and Rose stood from hers, and soon they were locked in a fierce hug. "You are brilliant, Rose – through and through," he whispered in her ear, just in case it was the last thing she'd ever hear.

"I love you, James," she replied, just in case it was the last thing she'd ever say.

They didn't break apart until they heard footsteps coming toward them, Rose turning around to find herself facing Lysander, his walk imperceptibly crooked and his eyes slightly glossy. Putting a hand on James's shoulder, he looked away from Rose and said, "Holly's asking for you... for some reason."

James raised his eyebrows in surprise, but Lysander didn't seem to understand his new sister any more than James did. So, he left to find the girl, and then there were two. Rose hadn't seen all that much of Lysander since last year at school, and even then, they'd been careful to avoid each other. It made Scorpius uncomfortable to see them so much as talking, and Rose didn't blame him for that. After all, Lysander had never truly gotten over Rose, or at least whatever idea of her he had locked in his head.

Lysander ended up being the one to help dissipate the awkward air. "Hey," he said as Rose rubbed her shoulders from the wind that was passing by, "You want to dance?"

Rose wasn't certain that she did, but Lysander had never been one to take no for an answer. She was in the middle of a sigh when he grabbed her wrist and pulled her onto the wood just as a slow song started playing, Rose stopping momentarily to take her heels off.

"Well, I don't feel nearly as intimidated now, I must say," said Lysander as Rose shrunk before him. Unlike Hugo, she hadn't inherited her father's height, but Lysander must have inherited that of his father's, since he and Lorcan were nearly half a foot taller than Luna.

"I wasn't aware that it was possible for you to be intimidated." Rose was swaying from side to side to the rhythm of the violins, but Lysander was slower and heavier on his feet, more like the cello.

He had taken out a flask from his pant pocket and was swigging back some sort of alcohol, which Rose could only assume from the scent of his breath was incredibly strong, as he said, "I must be a good actor, then."

"You're not," Rose said seriously. "If you were, your loneliness wouldn't be anywhere near as obvious as it is right now."

Lysander's mother had someone. His twin brother had someone. Even _Holly_ seemed to have someone, but not him. He never really had, especially when it came to Rose. But there was more to his loneliness than a lack of romantic love. All Rose had to do was notice the fact that she was the one leading this dance rather than him to know that there was abandon in him, too.

He seemed to understand that Rose would listen, because soon Lysander was asking her, "Did I ever tell you how I got so fascinated with Astronomy?"

Rose shook her head no. She remembered Lysander being good at the subject while at Hogwarts, though he hadn't ended up pursuing it upon earning a spot on James's professional Quidditch team.

"When we were kids, Lorcan and I were essentially the same person. We looked much more alike then than we do now, though our interests were always slightly different. Lorcan would go out creature-searching with our dad every weekend, but I liked to stay at home. Then, when they got back after a long day, Lorcan would be exhausted and so he'd fall straight asleep before it was even dark outside. When the sun finally set, Dad would come out to the backyard and lie down in the grass next to me. We'd gaze at the stars for hours some nights while Mum watched us from the porch, Dad explaining to me why the moon looked so much bigger than the stars even though, in reality, it was the other way around."

Lysander had only been a boy when he'd turned his father in for a life-long sentence in Azkaban Prison. He hadn't seen him since. Thinking such, he added, "I love Neville, and he and my mum are perfect for each other. But sometimes..."

When his voice trailed off, Rose could tell that he wouldn't be able to finish his sentence without crying, which he didn't want to do in front of her. So, she finished it for him, saying, "Sometimes you just miss your dad."

Lysander's mouth was shut tight as he tried to hold back his tears and nodded down at the barefoot Rose. To help him hold back his emotions, she pulled him closer to her until his chin was resting on the top of her head. The only thing that managed to separate them was the announcement made by Luna that it was time for the father/daughter dance.

Rose sighed to hear such, because of course it was perfect timing. "I'm sorry," she told Lysander as he pulled away.

"It's okay," he said just before Ron arrived to take his place. "Really."

Rose didn't believe him until he looked up at the nearly full moon and the smaller stars and said through squinted eyes, "Anyway, there's somebody I've been meaning to talk to." Satisfied that Lysander would be okay, Rose let him walk away as she staggered into her father's arms and followed his lead for a few minutes.

Everything was safe and peaceful when Ron was holding Rose. The rest of the world seemed peaceful too, with Xenophilius and Luna shaking rapidly even though the music wasn't all that up-tempo and Neville and Holly bearing crooked teeth for all their friends and family to see. The only duo missing seemed to be Harry and Lily, since Harry couldn't actually find his daughter, nor Ginny her son. When Rose looked around the pitch in search of Scorpius, since he was the last person to have been with Lily, she was both relieved and worried to spot him dancing with McGonagall only a few yards away.

"I think you can stand to be away from him for one song, Rosie," teased Ron when he noticed Rose staring at Scorpius from across the floor.

Laughing because, for once, her father's protective habits weren't necessary, Rose said, "I thought you two had reached an understanding."

"We have," Ron assured her. "But that doesn't mean I can suddenly stop worrying about my only daughter, especially since the vow etched into my arm doesn't include her. And after everything's that happened over the past few months, from your granddad's death to the dementor attack and Hugo's depression, I just want to make sure that you don't fall into that same black hole. Your mother and I named you after _red_ roses, not black ones."

She knew that Ron meant his last statement as a joke, but for whatever reason, Rose wasn't laughing as the music stopped and so did she. She wasn't laughing as she squeezed around her father one last time and then left him to look for Scorpius. She wasn't laughing as she smiled cordially to a haggard-looking McGonagall and pulled Scorpius away from his mentor. She wasn't laughing as she led him into Gryffindor's usual locker room – the one that _hadn't _been used as changing and makeup stations for the wedding party – off the side of the pitch and locked the door behind her.

"What's going on?" Scorpius asked from behind, Rose leaning her forehead against the door and taking a deep breath in an attempt to dampen her gut-wrenching fear into just the average anxiety.

Telling herself to turn around because above all, they needed to be on the same page, Rose babbled in a string of nearly incoherent thoughts, "D-do you remember that love potion you and Ilana made last year? The one you showed me on our one-year anniversary, the same day we got back together after that _stupid_ summer." She kept going even after Scorpius nodded in comprehension.

"Yes, yes, I remember," said Scorpius when the nods didn't appear to be enough.

Taking a few steps toward the center of the room where Scorpius was standing, her feet quickly going numb from the cold of the frozen ground, Rose said, "So, you remember telling me that it smelled like raspberries and me telling you that it smelled like rain?"

"Yes. I remember." She was an inch away from him now, and they had both stilled, anxious to see who would be the one to move first.

Rose was leaning ever so slightly forward, her eyes half-closed and her nose nearly touching his when she said, "I want to smell the raspberries, Scorpius. I want to smell the rain."

"Rose," he moaned and said all at once. She knew that he wanted the same thing, but for once in their lives, he was more afraid than she was. "Rose, we haven't talked about it yet. I – I don't have a plan."

Scorpius had never been spontaneous. He liked to practice, and he only liked surprises if they were ones he planned for Rose. Right now, he had no such plans in mind, because all he'd had time to think about as of late was making sure the Order was ready for war. Normally, Rose would be on the same page, but not now. Now, she didn't want his surprises and she didn't want their plans. She just wanted him. She just wanted _them_.

"Look," she started, practically begging by this point, "If there's anything that Astoria's latest quest has taught me, it's that I don't have all the answers. And yes, that idea _terrifies _me, but then suddenly I'm in your arms and you're whispering my name, and my deluminator is lighting up, and I realize that that's all I need. I don't need the answers, Scorpius. I only need a tiny ball of light to call my own."

He was staring straight through her as she knelt down and rolled her long dress up her legs until she uncovered the brace that kept her wand and deluminator on her at all times. Holding the deluminator in front of Scorpius's chest, she waited for it to light up after she asked, "Scorpius, will you turn my black roses red?"

The smile curled over Scorpius's lips like a skipping stone spreading ripples across a lake. He knew as well as she did that this wasn't just about war, or about wanting to share everything with one another out of fear that it might be their last chance. It was about love, and it was about the only thing left that could possibly make their love any stronger than it already was. So, Scorpius reached out his hands, clasping them around Rose's and the deluminator that she was gripping, saying, "I will, Rose." And as that tiny ball of light floated in between them once more, he moved her hands to her cheeks and added, "You know I will."

Then he was kissing her and she couldn't stop kissing him back, no matter how hard she tried. Because her fingers just _needed_ to run through his nervous, spiking hair, she ended up dropping the deluminator to the floor, and with the first crashing sound came the second. In the middle of the fall, Scorpius had taken out one of his wands and was pointing it toward the bench that sat in the main room, using a silent spell to send the wood flying over to the door, which it banged against and which would act as a barricade in case someone was really desperate to interrupt them.

Things turned gentle once more, however, when Scorpius returned to Rose to find her back facing him, along with the silver zipper of her dress. He slid it down slowly, kissing every part of her bare back as he went, and once she was only in her undergarments, she took the time to make sure he was only in his. They both felt another wave of panic as the clothes fell off, but their breaths were synchronized and so together they were steady.

"Did I ever tell you that I think you're beautiful?" he said quietly as they stood and stared at each other.

Her eyes twinkled as they looked down at the hands that were set patiently at Scorpius's sides, a wand clasped in each of them. She smiled in remembrance as he said, "I just want to let go of everything I'm holding so that I can hold you instead. I want to hold you and never let go."

She'd had his words etched into her memory ever since the day he'd first said them to her, on the castle's seventh floor hallway on the other side of the November snow. And just as she had that night, she replied now, "Then just let go. Open your hands and turn them to floor and drop it all. Drop it all and take three steps forward and wrap your arms around me. Lift me up and hold me, and then don't let go anymore. And I'll stand here, with my hands completely empty, and I'll wait for you. I'll wait for you and when you get to me, I'll wrap my arms around you. I'll hold you, and I won't ever let go. I promise I won't ever let go."

His three simple steps came with three simple words. "I love you," he said as his arms wrapped around her and lifted her off her feet.

"I love you," she reciprocated as her legs wrapped around his torso and her arms around his neck. Then she kissed him, closing her eyes upon deciding that she didn't care where he took her so long as they were together.

He ended up carrying her to the bathroom that stemmed off the locker room, and before long, Rose could hear the sound of rain coming from the shower Scorpius had turned on by hand. And then they were standing beneath the water as the sound heightened into hurricanes and as their intertwined bodies were suddenly surrounded by waterfalls.

Rose didn't for one moment regret her decision to give Scorpius something she would never be able to get back, and she was fairly certain that he didn't regret accepting it from her. The few hours they spent in that manufactured rain were quite possibly the best of their lives, and though it was true that their relationship had now changed forever, the change had been good. They were stronger now.

Of course, their newfound strength ended up being tested not long after it had been found. Rose and Scorpius were knotted together on the floor of the shower, Scorpius silently spinning the ring on Rose's right hand as she traced the scars along his chest, when they heard the screams coming from outside on the Quidditch pitch.

Panicking, Scorpius leaped up in a hurry and pulled Rose to her feet alongside him. They both tried to steady their racing heartbeats as they hurriedly dressed back into their formal clothes and as the sounds outside echoed in their eardrums like birdsongs bouncing off the ice. Once Scorpius moved the bench out of the way, Rose was the one to put her hand on the doorknob and open it just a crack. That was when they heard an unrecognizable voice call through crackling flames, "_SHE'S DEAD!"_

For exactly sixty seconds, Rose and Scorpius just stared at each other. To any outside observer, they might have appeared to be in the middle of a contest in which it was against the rules to blink. But really, they were each reading each other's minds as their thoughts flipped through the pictures of all the women and girls they knew to have attended tonight's wedding. Scorpius thought first of Ginny, and Rose thought of Luna. Scorpius thought second of Holly, and Rose thought of Lucy. Scorpius thought third of Lily, and Rose thought of Roxanne. Scorpius thought lastly of McGonagall, and Rose thought of Hermione.

Rose was the first out the door, though Scorpius's hand was clasped tightly in hers and he caught up with her quickly. Together, they followed the fiery pathway underneath the singing white tent. Together, they walked through the huddle of people who made way for them to pass as soon as they spotted who was coming. Together, they held onto their strength as they were surrounded by waterfalls – this time not from the passion-filled rush of love, but from the tear-filled chill of death.

* * *

_**Note: **So... who do you think it is? I'm sorry I had to leave that on a cliffhanger, but I promise that you will know who died within the first few paragraphs of the next chapter. Also, if you're really curious, you should read my **upcoming one-shot** (it's going to follow Holly) to find out some clues that were hidden in this chapter. That should be uploaded sometime this week, and hopefully I'll have **Chapter 35 ready by New Year's Day** (to keep in the holiday spirit)._

_Thanks for reading!  
_

_-Hailey  
_


	35. Tragic Goodnight

_**Note:** So sorry to leave you guys hanging off that cliff; I just couldn't write this one as quickly as I'd hoped to. But alas, here it is, so get reading and find out who was killed! (I also uploaded Holly's oneshot for you to read when you get the chance.)  
_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**35 – Tragic Goodnight**

The fires were still burning around the edges of the white tarp, its string of Christmas lights sparkling like miniature bombs that were somehow beautiful as they lit up the night sky in floating constellations. A few people – Holly and her father, Luna, Lucy, and the twins, and a group of guests Scorpius didn't recognize – were squirting water from their wands while yelling at each other in question of where the flames had come from. Someone Scorpius didn't see yelled back that the shadow had lit the fire in his wake, a trail of deadly footprints. They said the 'shadow' because they didn't know who it had been to take this innocent life. Somehow, no one had seen him or her, or at least, no one who was still standing on the Quidditch pitch. But Scorpius wasn't thinking about any of that. He was thinking about his sweaty hands.

He wasn't sure when he had gone from standing to kneeling, nor when he had stopped breathing. All he knew was what he could feel – the wooden dance floor beneath him, heat from the fires emanating through his white suit and into the blood of his calves; Rose's face buried in his shoulder, the loose strands of her hair blowing against his neck and chin, her left hand wrapped around his arm and her right clutching the back of his blazer's collar; the chill of Minerva McGonagall's flabby, dead skin freezing the sweat on his hands in a single touch. She looked even more wrinkled now, in sleep, than she had in life, and for some reason, Scorpius was counting them. He was counting every wrinkle he touched, starting from her forehead and running all the way down her arms, almost like he was counting the rings of a tree trunk to see how old it had been. He wanted to acknowledge every year of McGonagall's life in this moment, to know all the memories she had never shared with him before, so that he could make her live on forever.

All around him, people were frightened and confused. They wanted to know what they should do next, or what was going to be done. They wanted to hear that everything was going to be okay, that the shadow would be found, and that vengeance would be met. They wanted a leader, but all Scorpius could think was that their leader was dead. She was lying on the floor in her thick, layered dress, with her eyes shut tight and her wiry fingers clasped around a wand that had been unable to save her. McGonagall had been a leader, but Scorpius was no such thing. He was just a boy...

_ "Where you going, Mummy?" he asked in a voice that had yet to break. It was high-pitched, squeaky, uncontrolled and not at all controlling._

_ Astoria looked down at her son with a softness that brought both delight and fear to Scorpius's eyes. "I'm going on a little trip," she told him as she brushed a hand through his light hair that looked so different from her own dark curls. The gesture made him stop shaking momentarily, silencing his nerves with the slightest touch. "I told you about it last night, remember?"_

_ Not daring to move because he wanted to stay curled up in his mother's lap forever, no matter how long forever was in the eyes of a three year-old, Scorpius took a deep breath and asked, "When you come home?"_

_ "As soon as I can, my sweet," she answered cryptically, her eyes on the suitcase that sat by her feet rather than the little boy who was latched onto her arms. Then she turned to the man standing by the luggage, his white hair slicked back and his eyes heavy with an intense need for sleep._

_ "Take your son, Draco," said Astoria as she tried to stand, Scorpius refusing to let her go._

_ The boy's father was there in seconds, his hands slipping underneath Scorpius's shoulders and lifting him against his chest, but Scorpius continued to fight back. He bounced off Draco's chest in an attempt to leap into his mother's familiar arms, but then his grandmother intercepted him and put a finger to her mouth, a symbol he knew ordered silence._

_ He listened to Narcissa instantaneously, having been well-disciplined at a very early age. But as his mother rolled her suitcase to the double doors at the front of Malfoy Manor, and as one of her hands coiled around the snake-shaped doorknob, Scorpius's own hand reached as far his arm could stretch and he whimpered, "Mummy, don't go! Don't go!"_

_ Slowly, Astoria walked back to him, and his hope returned in full stride. Scorpius was ready to pull her back into the kitchen and order one of the cooks to make him beans on toast and then lay in the yard amongst the white peacocks as his mother read him a story from his favorite book, __The Tales of Beedle the Bard__. But his hope didn't last for long._

_ Astoria stopped a few paces away from Draco and Scorpius, only extending her hand for him to take one last time. And even that wasn't enough, because Scorpius's tiny hands were shaking and sweaty, and they couldn't hold onto hers for long. She slipped away practically as soon as he'd touched her, and with one blink, she and her suitcase had disappeared._

Scorpius was pulled from his memory when he heard Rose's voice say to someone he hadn't noticed appear, "Give him a _moment_." She was more commanding than he had ever heard her be before, her face taut as she lifted it from his shoulders.

At first, Scorpius didn't say anything to either contradict Rose or to defend himself. He just sat there, trying to remember what number of wrinkles he'd been on before checking out, balling his hands into fists and growing exponentially frustrated when he found that they had nothing to hold. For the first time since he'd sat down, though, he was listening, for it seemed his ears had made contact with the world even when the rest of him hadn't.

"He is the _leader_ of the Order of the Phoenix, Rosie, and he's already had an hour's worth of _moments_," said a low voice coming from very far above Scorpius's head. Only two people ever called Rose by that name, so Scorpius didn't need to look up to know that Ron was towering over him as he argued with his daughter. "Harry and Ginny are still looking for your cousins, and I need to rally the Aurors. But I'm not leaving until Malfoy here shows some sign of life."

"Ronald, he's just a boy," said a sweet, female voice from somewhere nearby, but her retort didn't help much."

"So was _I_ when the war started, Hermione," Ron said sharply, almost as if he was biting at his wife. "So was Harry, so was Neville, so were my brothers! _Scorpius_ chose this, not me, and now it's time for him to deliver."

He must have looked at Rose then, because silence swept across the area that Scorpius now realized was still densely crowded with everyone from the wedding, and a moment later Rose's hand was on his face and she was whispering in a way that she only ever did with him, "Say something, Scorpius. Say anything. Say – say my name."

But he couldn't. He had started breathing again, but his eyes still looked at McGonagall's body that he refused to let anyone take away from him, and his mouth couldn't seem to form the word that would always bring Rose back to him. She wasn't the one he wanted back.

"If he's not going to start leading his army, then _I_ will," said Ron when Scorpius failed to respond.

He could hear Rose take in a sharp breath as if she was about to argue back, but she didn't get the chance to say anything before Scorpius mumbled subconsciously, "My knight. Get my knight."

His voice had been eerily quiet, but he was sure that Rose had heard him. He could feel her eyes on him, a smile spreading across her cold cheeks, and soon she was asking, "Where is it, Scorpius? I'll go get it for you."

"My knight," he repeated, a little louder this time. His hands were still grasping for something that wasn't there, and the knight that he had broken over a year ago was all they seemed to want. "From my chess set."

He still hadn't given her much to go on, yet Rose stood then to face her father, and Scorpius found his eyes following her. It was the first time he'd looked away from McGonagall, which seemed to help with Rose's plea, for Scorpius's gaze did not go unnoticed by Ron. The latter was looking at him even as he asked Rose, "Are you sure you know where this is?"

"Yes," Rose lied. "It's in the castle. I can go and be back in fifteen minutes at most. It's the only thing that will comfort him." But it wasn't in the castle. The white knight Scorpius spoke of had been crumbled into ash, a pile of which had surely blown away from the shores of the Black Lake by now. He was the only one who knew that it was gone, and that the rest of his chess set had also shattered when he'd left Malfoy Manor for the last time, yet Scorpius couldn't seem to tell Rose any of this. It was as if his heart was telling him that the knight would be there, in the Room of Requirement or the bedside table in Rose's dormitory, so long as _she_ looked for it in his place.

Whether it was Rose's worry or simply his own love for chess that made Ron agree to let her go, Scorpius would never know. But either way, she started running the second Ron nodded his head, and in that same second, Scorpius was able to pull himself to his feet. His hands still felt empty, but now they had hope, and he would live off that hope until it became truth.

All eyes were on him as he came to, and he was now exceedingly aware of just how many people were huddled on this side of the tent, from the newly enlarged Longbottom family, to all the other Hogwarts professors and students who had stayed over break, to the cluster of Weasleys that stood closest to Scorpius. There was something he wanted to do, or rather, something he _needed_ to do, but he knew that it would have to wait. Right now, these people needed _him_.

For a moment, Scorpius closed his eyes and tried to take in all the energy he possibly could from such momentary rest. When he opened his eyes once more, he knew that that would be the end of it. There would be no more shock, no more sadness, no more hiding. This was the part where he showed his determination that only ever strengthened in the face of perilous pressure.

With this in mind, he finally spoke. His voice was loud and commanding, like Rose's had been, as he slowly turned his head to take in the crowd and said, "I'm sure I don't need to tell you what a tragedy this is for all of us. I, for one, will remember Minerva McGonagall until my last breath, and hopefully well past that time. But I also think you know that this death comes to us as a sign of danger – a sign of _war_. Now, we must prepare ourselves for what lies ahead. If we don't, tragedy _will_ strike again."

He wished that Rose was there to take his hand as he said the words, but he tried not to think about the fact that he'd sent her away for no good reason; she'd return soon, and perhaps she'd even find a knight for him to hold from one of the library's chess sets. But because she wasn't there, Scorpius found himself looking to Hermione for counsel, and sure enough, she was smiling with the type of genuine pride that only a mother could bear.

Everyone was paying close attention to Scorpius as he took one of his wands from his pant pocket, pointed it at McGonagall's body, and silently procured a clean, white sheet out of thin air that covered her from head to toe. "I'd like to bury her, properly, and without magic," he said as he looked down on the spot where his professor had been, no longer able to count her wrinkles through the sheet. "But for the rest of you, no such time should be wasted."

That was when he started designating the crowd with tasks. He began by telling all the guests that they should head home if they wished to, or if they had family members waiting for them there. Scorpius was thankful when only two wizards actually Disapparated, and when the rest remained glued to the ground that belonged as much to them as it did to him. Then he spoke to Ron, since he was clearly the most restless of all, giving him permission to send word out for the Aurors as well as anyone else in the Order of the Phoenix; they needed to set up a defensive force in case the Flock attempted a second attack on them. (Teddy and Dominique offered their help in sending out the Patronus messages, the former put in charge of notifying the rest of the Ministry.) Scorpius turned next to Neville, asking the groom who seemed just as grief-stricken as he was to take charge of the other professors, most of whom had been preparing for battle since this time last year. Together, they left for the other side of the pitch to discuss their plans and strategies, and Scorpius promised to check in on them within the hour.

Once a fair amount of the crowd had dissipated into smaller groups, Scorpius whispered to Hermione to make sure all those underage found a way to get home, even though he and Hermione both knew that the pursuit was futile for the majority of the kids. He was wondering what to say to the remaining guests when he saw a tall silhouette walking toward the tent from the direction of the castle.

Scorpius quickly excused himself from the crowd to approach the person in hopes that it was Rose, only appearing tall because she'd found her heels. He was disappointed to find that the figure was actually James. The Potter boy stopped just before reaching the pitch so that Scorpius could speak with him, or perhaps he even wanted to speak with Scorpius.

"Where have you been?" asked Scorpius anxiously before James had time to say anything himself. "You didn't see it happen, did you?" Lorcan and Lucy had been nearest to McGonagall and had been the ones to find her dead, but even they hadn't caught a good glimpse of the murderer. They only described the person as being dark and cloaked, and then mentioned the trail of fire that had been left behind.

"No, but I'd wager everything I own on the one culprit I have in mind," said James nonchalantly, lifting his chin in greeting to Lysander and Lorcan, who were approaching them from behind Scorpius. "And I've been with Lily, who's now having a conversation with our parents down in Hagrid's Hut. She has a fair lot to explain, so they could be a while."

The twins were on either side of him when James asked, "What about you? Any word about the Flock's whereabouts?" Whoever had committed tonight's crime had to have been a part of the Forbidden Flock, but they had also been able to penetrate the Hogwarts borders, and James was right about there being only one person they knew of who could do such a thing. As for the rest of Astoria's army, and Astoria herself – they could be anywhere.

"No," Scorpius replied, but he didn't care to elaborate on what he _did_ know. He had been distracted by James's mention of Hagrid, since he hadn't actually seen the half-giant anywhere in the past hour. Curious, he asked James, "If Harry and Ginny are in Hagrid's Hut, where's Hagrid?"

James was shrugging his shoulders when Lorcan answered for him, "He ran off in a defiant rage as soon as McGonagall died. I'm pretty sure he's planning to run all the way to Romania before the night's out."

Charlie Weasley and his dragons were in Romania, but last time Scorpius checked, Charlie hadn't been very willing to let any of them go, even to the right side. Plus, the fact that Hagrid wasn't allowed to use magic meant that there was no way he could Apparate, and Scorpius would need his sheer physical strength with the rest of the Order if the Flock tried to strike again.

Thinking this, Scorpius asked Lorcan, "Can you call him off? Bring him back? He has to be here to get the giants ready if it comes to war."

"Probably," he said, much to Scorpius's relief. "But we only have so many giants, Scorp. We _need_ those dragons."

"But my uncle will lose the entire sanctuary if he lets go of another dragon after what happened with Astoria," argued James. "It's not worth it."

Considering this, Lorcan suggested an alternative method. "What about wild ones? The Hebridean Blacks aren't far from here!"

"Yeah, they aren't very far from Azkaban Prison, either," Lysander piped in with a scoff. "Plus, aren't those the pirates' dragons? I've heard enough stories from Dad about our crazy pirate aunt to know that we should never go _looking_ for her."

Lorcan argued with his brother on the subject for a few more minutes, but Scorpius was having a tough time keeping up with the Scamander family history lesson and dragon territoriality. When he'd had enough of the topic, he shot his hands up in defense, clenched his eyes shut, and said through his grinding teeth, "_ENOUGH_."

Three handsome faces were looking at him with wide eyes and silenced mouths as Scorpius added, "It doesn't matter about the pirates; even if we could get past them long enough to steel some of their beasts, we wouldn't have any time to train the dragons. I think we need to stick with what we know, and right now, that's us and the centaurs and the thestrals and the giants."

Nodding, Lorcan remembered his place and said, "I'll let Hagrid know and get him back here as quickly as possible," before heading off for the pitch.

In as non-threatening a tone as he could manage, James put a hand on Scorpius's shoulder and asked, "Have you thought at all about declaring the war _now?_ You could give the Flock a few hours before actually setting the army on them, and that would give us time to prepare as well as send scouts out to look for where they're actually hiding."

Scorpius was eyeing the castle – its windows black as night but for the single lit candle that illuminated McGonagall's office tower – and felt suddenly sure that he knew where the Flock was hiding, but for some reason that knowledge refused to bleed into his conscious mind just yet. Declaring war seemed pointless when he didn't know where Astoria and Al were. After all, they were the ones he was preparing himself to face.

"No," he told James. "The Aurors haven't even arrived yet, and I need to take care of that body." This time it was his turn to put a hand on James's good shoulder as Scorpius looked to him and Lysander and ordered, "Hold the fort, mates."

The world seemed to disappear around him as Scorpius walked beneath the snow storm and back onto the Quidditch pitch. There, his legs led him straight to McGonagall, her body still covered in white and laying atop the wooden dance floor. If anybody needed or wanted him, they suppressed it then, for Scorpius's journey from that point forward was not interrupted. No one called out to him for either want or aid as he lifted the body onto his shoulder and slowly carried her to the shores of the Black Lake.

He was heaving when he finally reached the icy waters, but he held on to his strength long enough to gently release McGonagall onto a large stone that sat atop the frozen sand. After wiping away the beads of sweat that ran down his forehead, Scorpius knelt onto the ground and thrust his hands deep into the snow until he could feel the roughness of the sand scraping against the fingers that he thought had gone numb by now. This was the same place he'd found out about his grandmother's death, Draco having dragged him here from the top floor of the castle in the longest walk of his life. This was the same place his favorite chess piece had been crushed by his own fury and simultaneous pain. This was the same place Rose had held him only last month, when he'd wept for hours upon remembering Narcissa and coming to terms with the fact that he would never see her again.

But now, the tears wouldn't come. Now, when all Scorpius wanted to do was sit here alone and cry, no liquid but sweat penetrated his skin. He was as still, dry, and impermeable as a castle, or a rook. Was that what he had become over the last few years, through his training and through his family's abandonment? A rook to replace what both Narcissa and McGonagall had been for him – strong, supportive, never breaking and _never_ vulnerable? Was he no longer the fast-learning, horse-mounted knight who moved in unexpected directions to pay for the king and queen's mistakes? And as he wondered if this was true, he also asked where his fellow rook was, because like knights, they always came in pairs.

What did manage to penetrate Scorpius's eyes was the white light reflecting off the Black Lake. It was all he could see at first, and the more he considered its speckled color and wind-swept motions, the closer Scorpius came to realizing that this wasn't just moonlight. This light was coming from bulbs or wands, not stars or fires. Looking up, he saw that Hogsmeade was its source, for though the small town couldn't be seen from the Quidditch pitch, Scorpius had a perfect view of it from across the lake.

The Shrieking Shack was the closest to the water, and behind that were Honeydukes and the Three Broomsticks hugging High Street on either side. Both of the shops had lights on through their windows, and both of those lights appeared to be moving through the shapeless dark. Scorpius supposed that the light could just be coming from the workers there, but looking on at the brightness, he couldn't seem to ward off his own fear.

He was just about to stand up and get to work so that he wouldn't have to look toward the light any longer when something even brighter caught his eyes. This light had a discernible shape as it glided atop the lake's glossy surface, its wings long and full of power, even in their ghost-like translucent state. The Patronus was a hawk, and even though Scorpius knew two hawks whom he wasn't currently too keen on seeing, he didn't fear the one he looked on now. This hawk was just as broken as he was...

"_Scorpius, it's time for you to get up now. You've been in bed for far too long, and your grandmother wishes to see you." His father's voice was dry, husky, and not at all like his mother's. His mother's was the only voice he wanted to hear, and it was the only one he wanted to listen to._

"_No," was all the boy would say. "No. No. No."_

_After breathing a deep sigh, Draco put a large hand on Scorpius's small arm and said, "Hey, guess what? Your mum sent me a letter this morning; she said she'll be back first thing tomorrow! Don't you want to look nice when you see her? I can buy a suit for you if you come into town with me to try one on."_

_Scorpius swatted his father away with his free hand. "NO!" he spat. He did like to be well-dressed, even at such a young age, but Draco had used the same tactic to drag him out of bed only yesterday. Yesterday, he had lied. Astoria still hadn't returned home._

_At the touch of Scorpius's hand on Draco's, the latter inhaled sharply and then grabbed the little hand that he sometimes wondered if he had really been the one to create. "You're all sticky! I should get you into a bath at once." He tried to tug Scorpius off the king-size mattress that sat in the middle of his parents' giant bedroom, but Scorpius was shaking too much for Draco to keep hold of him. "Stop moving!" he yelled._

"_No," retorted Scorpius once more. His father's eyes were furious and appeared to seep into the pit of Scorpius's head like an arrow piercing the heart of its target. Knowing that Draco was frustrated even though he didn't completely understand why, Scorpius finally changed his words. "No," he said, followed closely by, "I can't."_

_He couldn't help his shaking. The young Scorpius wasn't pleading for attention or dramatizing his own emotional pain; he was simply scared. He was scared that the shaking would never stop. He was scared that this trip that Astoria had taken – one trip of the many she took every year for her work and for her secrets, but the first of which Scorpius had truly been aware of – would be the last. He was scared that he would never be able to hold his mother's hands again._

"_That's okay," said Draco as he let Scorpius's hand drop back onto the sheet and instead rubbed his back, which Scorpius had curled on its side. "I'm scared, too."_

_Though Scorpius's mouth didn't make a sound, his eyes asked all that his father needed to hear. They were wide, hopeful, and childish in the best possible way._

"_Can I show you something? Something magical?" Draco smiled when Scorpius nodded vigorously. Finally, a yes. Then he shifted in his seat on the bed so that he could grab his white wand that he'd only ever showed his son once before. He had even let Scorpius hold it that first time, but then the boy had blown out a window, and Draco hadn't been so angry in years. Now was different, though. Now, Scorpius wasn't going to touch the wand._

_Thinking of his family – Astoria in the hospital and holding Scorpius on his first day in the world, before Draco had taken him home and Astoria had had to wait in the hospital for months to heal from a dreadful labor; before all that, when everything had been perfectly peaceful – Draco pointed his wand in front of Scorpius's line of vision and whispered, "_Expecto Patronum!"

_A hawk of dark silver shot from his wand and spread its wings in the middle of the room, flying up and over Scorpius's head and around the ceiling's border, before ducking under the doorway and vanishing into the distance. Scorpius had seen the Patronus animal before, since Astoria had always liked to show him her magic, but he'd never seen it from Draco._

"_Same as Mummy," mumbled Scorpius while he pointed to where the big bird had disappeared. "Why same?"_

"_Because I love her. I love her just as much as you do," Draco explained. His Patronus hadn't always been a hawk, but throughout Scorpius's lifetime and even a few years before that, it had withheld its new form._

"_You want Mummy back?" asked Scorpius, his tone almost desperate, being that it was hitched and groggy._

"_Yes. More than anything, I want her back. I'm always going to want her back."_

When Scorpius turned around, the hawk faded away and his father stood before him, his skin rugged yet sagging as if he'd aged thirty years since Scorpius's memory, as opposed to the actual fifteen that it had been. He was dressed in his usual suit, black with a white shirt and a tie that was as stiffly knotted as Scorpius's. In each if his hands was a large, steel shovel. They came in a pair.

Scorpius didn't say so much as hello to his father, but he knew that he didn't need to. Instead, he looked straight into Draco's icy eyes as he walked toward him and asked, "Falcons are supposed to fly, so why did I drown?"

Draco was close enough to hand his son one of the shovels when he answered, "You didn't drown, boy. And you won't, because you haven't lifted off yet."

It had been a day less than a year since Scorpius had last seen his father. He had no idea what Draco had been doing all that time, while he had either been at school and training under McGonagall or staying with the Weasleys and training under Rose's family. It had been impossible to host another full core alliance meeting that summer, because the last thing Scorpius had wanted to do was put all of his most powerful allies into one room for Astoria to blow up at her leisure. And Scorpius had never even considered paying a visit to Malfoy Manor; that house was filled with his mother in every imaginable way.

Now, when he stared at his father, Scorpius wasn't even sure if he recognized him. Draco still had Astoria's Patronus, but why? Hadn't he let her go yet? Didn't he realize that she was already gone? He was silent and stoic as he scooped piles of snow and sand up with his shovel and tossed it aside with a simple flick of his wrist. Could it be that he was stronger now, or was it still his own grave that he was digging?

Scorpius was scooping in unison with Draco, and together they had made a six-foot long pit that was nearly three feet deep when Scorpius finally found the nerve to ask, "Have _you_? Have you lifted off yet?"

For a moment, it seemed as though Draco was thinking about his answer, which was a practice he was normally not well versed in. After a minute of quiet, he said, "No, I dare say I haven't. I suppose I'm waiting for the command."

"Yeah, as is everybody else," grunted Scorpius, the pile atop his shovel suddenly feeling heavier than it did only moments ago. "It's their commander who's too terrified to let them fight."

"You look fairly steady to me," Draco said with a glance at Scorpius. He hadn't seen Scorpius a few hours ago, but in that moment, Draco was right. His son's hands, though beginning to throb and blister, weren't making his shovel shake, nor was the rate of his breathing any faster than normal.

"Only because I refuse to let them all see me the way I feel right now," Scorpius admitted. "But the truth is that I have _no idea_ what I'm doing. McGonagall was always the one who told me what I should say at those meetings, and she was the one who taught me how I'm going to win this battle, but she never taught me how to _start_ it.

"I mean, I don't even know who killed her, because I wasn't there. I was off with Rose, because _she_ needed me and _I_ needed her, but where was I when McGonagall needed someone?" He was shoveling so quickly at this point that Draco could barely make out his words through his exhausted grunting, and there was no longer any room for Draco to help him with the grave. "I wasn't even _there_. Now, I don't know where the Flock is hiding, I don't know where Rose went, and I _really_ don't know where I'm going to tell all those people up there to go."

Slowly and carefully, Draco reached for the handle of Scorpius's shovel and ripped it from his bleeding hands. Scorpius didn't seem to notice the blood, but it was all Draco could see as he told him, "That's _enough_. You've done _enough._"

Shaking his head, Scorpius said the one word he'd always said to Draco when he was younger. "No. No, it's _never_ enough." Running a hand through his hair, he added, "I'm never in the right place when it happens, and I can never get there quickly enough to save them."

Astoria had attacked the Creeveys when Scorpius had hidden away behind Godric's Hollow, Narcissa had been killed at Malfoy Manor when he was at school, Astoria had infiltrated Arthur Weasley's funeral and attempted to capture Rose when he had already returned to Hogwarts, and now McGonagall had been killed when he had only been a wall away. Scorpius was getting closer, but still he could never quite save the ones he loved before they were taken from him.

"Well, neither can I," said Draco as he turned to get a better look at Scorpius. The grave was as deep as they were tall, the blond of their hair just sticking out above the beach. "I couldn't be there when my mother died, and I haven't been there for you on countless occasions. Nobody can predict the future, Scorpius, not even one of those proclaimed _Seers_. And I'm afraid that the Malfoy name only seems to dampen one's luck."

The men took a few deep breaths together, both of them cursing the name they were born with, and then Draco jumped out from the grave and offered a hand for Scorpius. Once back on the beach, they walked over to McGonagall's body and carried her into the pit, Draco's hands around her ankles and Scorpius's protecting her head. She was laid peacefully in the ground, almost like the grave was dug just for her, even though in actuality, Scorpius had dug it for everyone he'd ever left behind, and everyone he _would_ leave behind in the future.

"What do I do now, Dad?" asked Scorpius when yet again, the tears refused to come, no matter how long he stared down at his teacher's corpse.

He hadn't called Draco by such a name in many years, and while the elder Malfoy did love the sound of that three-letter word, he knew that he had done nothing to deserve it. In an effort to make Scorpius listen to those who truly understood him and therefore understood how to council him, Draco said, "You walk back to that decrepit Quidditch pitch, you take the head of your alliance's table, and you point somewhere on that map they've got. They're all waiting for you, Scorpius. All you have to do is go to them." He had been called here by Ron Weasley himself, along with all of the other Order of the Phoenix members, the majority of whom must have arrived by now.

Scorpius didn't want to leave McGonagall, especially with the open grave, but he understood from the promise in Draco's eyes that his father would fill the pit for him. To pay his respects one last time, though, Scorpius found himself reaching for his shovel, scooping up a pile of the sand that he'd just dug from the earth, and letting it cascade onto that white sheet like raindrops bouncing on the ice. Then he let Draco take care of the rest, whether by hand or by magic he did not care, heading for the pitch the way he needed to get there: alone.

Sure enough, the core alliance was waiting for him by the time Scorpius reached the pitch, whose borders were now patrolled by questioning Aurors. The soldiers were standing in a circle around one of the wedding tables, all leaning over some sort of large paper that was covering the table's surface and pointing to its different spots in abject haste. The current argument seemed to lay between Teddy and Hermione from across their respective spots on opposite ends of the table, with Ron butting in every now and again to defend his wife. Neville (who had parted from the his professor colleagues in order to join the core alliance) and Luna were simply trying to stay awake through their night that never seemed to end, and Dennis and Natalie Creevey had arrived and were just peeking their heads over the others to check on their sons, who were sitting at a table not too far away. Then there was James and Mercy, who were silently staring at each other without daring to speak their minds on any subject. But Scorpius was less interested in who _was _there than who _wasn't_. Harry and Ginny must have still been with Lily, and where Rose was, he didn't know.

He tried not to worry about her as he went to face his alliance just as his father had advised him to do. It turned out that the paper on the table was an enlarged copy of James's map, with color-coded tacks pinned across it to represent both the Order and the Flock. Teddy kept moving the largest white peg to the Great Hall of the castle, arguing that the Aurors should take center stage, but Hermione disagreed. She claimed that they should spread out along the army's vanguard, standing firm all across the Hogwarts border.

"Hermione's right," Scorpius spoke as he took his spot in between Ron and Neville. Everyone but Teddy looked to him in relief, happy to see their leader rise above the ashes of McGonagall's death. "Our frontline should be strong, and they'll have the giants with them for defense. The farther the Flock fights through the castle, the farther into its center we'll retreat – if and when the time comes."

Regardless of how much they seemed to argue with each other, nobody argued with Scorpius. Somehow, even in his absence and theirs, they had all learned their place within the Order, and they all understood that his words were final. But as Scorpius's eyes spanned the rest of the table, he could tell that there were others who had things to say.

It was Teddy who gave the bad news that Scorpius hadn't expected to hear. "I sent word to the Ministry, of McGonagall's death as well as our decision to remain where we are and fight back if need be," he said, and at this point Scorpius already had his head cocked to the side in disappointment, because he could sense the 'but' coming. "But we received no reply, from Shacklebolt nor anyone else."

Teddy and Hermione were the only two in the alliance who actually worked _in_ the building's offices. The Creeveys, along with the Aurors like Ron and Mercy, were all employed through the Ministry, but they only checked in with their departments when they needed to. And since both Teddy and Hermione had attended the wedding ceremony here at Hogwarts, neither of them could say what was going on at the Ministry now.

Somebody cleared their throat from across the table, and as Scorpius looked up to find its source, it was Mercy who asked, "Is it possible that Astoria's taken control of the Ministry, like she did with the Auror Department?"

Scorpius didn't know the answer to that, except that he wouldn't put it past Astoria's capabilities. She was not a witch to be underestimated. Luckily, though, Luna answered for him with an explanation that actually seemed quite sound. "What she did with the Aurors didn't really give her control; it simply gave her _access_. In order to get full control, she'd have to infiltrate the minds of thousands of workers."

"She's still done _something_," said James, causing Mercy to glance at him with squinted wonder. She probably thought that he was disagreeing with Luna to support _her_ claim, but Scorpius knew better than she did. James would argue with anyone if he thought he could win.

"Yeah, yet another something we should kill her for," muttered Ron so quietly that Scorpius wouldn't have heard him if they hadn't been standing right next to each other. Ron probably also wouldn't have said it if he'd given his words any real thought before voicing them; the look he received from Hermione was enough to make anyone feel guilty for a lifetime.

Scorpius knew that Hermione was only angry at Ron for his defense, but Ron's threat didn't actually hurt Scorpius. Perhaps he'd been hurt enough as it was, or perhaps he even _agreed_ with Ron. Either way, Scorpius wasn't afraid of the _idea_ of his mother being killed. It was the actuality of it happening that would scare him.

He also knew that Astoria wasn't the only person Ron was referring to when he spoke of killing. The core alliance, mainly Ron and Draco, had disputed over proper punishment of the Forbidden Flock before. Scorpius had moved them all away from the subject with the promise to return to it one day, and it seemed as if that day had come.

Still, Scorpius knew exactly what everyone at this table thought on the matter thanks to their previous discussion: Teddy, James, Dennis, and Natalie didn't believe in killing when the Flock members could simply be sentenced to a life in prison, and Mercy most likely agreed with them; Neville and Luna agreed with Ron in that they wouldn't have a choice but to kill once the battles ensued; Hermione knew where she stood on the matter but didn't want to admit it, and Scorpius felt the same. If death could be avoided, then he would pay any cost necessary to protect both innocent and guilty lives.

That was what made him say so fiercely that he was sure no one would dare to object, "We're not _killing_ anyone. That's a last resort, in all cases." Though now that he'd decreed such, Scorpius wasn't sure what the _first_ resort would be.

Looking back at the faces he was surrounded by, all of whom were looking down and waiting for the moment when they might ask him what he was already asking himself, Scorpius's eyes kept focusing back on the Creevey couple. They were just as quiet now as they had been at last Christmas's meeting, when Scorpius had met them for the first time, and he knew exactly why they always seemed so unimpressionable. They were Obliviators, memory erasers, and their skills with mind penetration made their own minds that much more difficult to penetrate.

Scorpius was still staring at Dennis and Natalie's mutual mousy brown hair and simple facial features when he said more confidently than he'd felt all night, "We'll wipe their memories instead."

That seemed to be all he'd needed to say for Scorpius to feel like he could check out again. His focus could only remain for so long. It wasn't that he felt tired (though surely he was), but he currently had so many things on his mind, and he couldn't deal with more than one of them at once. So, as the core alliance dove into argumentation yet again, Dennis and Natalie informing everyone that obliviation wasn't as easy as it seemed while Ron and Mercy boasted about being skilled enough to make it happen, Scorpius excused himself by saying to them all, "Please, by all means, discuss. I'll be back before you come to a conclusion, I'm sure."

Then he began to make the rounds at all the other tables. He started with the professors, where Lysander, Lorcan, and Colin had also stationed themselves. Most of the teachers were still busy trying to figure out how anyone had broken through the protective barriers, strengthening the charms as they went. Pontner, the Potions professor, had decided that the Quidditch pitch may just be a better location for her enlarged hospital wing than the one that was already in the castle. Trelawney and Patil had taken post just outside the pitch and were currently stargazing, as if the night sky held premonitions for them to read. Smethley and Lysander were in the middle of a heated discussion regarding the underage students who refused to go home and were adamant about fighting, Smethley saying that they would never survive and Lysander trying to make her give them a chance, specifically using Lily as an example of a young witch who was already stronger in DADA than most seventeen year-olds.

The person Scorpius had been looking for, however, was just walking back to the table in the direction of his two assistants. Hagrid was fuming as he passed one of the Auror guards without stopping to answer his questions, pounding onto the wooden floor and yelling at Lorcan and Colin, "D'yeh really 'spect me ter come back 'ere after gettin' halfway to Romania, yeh _barmpots_?!"

Scorpius was standing next to him when Colin crossed his arms and told Hagrid, "Well it worked, didn't it?"

The giant's expression turned completely blank for a moment, and then suddenly Hagrid was furrowing his forest of eyebrows and saying, "On'y 'cause yer letter said me house was on fire, but's right well NOT!"

Laughing for the first time since he'd found McGonagall, Scorpius whispered in Lorcan's ear, "You told him the Hut was on _fire?"_

Lorcan shrugged. "You wanted him back."

Still chuckling and deciding not to let Lorcan or Colin take the blame for Hagrid's wrath, Scorpius said to the giant, "It was my idea, Hagrid. I needed you back here so that you could prepare the giants. Where have you been hiding them, anyway?"

Quickly forgetting why he'd ever been angry, Hagrid answered, "Well, in the Cleeves Cove caves, o' course; 's the on'y place big enough fer 'em!"

"Good," said Scorpius, though he had no idea how close those caves were. Since he didn't want Colin fighting in battle if it came to that (and surely the Squib would try) and because Lorcan would never leave Lucy behind, Scorpius added, "Take Colin and go get those giants, as quickly as you can."

Colin obliged and was packing a bag of supplies when Hagrid shook his heavy head until he was too tired to move it anymore, yelling, "Wait, hold off a minute-"

But Scorpius interrupted him before he could finish, thinking about something that Harry had told him once when he'd needed to realize the direness of a situation. "No, Hagrid. This needs to be done now, and you _know _it does. You know it because it feels like it did the last time. It feels like a storm's coming."

This time, Hagrid nodded. "An' we all bes' be ready when she does," he said.

Scorpius was smiling as he watched Hagrid grow determined once more. He and Colin were quick to set off, Holly wishing the latter good luck with a kiss on the cheek. Once they were gone, Scorpius told Lorcan that he was now in charge of the Hogwarts game, so he soon set off to rally the centaurs. At that point, Scorpius had done all he could think to do in leading the Order, at least until a second attack came. His next priority was Rose.

It had been two or three hours since McGonagall had died and Rose had gone up to the castle, the moon now at its highest point in the sky and serving as a signal of midnight rapidly approaching. Just to be sure that he wasn't missing anything, Scorpius turned to Lysander as the latter was about to walk away from Professor Smethley to ask if he'd seen Rose, but of course he hadn't. Even Lysander would tell Scorpius if he knew something; their competition over Rose had come and gone a long time ago now.

Next, he turned to the underage student table, where Hugo, Nigel, Roxanne, and Holly were all still seated, most of them half-asleep as they waited for something interesting to happen. "Have any of you seen Rose?" Scorpius asked them.

Each of them shook their heads, but when Scorpius started to walk away, Hugo ran after him, Nigel in his wake. "Wait, where are you going?" asked the taller of the two.

"To look for your sister," Scorpius replied. He didn't stop walking to chat. In fact, he did just the opposite, speeding up so that his legs matched his racing heartbeat. He was beginning to get a bad feeling about Rose's whereabouts.

"Well, we're coming with you, then," announced Nigel as he struggled to keep up.

"Fine," said Scorpius, figuring that there was nothing he could do to shake them off. They were already past the guards and half-way to the Whomping Willow. "But get your wands ready." He agreed with Lysander about the underage wizards being capable enough to fight in the war if they wanted to, but Scorpius wasn't about to take any chances with one of Ron Weasley's children. Plus, he genuinely liked Nigel.

Such was even further proven when Nigel said, "Trust me, we're way ahead of you," and Scorpius looked back at him to find the boy taking a long, narrow pouch from his suit pocket and pulling six hand-made wands from inside it. Hiding them away once more, Nigel added, "There are plenty more where those came from. Hugo put a charm on the bag to make it bigger inside."

"One of my mum's favorite," said Hugo. "I counted fifty wands when Nigel was loading the bag – one for every member of the core alliance, one for every professor, and about _twenty _for me."

"Are you sure that will be enough?" asked Scorpius. "You are rather prone to breaking them, as I recall."

Hugo gave him a scowling look as he pouted, "Oh, shut it, Scorpion. Let's just focus on finding our Rosie."

It was difficult for Scorpius to crack jokes when he was so worried, but a part of him hoped that doing so might make it easier to breathe. It didn't, at least not until Hugo had referred to Rose as 'ours,' as in both his and Scorpius's. _That_ did the trick.

They were hopping up the path leading to the stone sundial when Nigel asked, "My parents seemed worried when we left the pitch. What were you discussing in that meeting of yours?"

Hugo must have given him the same scowl Scorpius had just received, since before Scorpius could respond, Nigel shrugged his shoulders and whispered crossly in a different pair of ears, "What? Just because I didn't let you spy on them doesn't mean I'm not curious to know what they said, so long as Scorpius is willing to tell us."

"It's all right, Nigel," said Scorpius, if only to end the bickering. "The core alliance was just discussing the battle, and what people should do if they were to find themselves in a... _compromising_ position with a member of the Forbidden Flock." He knew that Hugo could handle the subject, but Nigel was so much more naïve, and so much more vulnerable.

"Compromising?" Nigel asked, Hugo having gone silent beside him. "I – I don't understand."

"He means in a duel," Hugo explained. "No one can seem to agree whether those duels should end in death or simply lifelong misery while rotting away in Azkaban."

"Your parents made me realize that we should just Obliviate them," Scorpius said before Hugo could make Nigel even more uncomfortable than he already had.

At first, Nigel didn't respond, but just as the trio was coming to the end of the wooden bridge, he said almost solemnly, "I asked my parents to wipe my memory once."

Scorpius had promised himself that they wouldn't stop walking until he found Rose, but he hadn't expected to hear such a thing come from his friend. Deciding to let Nigel catch his breath and to listen to what he only assumed would be a troubling story, Scorpius stopped and faced Nigel head-on, Hugo standing by his boyfriend's side.

"It was just after Astoria attacked our house two summers ago," Nigel started. Looking to Hugo, he went on, "I didn't really have you yet, at least not the way I wanted you. Nothing seemed to be going right, and when you left to stay at the hospital with your dad, I wondered if you'd ever tell him about me. I wondered if you'd ever stop seeing your secret – _our_ secret – as something that would hurt him the same way Astoria had hurt him. And I supposed I thought that if I couldn't have you, then I'd rather just forget."

He was smiling, Hugo's eyes watering as they looked at Nigel's, when he finished, "But I'm pretty glad that they wouldn't do it. It doesn't really matter how many people around us get hurt or die, because we adapt. We tell people what we never thought we could, we accept pain as a pathway instead of a barrier, and we laugh in the midst of grief. Most of the time, we don't actually need to forget."

Scorpius could hear Hugo's choked breathing and could just barely make out his tears shining in the night, but he looked away when Hugo walked up to Nigel, grabbed hold of his red ears, and kissed him. They broke apart quickly, Hugo pausing to say, "I'm yours, Nigel Creevey. I hope you know that I always have been. I've _always_ loved you."

Scorpius was still looking off into the distance, his eyes following a dark shadow that was dancing across the courtyard that the bridge opened into, when Hugo's proclamation made him think of Rose. He had been thinking about her all day, much like he always was, but not like _this_. Now, he was envisioning her the way he'd seen her after the wedding, the way she'd made love to him in the most tender yet bravest way he could have imagined. The place and time hadn't been what he would have planned it to be – the rain had come from a shower instead of the clouds, and there had been no maple leaves falling around them – but in those moments, he'd been happier than he'd ever been. And as he fought through his current grief to think of that happiness, the shadow floated ever closer to the bridge.

"_RUN!_" he yelled at Hugo and Nigel as the dementor started to smell them. Scorpius could have fought off one dementor easily enough, but he knew that there would be more of them where the one had come from.

Hugo and Nigel were very obedient, running across the bridge just as quickly as Scorpius until the three of them were back on the ground, crouched behind one of the sundial stones in hiding. Once safe, Hugo whispered anxiously, "What was it, Scorp?"

"A shadow," were all the words he could make out; he was too busy trying to understand how there could be a dementor at the castle again, long after Ron had banished them from the premises back in September.

"McGonagall's shadow?" asked Nigel.

"No," Scorpius shook his head. McGonagall's frozen body made it easy to tell that she had been the victim of a Killing Curse, meaning that her shadow had to have been a real person. "No, it was just a dementor, but I didn't want to risk being seen."

Hugo shivered at the thought of dementors flying around nearby; as far as Scorpius knew, he still couldn't produce a Patronus Charm. But as soon as his fear was gone, his quick thinking returned to him, and he said, "But if dementors are out guarding the castle, who's inside being guarded?"

Scorpius already knew the answer, and he was pretty sure both Hugo and Nigel did too. Even so, he was thrilled when Hugo stood up and said, "Let's try the main entrance." Just because they all knew what was going on didn't mean that any of them wanted to believe it.

The Entrance Hall was closer to the Boathouse, so to get there, Scorpius and company had to run down to the Black Lake, jog along its shores, and then climb up the winding steps that met up with the road from Hogsmeade. It took them ten minutes to get there, which was a full ten minutes fewer than it usually did, and during this journey, no one spoke.

All three boys attempted to open the double doors once they reached them. Scorpius tried without magic, Nigel tried after using an Unlocking Charm, and Hugo tried blasting it open with the Reductor Curse. Nothing worked. Nothing was _going_ to work. Nobody was getting into the castle, and nobody was coming out.

Nigel was the first to speak, Scorpius and Hugo far too concerned for Rose's safety to even consider what this meant in the grander sense. "You don't think _she_'s in there, do you?" he asked, and he wasn't talking about Rose.

"I dunno'," said Scorpius as he stared up at the layers of stone that towered above him and collided with the stars. "But I'm going to find out."

Hugo and Nigel had no idea what was going on when Scorpius didn't say another word, and instead starting running away from the door until his legs were moving fast enough for him to transform. He no longer cared to keep his falcon form a secret, especially from two people he knew for certain that he could trust, so he turned into a bird and flapped his boundless wings until he was high enough in the blackness to turn around and fly to the Headmaster tower.

Scorpius knew that he would find her there long before he actually glided past the illuminated window, but he couldn't put a word on his fury when he saw Astoria sitting in the chair that used to be McGonagall's, behind a desk that used to be his second home. He had to convince himself not to crash through the window and attack Astoria right there and then, but he knew it wasn't time yet. Plus, Rose wasn't there with her. As far as Scorpius could see, Astoria was alone in the circular room, sitting there just as calmly and comfortably as she used to sit in the dining room at Malfoy Manor, with a black chess piece curled up in her hand...

_ "She's home!" his call echoed down the second floor hallway and down the marble staircase, into the massive dining hall and sending vibrations through the ancient chandelier that hung above the empty space where a table would sit when the Malfoys hosted dinner parties, which was very rarely. Scorpius kept saying the words as he slid down the staircase railing, ignoring Draco's worried yelling from behind him._

_ The boy reached the ground floor in the same moment that his mother did, Astoria scooping him up in her arms as the speed of his ride flew him off the railing and into the air. "I'm home," she concluded for him._

_ For a long while, Scorpius buried himself in her chest, closing his eyes and clawing his hands around his shoulders so that he could get as close to her as possible. He rubbed his cheek against her velvet witch's cloak, twirled his fingers through her black hair, and inhaled the smell of a nighttime fire. Her signature scent was cold around the edges, sending crispy chills down his nose and into his throat, but its core was so hot it burned his tongue. He was far too happy to feel the pain._

_ Scorpius only backed away when Astoria's chin moved atop his head so that she could tell him, "I brought something for you, you know. Do you want to see it?"_

_ Once his head was free, Scorpius nodded with all his might. His mother took a moment to find his gift within the depths of her bag that sat on the floor, and in the meantime, he repositioned himself on her lap so that he could see her face. He had feared that he hadn't looked at it long enough before she'd left, and he wanted to remember every part of it in case she left him again. He wanted to remember the skin that was the color of snow just before it browned and turned to mud. He wanted to remember the eyes that were the kind of ice that was so thick it never broke, far too thick to the see the water it hid. He wanted to remember that the shape of her face reminded him of a river: how it was long and pointed, twisted and eternal._

_ "This," said Astoria as she unraveled one of his hands from her clothes and wrapped it around a strangely shaped stone, "Is a chess piece called a knight. And whenever you feel scared or sad, whenever your hands start to sweat or shake, whenever somebody leaves you, I want you to hold onto this knight and remember that you're strong and that you're not alone."_

_ When Scorpius looked away from her eyes and down at his hand, he found that the pure white stone was carved to look like a horse ready to gallop. Astoria had a carbon copy of the stone in her own hand, only hers was black._

_ Using her free hand to pet Scorpius's cheek, she said, "Now tell me, son, what does a knight do?"_

_ At first, Scorpius didn't know the answer to her question, but when he glanced around the room and looked from his father's hawk-like stance at the top of the stairs to the double doors at the front of the hall, it came to him clear as day. His eyes were back on his mother's when he told her, "He brings people home."_

Scorpius landed as a human a few yards away from the Quidditch pitch, just far enough from the guards that they wouldn't have seen him transform. His thoughts were spinning as he knelt down to bring himself back to earth. Just as he had done countless times before, he cursed himself for not understanding his mother's motives sooner and wished that he could turn back time so that he might change the present. But even a time-turner wouldn't change anything. Whatever happened, happened.

He had let Rose go even after promising not to, and Astoria had known that he would. That was why she'd had McGonagall killed, whether by herself or by one of her faithful followers – because she knew that it was the only thing that would make Scorpius forget. It made him forget about what he had broken and what he needed to protect, because all he had wanted was that knight. Astoria must have hoped that he'd tell Rose to get it for him, even if it had already been gone, which would drive her into the castle. Astoria would be waiting for her there, no doubt having been let inside by Al, and she'd snatch her prey and then lock the doors for the night, waiting to see how long it would take for Scorpius to figure out her plan.

Now, he had finally figured it out. Now, it was time to make his own plan. Now, it was time to become a knight. It was time to bring his people home. That was what Scorpius told himself as he made his way back onto that chiseled wooden floor just as Hugo and Nigel were returning on foot, walking straight into the middle of the conglomeration of tables to say as loudly as he could to anyone who would listen, "ASTORIA'S TAKEN THE CASTLE."

Ron was the first to react. Everyone was jaw-dropped and turning to their neighbors with panicked whispers, but Ron was loud when he asked from the closest table, "The castle? _Rose_ is in the castle!"

It took all the courage Scorpius had ever known to say, "Astoria has her too."

He was expecting the punch that Ron plastered across his face, though it came much faster than he'd thought it would. Ron's legs were _really_ long. It didn't hurt all that much, since his face was already numb from the cold and his own inner agony, but it did make Scorpius dizzy. He was still spinning atop his feet when Ron yelled, "You promised to _protect_ her!"

"And I _will_!" said Scorpius once he regained his footing and noticed that both Draco and Harry were at his side, ready and willing to fight Ron if he tried something again. Seeing that Harry was there, Scorpius looked around for Lily, finding her hiding behind Ginny and James and looking as bruised and battered as Scorpius felt inside, but for once, she wasn't wearing any make-up. Her guilty tears must have washed it all away.

Thinking that he needed to be as strong as she had been through her first months of lycanthropy, Scorpius stood tall and said to Ron, "Believe me, I _will_ fight for her. We all will." When Ron calmed, Scorpius turned his head to address the rest of the crowd as he added, "We will _all_ fight for what is rightfully ours. We will fight for our families. We will fight for our blood. We will fight for our _home_. And whatever the Flock tries to steal from us, we'll take right back with something far stronger than vengeance. We'll take it with hope."

All eyes were on him as Scorpius looked for Nigel, and the youngest Creevey seemed to understand what his leader wanted without any oral explanation. Wordlessly, he took that pouch from his pocket, handed Scorpius about ten of his wands, and then told everyone to back away. Scorpius was in the center of a circle with a three yard radius, his army standing on all sides of him, as he held the wands in his hands, pointed them at his neck, and announced with a voice that was sure to reach the castle, the Ministry, and quite possibly the white cliffs of Dover, "THIS IS THE LEADER OF THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX SPEAKING ON BEHALF OF WITCHES AND WIZARDS WHO FIGHT FOR FREEDOM. ASTORIA, IT IS TIME TO END YOUR THIRST FOR BLOOD. RETURN YOUR CAPTIVE TO US, UNHARMED, BY SUNRISE, OR WE WILL BREAK OPEN YOUR DOORS AND SHATTER YOUR WINDOWS AND _BURN YOU ALIVE_."

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_**Note: **I've been wanting to provide some depth into Scorpius's relationship with Astoria for a while now, so I hoped you all enjoyed those flashbacks. Let me know what you thought of them and the rest of the chapter in a review._

_Next chapter is Al's perspective again, and I'm _very_ excited for it. It will **definitely be out within the week, by January 11th at the latest** (I'm leaving on a trip that day, so I won't let this chapter be late)._

_Thanks for reading!_

_-Hailey_


	36. The Final Wizarding Race

**_Note:_**_ This one was a lot of fun to write, and it was inspired a lot by a certain piece of literature and some important historical places, so I'm curious to see if you catch any of those references._

_As always, please leave a review if you can, and I promise I will respond to it (unless posted as Guest). The next chapter should be up around January 27th.  
_

_Thanks for reading!  
_

_-Hailey_

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**36 – The Final Wizarding Race**

Had he really said _burn you alive? _Al's eyes rolled just thinking about Scorpius Malfoy threatening the Forbidden Flock with death by flames. There was no way good-guy Scorpius could watch anyone burn to death, especially if the death was on his hands. Albus knew a thing or two about guilt, and Scorpius couldn't bear any more of it after everything he'd been through as it was. And yet, even with Al's mind telling him that Scorpius's threats were completely hollow, his legs were racing through the castle halls and up the moving staircases as the echoes of Scorpius's words continued to bounce off the stained-glass windows on every landing. Perhaps it was something else Scorpius had mentioned – something about returning a captive, speaking as though Astoria had kidnapped someone – that made Al run. While Al had always had multiple people in his life he would kill for but perhaps only one for whom he'd die, Scorpius would die for anyone, but there was only one person he might kill for.

Ravenous, angry eyes were taunting him from every portrait in the hall as he mounted steps two at a time. Some of the painted subjects even dared to spit at Al, and although the gesture was simply for show, it increasingly infuriated Al with each new floor he came to. He was on the landing of the sixth when he yelled at Glanmore Peakes, the infamous slayer of some sea serpent, "Why don't you stick your sword at one of these other _barmy_ blokes?"

All across the stairs laid the runts of Astoria's army. Most of the Forbidden Flock had split into smaller groups and taken up respective rooms all around the castle to consult and plan for the imminent battle, so the ones who hadn't been welcomed in such groups were now riding the staircases like they were toddlers on a roller coaster. Most of them were old, foolish, and poor, so Al doubted that any of them had attended Hogwarts back in the day, and now they were reveling in the castle's majesty.

"_They_ don't have the legacy to withhold that you do, _Potter,"_ grumbled Peakes through the thick tufts of ginger hair that covered his face and flew like mountains of autumn leaves beneath his captain's hat.

Al sighed as soon as his name had been mentioned. Now, all the runts were gathering around him with wonder, almost as if he was a god, though that god seemed to be a demon for many of them. Even the most uneducated wizards knew the name Potter, making it impossible for Al to ever forget it.

He made it halfway up the final staircase just by trudging through the crowd, but eventually Al couldn't take their feigning hands reaching out for him anymore. Turning around and pointing the Elder Wand straight into the thick of the toothless mutts, he seethed, "_Levicorpus." _Instantly, their bodies were snatched and hung upside-down as if an invisible rope had been tied from the ceiling to their ankles. Last summer, Al's wand would have produced the Half-Blood Prince's spell only to its usual power, affecting one or two victims at most, but now it hung nearly a hundred.

Smiling to himself, Al left the poor souls hanging and finally reached the seventh floor, where he found just the person he'd been looking for walking in slow, steady strides across the hall. It didn't matter how dire the situation, Astoria always walked slowly, her movements calm and collected even in the midst of chaos. Now, she was heading in the opposite direction of the Headmaster Tower, which she'd taken up as her own private headquarters as soon as the Flock had infiltrated the castle.

Al was about to address his leader, thinking that she hadn't seen him there, when Astoria said without looking at him, "Wait in my office. I shall return in ten minutes." She didn't mention the spell Al had cast on her most hopeless soldiers.

Too tempted, Al found himself watching Astoria as she passed the Fat Lady's portrait and stopped in front of the Barnabas the Barmy tapestry, but told himself to be on his way before he actually saw her go inside the Room of Requirement. Al didn't want to know what she was using that room for, even less who might be in it.

He didn't much want to pay a visit to McGonagall's old office, either, but he figured that he had no choice in that particular matter. Still, he made a real effort to avoid the eyes coming from this room's portraits as he walked straight for the window that overlooked the Quidditch pitch. The fire he'd started had long since been put out, but Al could still see the lights flickering around the white tarp that housed all of Neville and Luna's guests. By now, Scorpius would have recruited the rest of the Order of the Phoenix and notified the Ministry of Astoria's attack, but only the former would do him any good. Astoria had already triggered the freezing spell that the late Calder had set on the Ministry, so Shacklebolt and his posse wouldn't be coming to save the day any time soon.

Around the pitch and beneath the falling snow, Al noticed a few figures stationed as guards, their wands pointed into the sky. In perfect unison, the Aurors blasted spell after spell at the stars, and soon a translucent half-sphere had covered the Order's side of the Hogwarts grounds. Their protective charms stretched around the entirety of the Quidditch pitch, wrapping all the way around Hagrid's Hut and well into the surrounding Forbidden Forest. Al didn't like that Scorpius had taken the forest for himself, but it wouldn't be a detrimental loss to the Flock. Vega, Astoria's war strategist, had drawn the spiders out and was storing them in Hogsmeade, where half of the army was currently being kept to launch their own borders. It was only Zephorien Al was worried about, even though he had left the dragon far outside the Hogwarts property line, where he was sure to be safe. Plus, dragons were known to be able to take care of themselves when need be.

Though truth be told, Al's worries extended further than just Zephyr. Ever since Astoria had learned just how special Al's connection with the dragon was, she'd been using it to his advantage, and then she'd done the same with Lily. Al's little sister was out there somewhere, hiding with her friends and family underneath the tarp or, if she was smart, she'd already started running. Either way, she was safe; Al had made sure of that. He'd paid Lily's debt to Astoria without questioning its price: an eye for an eye, a kill for a kill, a heart for a heart.

"Don't worry. She will survive this." The voice came from behind Albus, where he'd been trying not to look. The woman's speech was well-annunciated, pure, and precise, much like the track of the single tear that trickled down Al's cheek as he heard her.

He finally turned around when she repeated, "Lily will survive this war, and she will do so because of you. You saved her life."

"Only by taking _yours!_" Al yelled back at McGonagall through her giant, gold-framed portrait that hung directly above her old desk. She looked different in the painting than she had on that dance floor – younger, maybe even happier, or at least more peaceful. She was smiling when Al asked desperately, "Why didn't you fight back? You just stood there, looking at me. You didn't yell for help, you didn't run, you didn't even point your wand in my direction."

The memory of her face when he'd sent the green spark her way would be etched into his mind forever, of that he was certain. Al would never forget the way all of her wrinkles went still, or the way she turned her eyes toward the center of the dance floor as if searching for someone and closed them when she didn't find him, or the way her head felt in his hand when he'd caught it just before she fell to the ground… just before he'd fled in a trail of flames.

Al hadn't expected an answer to his most recent question, so he was especially surprised when McGonagall gave him a number of responses. "Because I have been dying longer than you've been alive," she told him. "Because Astoria would have killed you if I hadn't let you or Lily kill me. Because Scorpius would never have declared war without a little push. And because my fate was sealed the moment you found a way back into the castle this fall. You're a lot more powerful than you think you are, Potter."

"Don't call me that," Al spat out before he knew what he was saying. The words left his mouth like a reflex, and once they were gone, he didn't know why he'd said them. Was it only because he didn't want to be associated with the name, or was there more to his anger than that? Was there envy, because only Ilana was allowed to call him by his surname? Was there denial, because after so many years of trying to tarnish the name, Al had finally cemented his legacy of disappointment?

He'd been looking at the wooden floor as shame swept upon him, but when Al looked back up at McGonagall, he saw that the eyes of her neighboring portrait subjects had all gone from closed with sleep to open with curiosity. Severus Snape's black orbs were on him once more, as were Albus Dumbledore's blue bulbs, Armando Dippet's muddy pits, and Newt Scamander's grassy blades. They made Al suddenly realize that it was one thing to spend an entire childhood feeling like the world was watching him, and another entirely to stand on the cliffs of adulthood and actually see his own reflection in the eyes of his watchers.

Cocking her head to each side as she took in the presence of her predecessors, McGonagall smirked and said to Al, "You understand what I mean now, Potter? Just one voice has the power to awaken manifold generations."

Al was staring at Snape with such intent focus that he noticed his namesake close his eyes long before Al heard Astoria turning the knob on the other side of the office door. When she was inside the room and had retaken her desk chair, all of the Headmasters pretended to fall back asleep.

"I assume you heard Scorpius's _lovely_ message," she droned at Al while staring at the chess boards that had taken center stage on her desk. The white queen had nearly reached the edge of her opposing end of the board, but Al could tell that it was Astoria's turn, because in her hand she was clasping a rather regal black knight.

Upon silently convincing himself to look away from the portraits, Al sat down across from Astoria and said, "The whole world heard it." When Astoria didn't so much as laugh at his attempt at dark humor, he proclaimed, "I assume you're planning to hold on to whomever you've taken hostage."

_That_ did make Astoria laugh. "I wouldn't have captured them if I didn't plan on _keeping_ them." Al paid note to the fact that Astoria had refrained from speaking the gender of her captive, let alone the name. He paid even more note to what she said next. "And while I am keeping my captive, I would like you to lead the army into battle, taking the very head of the Flock vanguard."

"_What?"_ asked Al. It was the only word he could think of, for this was the last thing he'd expected Astoria to say. When Al had decided to pay Lily's debt for her, he'd been lucky for his sister to be distracted by James long enough for him to go behind her back, but there was another risk he'd taken by killing McGonagall in Lily's place. Astoria always liked things to go according to plan, and by eliminating Lily from the equation, Al had ruined her latest plan. In order to make it up to her, he'd provided Astoria with access into Hogwarts castle, leading her and the rest of the army into Hogsmeade and through Ariana Dumbledore's portrait tunnel that ended in the Room of Requirement. She had thanked him for such ingenuity, but Al had remained unconvinced that her trust in him had been restored, at least until now.

"I'm not going to repeat myself for the sake of your poor hearing, Albus," Astoria said. "Vega is in the Hog's Head awaiting your orders, and you only have seven hours until the sun rises and Scorpius's threat must be tested. I suggest you get moving."

Without another word, Al stood from his chair and nodded in acknowledgement as Astoria explained, "You'll have to use your favorite passageway, of course. Oh, but this time, think of a dark room with a red curtain hanging down across its center." He was about to leave with her orders kept in his mind when he saw that Astoria had yet to make her move in the game of chess she was playing against some invisible opponent.

Al held out his open palm above the board, and reluctantly Astoria placed the black knight into his hand. Then he set it down on the board right beside the white queen, where the miniature horse reared onto its hind legs and smashed its hooves against the queen's back until she toppled face-first onto the board in a hundred shattered pieces. Al had never been particularly skilled at chess, but there was one tactic that Scorpius and his Uncle Ron had taught him early: as soon as you get the chance, kill the queen.

The walk back to the hallway went by much faster than the one up had gone. Al's victims were still hanging below the ceiling as they sent him lop-sided sneers, and Al was too busy marvelling in the magic to notice Ryder until he ran right into her. She was sitting on the floor with her back to the tapestry and her eyes were on the wall where the door to the Room of Requirement was hidden. Al hadn't seen her since her boyfriend had been killed, and he was glad of that as soon as he took in the sight of her swollen, drooping eyelids.

Al didn't say anything for fear that she might attack him; Ryder had always been fiercely rash, to say the least. But of course, he was attacked anyway, Ryder slowly rolling her wand across the length of her palm as she said to him, "You betray Astoria's trust, you put my brother in prison, you let Calder _die_ right in front of you, and you get rewarded for it. _You_ get an army, while I have to sit here like some stupid guard dog."

"Ryder, look-" Al tried to say before he was cut off, Ryder lifting her hands into the air. He wasn't going to argue over or even apologize for the majority of his wrongdoings, because they were all true and because she wasn't ever going to forgive him, but there was one thing she'd said that he couldn't let slide. Al never _put_ Knox in prison. Rookie chose to do so himself in order to pay his debt to both Astoria and Al; Al would never have done that to the man who had, at the time, been his best and only friend.

Ryder's hands were in the air a full minute before she spoke again. Her teeth were grating against each other and her lips were trembling when she finally turned to look up at Al and said, "But I won't be a guard dog forever. Astoria wants me to remain in the castle at sunrise, but surely she'll only need me here for a couple of hours. Once I'm free, I'll be the first one on that battle ground, and your _sweet_ sister will be the first person I kill."

A small ant was crawling quickly across the marble floor when Ryder went silent once more, and she killed the creature with a single whisper and a flick of her wrist. That was what made Al understand that her threat to murder Lily wasn't just some facetious comment; it was a promise.

Her wand was pointed at him throughout his three paces across the hall, even still as the double door appeared and opened before him and he slipped inside. Al's relief upon getting away from Ryder was only temporary, though, because the room he walked into was just as threatening and was filled with just as much hate. The side Al was on was basically empty, a long and narrow expanse of nothingness with no windows and no light but for the one he'd cast with his wand. The floors and ceiling were concrete painted white, and the walls were made of mirrors that all seemed red thanks to the curtain that acted as a separator, though what it separated, Al didn't know. The only thing on this side of the room that was of any interest to him was the portrait hanging in the middle of the longest mirrored wall, its frame around an abstract painting that Al would be more than happy to disappear inside.

He was about to do just that when he heard screaming from behind the curtain. The sound was high-pitched, sharp, and as filled with pain as it was painful to hear. The scream seemed to go on forever, no doubt thanks to its impressive echo, and Albus hated every second of it. He felt much like he did when Astoria had tortured Zephorien – like he was connected to this soul and therefore could feel everything they felt, branded together through magic or simply telepathic from years of hard-earned friendship.

Wynn Traylor stepped out from behind the curtain as soon as Al had his hand on the red velvet and was about to pull it to the side. Upon seeing the aging albino, Al stumbled back a few steps and tried to hide both his curiosity and his gaze. Wynn was intimidating for a legitimate reason, and there was no question in Al's mind that the screams had been his doing.

"You never have been able to look me in the eye," Wynn said in his husky growl, an odd match to his sing-song Welsh accent. Al wasn't focused on either his voice or his bloody eyes at that moment, though. He was more concerned with the blood that Wynn was magically wiping off his hands… the blood that was most definitely _not_ his own.

Once his hands were clean, Wynn procured a stiff, stony chair for himself to sit on and placed it right beside the portrait. This way, Al would have to walk directly past him in order to escape his presence. He wasn't quite ready to get so close, which Wynn of course understood. He seemed to want to tell Al a story, and he was giving Al no choice but to listen.

"That's all right. I don't blame you," he was saying as he settled into his chair. "No one could when I was a boy. Of course, being invisible is quite an ironic experience, because when people refuse to look at you, it usually means that you're all they ever talk about. There were rumors about me – about where I came from – dating back to a time I can't even remember. The most widely acknowledged was the one that proclaimed I had been born in the ocean, and had washed up on the shores of the South Stack Lighthouse, famous for its white color that made it stand apart from all the other buildings in Holyhead."

"Holyhead? As in, home of the Holyhead Harpies?" asked Al suddenly. He hadn't meant to interrupt, but of course he knew this town. In fact, he had _visited_ this town, though it had been many years ago, when Ginny had still been playing professionally on the all-female Quidditch team.

"The one and only," replied Wynn. "Those girls were the worst of everyone, but I learned to live with them. I adopted the rumor as a truth and started living in the lighthouse until my letter from Hogwarts was dropped off by a snowy owl. School wasn't much better than home, but at least I had magic then, and by that time I was teaching myself to be an Animagus as well. I learned how to accept the invisibility I'd been born with, but now I know better. The truth, Black Hawk, is that you can't fight a war on your own."

At this point, Al was having a hard time listening to Wynn. Though the older wizard didn't seem to notice the noise, the screaming had started again just after Al had spoken. It was almost as if the prisoner wanted to be heard, and not just by anyone but by Al. Surely, Wynn had put a tongue-tying curse on him or her to stop them from actually speaking, and the screams sounded that much more painful as they pushed through the curse.

Seeing that Al was distracted, his head turned toward the curtain rather blatantly, Wynn finished his story and stood from the chair. Then he walked past Al and petted the curtain while saying, "And that's exactly how I'm going to get our prisoner here to crack – leave her to her loneliness, and see how long it takes for her to self-destruct."

Because Wynn had provided him with a clue as to who the prisoner was, or maybe just because Al was well versed in loneliness and self-destruction, he looked Wynn straight in his bright red eyes and said, "You're despicable."

"Aren't we all?" replied Wynn with a pink smile plastered from cheek to cheek. It didn't matter if Wynn was pleased with his answer, though, since Al had already turned around and was opening the portrait hole to be on his way.

This walk was the longest of the night. The whole way through the cold, dusty tunnel to Hogsmeade, Al couldn't get the girl's screams out of his head. And then there was all the red – Astoria's curtain, Wynn's eyes, the prisoner's blood – and the way she had seemingly tried to gain Al's attention when she'd heard his voice. It was Rose. It _had_ to be Rose. And while Al had no idea how Astoria would have caught her since he'd been careful to keep tabs on her and therefore knew that she'd been locked inside the castle all night, he was more concerned about what Astoria might do with Rose now that she had her. The only thing that was more disconcerting than that particular thought was what Wynn had said about loneliness.

For months, _years_ even, Al had been fighting a war on his own, and the albino was right: he couldn't win. It didn't matter which side he was on or who he aligned with, because at the end of the day Albus would always be alone. He would always be the third wheel to his siblings and to his ex-best mates, and he would always be Astoria's lackey. He didn't want to let Rose be tortured like he'd allowed so many other terrible things to happen, but he also didn't want to lead Astoria's army. He wanted to lead his _own_ army, because that was the only way he could acquire enough power to protect himself from whoever he decided was his enemy.

So, when Al jumped down from the other end of the portrait hole and saw Vega sitting at a table with her entourage of dark wizards, Al ran past them before he was noticed and didn't say a word of hello. High Street was wide awake in the night, crowded by Flock criminals attempting to rob the shops and magizoologists trying to tame a host of spiders. In the background, Al could hear the chanting war songs of real soldiers from the Quidditch pitch and the roars of giants from a far-off cave. Normally, such surroundings would have thrown off his focus, but Al was determined to accomplish the latest goal for himself. He wasn't ready to lead this army on his own, but with a little help, he might be.

Zephyr was right where Al had last left him. If at all possible, it seemed to Al as though the dragon had doubled in size over the past few months, almost as if he underwent growth spurts whenever he sensed battle on the horizon. Or, maybe he just had a larger appetite when he was scared.

The dragon was thrilled to see his master, bowing to Albus and pressing the flat side of his head against Al's chest so that his scales matched up perfectly with Al's branded tattoo that was hidden behind his black cloak. Then, sensing Al's wishes through their telepathic bond, Zephyr brought his head back up in the sky with his stretched neck, wrapped his long, spiky tail around Al's hips, and hoisted the boy onto his back.

Patting his hand against Zephyr's scales as the dragon readied himself to fly, Al said, "All right, buddy, it's high time you show me where you came from."

They were lifting off beneath the rounded moon within seconds, and soon they were soaring over darkened Scottish countryside and dimly lit streets of small villages. Al knew the general direction in which they should fly, but it turned out he didn't need to; Zephorien knew exactly where he was headed. Once they passed Dufftown – the closest Muggle village to Hogwarts that appeared from above to be shaped like a winter's boot – there was about an hour's worth of rolling hills to cover before they reached the snowy mountains of Fort William. Twenty minutes of furious flying later, Al was rearing Zephorien onto the westernmost shores of Mull Isle, the middle island of the Inner Hebrides.

Al had purposefully grounded in a rather barren area of the island, just to make sure that no Muggle sleepwalkers happened to see the giant dragon he'd brought with him. There were no buildings in any direction of Al's line of vision; all he could see was darkness reflected against the snow and water, all he could hear were the waves lapping against the stony cliffs, and all he could smell was the saltiness of the sea being blown up his nose by the chilling wind.

During the few minutes he gave Zephyr to hunt, Al stood at the very edge of the island and looked out at the vast ocean before him, wondering where he would start to look for Zephorien's relatives. He couldn't help but think back on the last time he'd been to the ocean, meeting Astoria and Knox in Dover before they set off for Romania. It felt like a thousand years ago, yet somehow Al was thinking of the same thing – or rather, the same person – now as he had been thinking of then. He was thinking of Ilana, and how much she would love it here, with the wind and the water and the cliff. Al had always felt like their relationship sat on the edge of some cliff somewhere, and the only thing that had kept them both from falling into the water below was the wind that blew their bodies back to land.

The only thing that managed to distract Al from his favorite imaginations was the sight of more lapping waves that were mysteriously different from the ones he currently stood over. These whitecaps were also pounding against stony shores, but the shores appeared to be attached to a dark, grim building that towered above the water like a whale breaching into the sky. The building was too far away for Al to even guess at what it was being used for, and by the time he realized that he wanted to get a closer look at it, Zephorien was nowhere to be found.

At least, that was until Al felt the familiar stabbing pain in his chest and turned around to see flames roaring down the side of a distant hill and causing avalanches of snow to melt down its side. "Bloody hell, Oreo, what have you done now?" Al cursed as he started running toward the fire.

The snow was impossible to run through as it clung to Al's ankles like Inferi clinging to living flesh, but he found his way to his other half somehow. Zephorien was still spitting fire when Al made it to him, and it took a minute for Al to understand why the dragon was in such anguish. His right hind ankle had been caught in a foothold trap, only this was no normal hunting trap.

It was made primarily of a circular band of steel that must have been ten times the size of normal traps used for wild dogs and game. Attached to the band was a chain fastened deep into the ground, and Al could hear its coil springs squeaking as loudly as shipping boats rocking against a pier. Zephorien was only making matters worse as he tried to pull on the trap in order to get free, sufficing to tighten the trap's jaw around his claws. After a few minutes of soothing words and calmed breathing, Al was able to make Zephyr stand still just long enough for him to snap the trap in half with a Reductor Curse.

Finally free, Zephyr set off to pace atop the hill's summit as if he needed to make sure he could still walk, and Al tried to inspect the trap (though there was little left to inspect after blowing it to bits) that had clearly been built specifically for dragons. He was worried about who might have made it, but he was even more curious about how many dragons it had already caught, and how close those captives might be now.

Al was testing the strength of the trap's spring when he heard a parade of footsteps marching up from below, followed by the sounds of celebratory cooing. Thanks to Zephyr's preoccupied pacing, Al wasn't able to run away before three figures came upon him. He wasn't at all afraid of them, though. In fact, if he was lucky, these hunters might be able to lead Al to the exact spot he was looking for.

They were too excited by the sight of Zephorien to notice Al crouched in the snow beneath them. Al was eyeing their choice of clothing – scraps of leather sewn together, ratty old bandanas, and coats that reeked of body odor from five meters away – when Zephyr first smelled them. He must have come across them before being saved and brought to Romania, because he didn't seem to like the crew at all. He was spewing out even more fire and stomping his feet against the ground even harder than he had when trapped. He didn't even want to run from them; on the contrary, it seemed to Al as if he wanted to kill them.

"Here, boy! Play nice now," said the eldest male of the three to the dragon. He was who Al assumed was the leader, with his tall top hat and clothes a washed-out black color as if stained with tea bags. He looked around the same age as Al's parents, but even after all those years, he had no idea how to train a dragon.

The younger man closely resembled the older one, though his hat was smaller and his smile far more mischievous. It was the sight of him that made Al realize that these wizards were pirates; this one was wearing an eye patch just to be sure that everyone he met knew what he was.

When Zephyr roared flames straight for that eye patch, the younger man scurried away twice as quickly as he'd come, having suddenly disappeared into the depths of the nearby wood. The older one was still trying to calm Zephyr down as he stroked his scruffy beard in thought, but the third pirate seemed to think that it was time to take matters into her own hands.

"I say, off with its head!" the woman yelled while swinging a long stick at Zephyr that looked remarkably like a croquet mallet from where Al was sitting.

Her threat was what made Al finally stand up and pull Zephyr back, telling the dragon through his own thoughts to fly overhead for a while, but warning him not to stray too far. Zephyr turned away from the pirates to look at Al before he spread his vast wings and lifted from the ground, and Al smiled when he saw the pirates staring at him in shock.

"Who are you, and how'd ya do tha'?" yelled the woman once Zephorien was gone. "And where's it goin'?"

"More importantly, where did a youngin' like you learn your ways with such beasts?" asked the man with the top hat.

Al was only a few feet away from them now, and he knew he already had them wrapped around his finger. Thinking fast, he replied, "My name's Felix Higgs. I – I'm a Muggle-born, and I'm only trying to get away from my school. War's broken out you see, and as for my dragon, well, I've always been good at Care of Magical Creatures."

The woman looked at Al suspiciously, but the man bought his lies hook, line, and sinker. He looked rather pleased about meeting 'Felix' as he said, "Right, well me name's Greer Lidell, and me family's been livin' on these isles for hundreds of years without ever bein' able to tame a dragon like you 'ave.

"This 'ere's me wife, Eleri," he gestured to the woman, though she was already glaring at him like he'd just signed their mutual death sentence. "And the one who ran off is me little brother, Fergus. Together, we're the last surviving clan of Hebridean pirates!"

Al was surprised by his open admittance, and Eleri seemed to be as well, since she hit her husband hard on the shoulder with that mallet of hers and sneered at him, "Yer not suppose' to _tell_ him that!"

"I thought it was only the ship I wasn't suppose' ter tell 'im abou'?" asked Greer before receiving yet another hit of Eleri's mallet, harder this time. Al was grimacing just thinking about what that must have felt like and Greer was rubbing his wound as he tried to distract himself from the pain, turning back to Al and asking, "Would you perchance like some tea?"

"Er, I-" started Al before he really knew how to respond.

Luckily, Eleri responded for him, taking a few lethargic steps forward and saying through squinted eyes, "That dragon's not yours to keep, ya know. He belonged to _us_ first."

Sensing the tension in Eleri's voice, Greer suddenly turned around and walked away while mumbling that he was going to make some tea. Al wasn't all that thirsty, but just looking at Eleri reminded him of the way Astoria looked at her victims, so he found himself thinking that tea sounded like a terrific idea.

Being careful about his choice of words, Al looked Eleri straight in her green eyes that were somewhat muddied by her unkempt, spiky brown hair, and explained, "I know he belonged to you first; that's why I'm here. Zephorien here has taken a great liking in me, for whatever reason, but I fear he won't be safe with just me. So, I've come to find the rest of his litter." He hadn't lied all that much this time, but of course Eleri was even angrier than she'd been before.

"Oh, I see!" she said with widened eyes. "So, you think you can jus' march into our territory, say a nice hello, impress us with your babysitting skills, and we'll jus' _give you_ the rest of our dragons? Are you _mental, boy?"_

Al laughed, because now he knew exactly what to say. After all, she'd just given him the only information he was looking for, and the only way to earn respect with a pirate was to be a pirate too. So, with a sudden burst of confidence, he told her, "No, I don't expect you to _give me_ the other dragons. I expect to steal them for myself, right after I tame them the same way I did with your old runt." He had his fist curled around his wand and was pointing it at Eleri's kneecaps as he finished with, "Now, since you've clearly never tamed one yourself, I suggest that you show me where you're hiding the rest of your dragons and let me do my magic on them. If you're a _real _pirate, perhaps you'll be able to steal them right back from me."

She was staring down at his wand and could sense the power emanating from it, but Al knew that she would have abided even without his back-up plan. If she and her boys had truly been sailing through these islands for generations and _still_ hadn't successfully bound a dragon, then surely their desperation had reached unforeseeable heights. It also meant that they had no idea how the binding process worked, and therefore wouldn't know that once Al bound himself to Zephorien's siblings, those dragons would barbecue anything in sight just to make sure that their master returned safely to school.

Eleri led him to her ship without another word, yelling into the woods for Fergus to come out and join them. Apparently, this one only spoke on rare occasions and liked to appear and disappear whenever least expected. He was also rather shy, turning away from Al and glancing over at him curiously every few seconds of their walk, but he was always grinning like a fool to make people think that he felt comfortable around them.

The boat looked more like an enlarged canoe than a pirate ship to Al, but it was well enchanted, a small hatch in the middle of its body opening to the living quarters that were twice the size of the ship itself. Back on deck, there were only a couple moldy oars and rusty shackles, but there was a very white, well intact sail that Eleri hoisted with ease, the way only someone who'd sailed their whole life would be able to.

They headed due west and sailed for about a half an hour, swerving slightly to avoid the large building Al had noticed earlier. Throughout the trip, Al sipped his tea graciously, smiled back at Fergus when he noticed the man staring, and routinely checked the skies to make sure Zephorien was near. He always was, circling above the rough waters and breathing out all of Al's anxiety for him.

Al was checking up on Zephyr for the tenth time when Greer announced their arrival at what he called the Isle of Staffa, an island far smaller than Mull and widely renowned for its natural treasure: Fingal's Cave. The opening of that cave was what they used as a port, and inside it was where the dragons were kept.

Only Eleri went into the cave with Al, the men deciding to wait for them on the ship. The former pair had to climb carefully along the walls of jaggedly carved rock, avoiding both the raging water beneath them as well as the vicious vampire bats from above, to make it into the core of the cave. Said core was quite a long way from the cave's sole entrance, but Al tried to remind himself that even if this was some bizarre pirate trick, he was powerful enough to get out of it. Plus, Zephorien was currently sitting on the island top right above them.

The center of the cave was barred by what Eleri called an impenetrable protective spell, having stopped Al from going any farther just as the wall was beginning to turn to the left. "If the spell's impenetrable, how do you get in?" asked Al.

"We don't," Eleri answered with as much fear as she'd shown Al since he'd met her. She was telling the truth.

Al was beginning to think that this plan had been very badly thought out as he slowly understood just what Eleri was inferring. She and her co-pirates captured dragons and tried to tame them in hopes that the beasts could be a part of their crew, but when the dragons were too wild to be tamed, the pirates used themselves as bait to lead the dragons into the caves and then leave them there to die. It wasn't until Al heard the screeching call of a dragon that sounded exactly like his own that he told Eleri, "Well, I'm not you," and turned the corner.

The first skeleton he found must have been fifty or more years gone, and Al was rather impressed to discover that Greer had meant what he'd said about his family history. There were three more skeletons on the way into the very heart of the cave, all stacked along the water base that was only as a deep as a puddle now, with smaller bones caught on ends of rocks and hanging from crystals in the ceiling. Al tried to ignore them, though, which grew easier as he traveled farther into the cave and as the calls of live dragons filled his ears like a child's cry filling her mother's heart.

There were five of them still standing, all piled on top of one another in a large, circular expanse that had surely never seen the sunlight. Al's lit wand made them stir slightly, but they were all to starved and weak to even attempt to hurt him. They just laid there, the ones that hadn't already gone blind staring at him with contempt in their red eyes and the ones that still had enough strength crying in desperate, pleading tones.

Trying to remember the binding process that Charlie had explained and performed for him and Zephyr in Romania, Al slowly walked up to the beast that was closest to him, his hands in the air as if surrendering to show that he meant no harm. This dragon was smaller than Zephorien, perhaps the same size Zephyr had been when in Romania, and Al could tell from the far smaller dragon clinging to his mother's side that this one was female.

It took all her leftover strength for the mother to push her baby away from Al in order to protect him, and she nearly collapsed afterward. At first, Al thought that her fury may be a good thing, since in order to be bound to her, she'd need to spit some fire to meet his wind. But on second thought, Al realized that he might only need her deep breaths.

He spoke to her consolingly, emulating the way he would always talk to little Remy, until he was standing close enough to her to start sending gusts of wind her way. She shook her head at the feel of the air, but after a minute or so, she snorted grandly, and that was enough. The gust from her own exhale met Al's wind and soon the brand he'd magically fashioned himself was sinking the pattern of her scales into his skin, all along his stomach and right below the tattoo that Zephyr had given him.

Once Al had the first dragon, the rest were more willing. The baby was the easiest of all, printing only a few scaly marks onto the side of Al's neck. Then came two sibling dragons that were very much attached to each other, and they each took up one side of Al's back. The fifth and final dragon was the largest of them all, larger even than Zephyr at his current size, and he was the only one who actually managed to breathe fire. He left the largest mark on Al as well, his scales burning across the length of both of Al's arms, from steady shoulder to feeble wrist.

A wave of relief flowed over Al and his new dragons as soon as the process was completed. But after a minute of relishing in his work, Al began to panic about the idea of getting out of here. He tested Eleri's barrier himself before leading the dragons there, and sure enough, there was no spell he could think of that would break it. He was trapped inside for good, and if the dragons hadn't found a way out themselves, he doubted that he ever could.

On his way back from the wall turn and into the core, however, Al found himself noticing that the ceiling of the cave was tilted upwards and reached its highest point in the core rather than at the entrance. Before he knew where it had come from, Al had an idea and was already planning how he might execute it. Because the dragons could now read his thoughts, Al made his way to the largest one and gave him a single, curt nod.

The dragon didn't question him for a second; he was too glad to have a non-threatening master after so many years of torture, and he wanted out of that cave even more than Al did. As the other dragons moved away with Al to give the largest some room, the big one took a firm stance in the puddles, brought his neck into his shoulders, and then thrust the top of his head against the ceiling of the cave. It took about ten hits and a few heated flames for the rock to break, but eventually it did, and at that point all of the dragons were clamoring to get outside as the walls of the cave crumbled around them.

Al hung onto the baby's tail to make sure that he was freed safely, the mother careful to let the youngest crawl onto the island before any of the others did. Zephyr must have sensed them or Al, too, for he was waiting for them on the island and was eager to help pull them to the surface. All five of the dragons made it out alive, with only the large one receiving any injuries, but they were small enough for Al to heal.

Zephorien was thrilled to have his family back, and he was the first to bring them all some meat to tear apart and share. Once fed, it seemed that the only thing the dragons wanted to do was fly, and Al was more than happy to give them permission to. Watching them all stretch their skinny wings and take to the sky was like watching a falsely accused prisoner go home after spending half their life in a cell they barely fit in.

Al was still watching them from outside the hole they had made in the island when he saw them all soar past the same lighthouse-shaped building he'd seen from Mull. It must have been situated right between the two islands, for it looked exactly the same from this direction as it had from the other. This time, though, Al gave his eyes time to focus on the area so that he could get see the place more clearly, and he noticed a few random, barred windows checkered across the black, cement walls and shivered when thought he spotted a hooded ghost floating above the waves.

"Azkaban Prison," a voice confirmed from behind him just as Al started to recognize the place. Eleri sounded quite calm considering that her dragons had just broken through their cave and flown off without her. But of course, Eleri knew that Fergus and Greer were out searching for them right now, and Al knew that it wouldn't matter even if the pirates found them.

Still focused on Azkaban, Al turned to Eleri and saw that her face was just as rigid when looking upon the prison as his was. Sensing that it was true, he asked her, "Do you know someone who's in there?"

She laughed. "Who doesn't? There are thousands of 'em." She sounded like quite the expert.

"What else do you know about it?"

"The usual. The building takes the shape of a triangular prism, its head in perfect alignment with the North Star. It was built on an isle so small that the earth itself 'as eroded into the cement, strengthenin' it as time goes on. It 'as ten floors that separate the prisoners into distinguished groups, with the bottom housing petty thieves and the top claiming the mass murderers who are jus' waitin' to receive the dementor's kiss and be swung off the roof, left to fall into the sea below."

Al hadn't heard most of what Eleri claimed was common knowledge. All he knew about Azkaban was what he added to her impressive list. "And nobody's broken through since Sirius Black – at least, none without Lord Voldemort's help."

Eleri was smiling when she said, "Well, that's not entirely true, is it?" Al didn't understand what she was getting at until she added, "Nobody's broken _out_. The _Daily Prophet_ chooses not to write abou' the people who break _in_."

Now, Al knew where she was going with this, especially when she when she tried to win him over with flattery. "What ya did with those dragons was mighty impressive, it was. I dunno' who ya are, Felix Higgs, 'cept that you're a brilliant wizard. I'll bet with a bit of me help, you could get in and out of that prison 'fore the sun comes up." In her eyes, he was practically a prophet, but breaking into Azkaban wasn't a decision to make in haste.

"Thanks for the offer," he told her, "But I need to get going. And anyway, the _Daily Prophet_ would write about the break-ins if anyone actually survived them."

"Suit yourself," Eleri shrugged as she started to walk away.

Then again, she did have a point. Al had just bound himself to five dragons _and_ he was the Master of the Elder Wand. If he couldn't make his way through Azkaban alive, who could? And it wasn't just anyone he knew in there – it was Knox. Knox, who had given up his freedom to rot in a cell for the rest of his life just so that Al didn't share such a fate himself. Sure, Knox was a rightful murderer and deserved his sentence, but Al was a murderer now too. Why should one of them be confined to a cell while the other flew on the backs of dragons?

"Wait!" Al called out to Eleri, and she was back at his side in a matter of seconds. "Hypothetically speaking, if one were to try to break into the prison, how would they get inside?"

"Through the bottom, under the sea," she answered. When Al looked at her once more, he found that her palm was open to him. Sitting on it was a bundle of what Al could only describe as slimy, grey-green rat tails. He didn't remember where exactly the plant came from, but he knew immediately what it was and what it could be used for. Professor Longbottom had spoken of it hundreds of times in Al's Herbology classes, and because Harry had supposedly used it on himself once upon a time, he always looked to Al when he spoke of it. The plant was gillyweed.

* * *

They only spent an hour planning before they dove into the water, since Al was rather pressed for time at this point. He hated swimming, and he hated the feeling of gills forming on his neck and his fingers and toes suddenly sprouting webbing. The only thing he hated more were grindylows.

Al and Eleri managed to find their way to the rock island relatively quickly, jetting themselves across the water's bottom with all sorts of acceleration spells and swerving around any sharks that Al was fairly certain Eleri was summoning to scare him. The rocks had melded into the cement of Azkaban just as Eleri had described, and while there was no entrance so low, she and Al were able to blast through the cement to create their own opening. That was when the grindylows stormed out.

The water demons wore the same grins on their faces as Fergus did, only these were sickly instead of pitiful. They had as many tentacles as octopods, their spindly fingers flapping from their rounded heads that were smaller than the dagger-like horns attached to them. Eleri had warned Al that the first floor of the prison was inspired by Devil's Island, a Muggle fortress for political prisoners built off the coast of Africa, but Al hadn't expected the name to be quite so literal.

He and Eleri were able to avoid being seen by the grindylows when they swam up to the hole they'd blasted and leaned their backs against the rock just next to it. It appeared that the creatures wanted out even more than Al and Eleri wanted in, much to Al's delight. Once the entire pack of them had swum off, he deemed it safe to head inside, so he led Eleri through the hole and successfully arrived at Azkaban.

There had been few protective charms on the building, but it was impossible to Apparate in or out on the property and the only entrance was from above, so really Eleri had been smart about going in from below. The first floor was like a submarine station, filled with water to the same level as the surrounding ocean with the rock floor forming a triangular perimeter around the pool. Al waited underwater a moment before surfacing, grasping his wand and thinking to himself, _Homenum Revelio. _When nothing happened, he knew that there were no guards on the floor, so he gestured to Eleri to say it was safe and then pulled himself up onto the floor.

"Not many down here," Al whispered as Eleri stood up beside him. There were cells along the length of the three walls with a latter hanging in one corner that led to the second floor. The cells weren't too small here, each about the size of Al's bedroom from Godric's Hollow, but the prisoners – regardless of how little crime they'd committed – were still desperate to escape.

There were maybe ten of them, all still fresh and healthy (Eleri was under the impression that they were the prison's newest residents), but they had all awoken upon hearing the blasting sound, and now they were squeezing their arms through the iron bars to try to grab hold of Al or Eleri's legs. None of them were successful, though one young girl did get close to touching Al when he moved toward her cell as if curious to look at her.

She was so much like Ilana. She was pale with dark hair and emerald eyes, and Al was drawn to her like wind on water. Eleri was telling him to stop, whining about wasting time, as Al inched closer to the girl's cell, but Al didn't hear her. All he heart was the ferocious beating of this girl's heart against her chest, and all he thought of when he heard it was how strong it was. She had most likely only been in Azkaban for a couple of days so far, and whatever she'd done to get there hadn't broken her yet. She was whole, complete with tiny shoes and unlaced hope. She didn't yet know longing or lust, yet she was bursting with life. She was a kid.

Al knew that she wouldn't make it out if he tried to free her, but he couldn't leave her there alone, either. Compromising with the voices in his head, he procured a quill, ink, and paper with his wand and slid them between the bars of her cell. She reached out for it and almost touched his hand before he drew his arm back. "Write down your memories. Never forget where you came from," he told her, because it was what Ilana would say, and because a quill and paper were what Ilana would want.

He turned around before the girl had the chance to thank him and was the first on the ladder. There were a couple of Ministry-employed guards on the second floor, but Al was able to stun them before they posed any threat. He and Eleri were quick to leave this floor after checking the cells for Knox, since it seemed to be teething with bacteria and infection, prisoners with the oozing skin of lepers locked in their cages. The next floor up was much cleaner, for it housed only females who seemed to be better versed in the topic of grooming.

Al was curious to see if Eleri would want to search this floor, since he of course wouldn't need to, but it turned out that she didn't. Whoever she wanted to find was male, a mass murderer, or both. The only convict they paid any attention to on this floor was the one who had somehow painted messages all over the walls of her cell. The messages were words of activism, saying things like _Stop Spell Suppression!_ and the woman inside was as old as McGonagall had been, ancient and haggard as she curled herself into the corner.

"Carlotta Pinkstone," Eleri mumbled with wonder. "Who'd 'ave thought she was still alive?"

Al ignored her as he set his sights on the fourth floor. They were nearly half-way there, and he was growing more worried by the minute of what state he might find Knox in. But much to his surprise, the fourth floor was completely empty. The cells were still there, though smaller than those they'd already seen, and now there were even more of them thanks to the rows that covered the middle of the floor where the pool had been on the ground level. They were there, but the guards weren't, nor were the prisoners.

"What d'you reckon happened here?" asked Al.

Eleri was staring down at blood stains that had splattered an unappetizing brown color from the floor to the ceiling. Following her gaze, Al noticed for the first time that each cell was marked with two numbers and a symbol, most of them ancient runes that he had never learned to read. What he could read, however, was the drawing that had replaced one of those symbols: a stick-figured wizard silenced by a deadly flash of green.

"Too many prisoners kill each other and the guards start killin' 'em too," said Eleri with an odd timidity to her voice. "Can't have that, can they?"

The fifth and sixth floors were reserved for torture, and Al and Eleri had to be careful where they stepped to make it through unseen. None of the prisoners were being harmed at this time of the night, but there were still plenty of guards to stun and freeze on their way. On the sixth floor, they also had to maneuver around impressive machines like waterboards and skinning tables. The sight of it all when combined with the fearful faces of the victims was enough to infuriate Al, and after passing a row of recently raped women, his anger was ready to burst.

That was what made him follow the voice when he heard someone muttering helplessly from a cell nearby, "I don't know what I did. I swear, I don't know what I did. I swear it."

The prisoner was only talking to a wall, his back facing the iron bars of his cell and giving Al a clear view of the whip marks that could be seen through his thin, torn shirt. He was a large man, his hair dark and overgrown so long that it reached his shoulders. He had been here a long while, and though Al couldn't be sure, he had a feeling that the man he was looking upon wasn't really a man at all. It was Vincent Goyle.

"Felix, behind ya!" yelled Eleri before Al could see the guard coming.

Her warning gave him just enough time to twirl around, point his wand at the wizard, and yell, "_Avada Kedavra!"_ The guard fell to the floor in a single thump, never even getting a word out to ask what Al was doing there.

Al was in shock as he stared down at the man he'd just killed. He hadn't meant to use that curse, but it was the first thing that had come to his mind – a mind filled with images of purposefully inflicted pain and the memory of Wynn's red eyes that matched that red curtain and her red hair. He wasn't permitted to wallow in his shock for long, though, since Goyle had heard him voice the incantation and was now facing Albus and looking from him to Eleri in utter confusion.

When Al met Goyle's big brown eyes, the boy pointed to his old classmate and said, "That – that's not _Felix_. That's-"

"Let's go," Al said to Eleri as he grabbed her wrist and pulled her away from Goyle before he could say his real name. She was hesitant to move, but was too lost in her own confusion to ask Al any questions before they made it to the next level.

The guards on this floor were far different from those on the sixth. They seemed to Al more like servants, and Al and Eleri were able to Confund them into thinking that they too were servants, newly recruited to wait on the prison's best and wealthiest. This floor was what Eleri called The Chateau, filled with only four or five giant cells complete with fancy amenities like wardrobes and fireplaces, its prisoners snoring loudly atop puffy mattresses and freshly cleaned pillowcases.

Eleri was about to explain why this floor was so special when Al whispered, "I get it. You only make it through the torture if you tell them what they want to hear, and then they reward you for it. Either that, or you're loaded to begin with, so they put you here right away and tax you for the luxury they provide. They make you pay for your own incarceration."

If anything, Al and Eleri hated that floor more than any other, so when they couldn't find Knox, they were eager to move on. They needed permission to be sent through to the eighth floor, which was known by guards as The Rock and by prisoners as The Last Chance of Escape. Al used the Imperius Curse to make sure they were let on the ladder, and he decided to have the Imperiused wizard escort him and Eleri onto the floor.

That was good thinking on his part, because each of the quarter-sized cells on this floor was guarded by its own man. With the seventh floor guard with them, the others didn't pay Al or Eleri much mind, and the prisoners didn't either. Most of them looked to be on the verge of death, their skin dry and their eyes hollow against the black of their walls. They wouldn't have reached out for Al even they'd known he had broken in; they had no life left to escape to.

Whenever Al looked at any of them, his stomach tied itself into knots, so he tried to keep his eyes on the codes above each cell door, as if Knox's might have some special marking that would call out to him. He stopped when he saw the numbers two and nine next to a symbol that he'd seen before: a vertical line cutting a circle in half, a triangle enclosed around them both. He couldn't remember what it meant, but he couldn't look away from it either.

"Black Hawk?" whispered a voice as dry as sun-heated sand. Knox was sitting by the bars of his cells, and he looked like absolute hell. His usually handsome face was starved thin, his cheekbones protruding around his jaw and his eyes the size of golf balls in their too-small sockets.

"Rookie, you look _great_," Al teased through the bars, momentarily forgetting that he was surrounded by guards. As soon as the closest one looked at him, though, he had flung them all to the ceiling with that levitating curse he'd cast on Astoria's runts earlier that night.

"Nicely done," said Eleri from beside him as she looked up at the wizards. Then she patted Al on the shoulder and said, "I'll meet you upstairs."

Al wasn't sure that it was wise for them to split up, but Eleri had gotten him this far and he wasn't about to argue with her. Instead, he let her go, unlocked Knox's cell, and helped his friend to his feet.

"So, how've you been?" asked Al as he led Knox to the next ladder.

Knox had to hold onto Al's side for support as he hopped his way past his fellow prisoners who were sneering at him with more resentment than Al had ever seen, yet he still managed to joke, "Oh, you know how it is, did some water boarding last week and was just waiting to be promoted to the Door of No Return."

"What a bore!" said Al, and he hadn't felt better about saying something since the things he told Ilana on their last night together.

Just before they arrived on the penultimate floor, Al grabbed a wand from one of the hanging guards and gave it to Knox. Seriously this time, he said, "I don't care if you let go of me, but don't dare let go of that stupid stick."

Knox was grinning excitedly, because he understood perfectly what Al was telling him. Together, and as if they'd been planning the attack for years, Al and Knox swarmed the final two levels with spells ranging from Jelly-Legged Jinxes to Unforgivable Curses, sending the ninth floor into absolute chaos and not caring how many cell doors they opened on their way. As long as they made it out, they didn't care who came with them. They also failed to notice that one of those cells had already been opened.

The tenth floor was basically the roof, for it had no ceiling except the flock of dementors flying overhead, ready and waiting for whoever dared to climb up the final ladder. Knox didn't need to tell Al that this was what he'd meant by the Door of No Return: once you get to the tenth floor, nothing can save you… nothing except a well-done Patronus Charm, and there was no spell on earth that Al was better at performing.

His hawk was ten times the size of Knox's rook, but there would be plenty of time to remind him of that later. For now, Al was only concerned with shielding the still weak Knox from any of the hooded ghosts, so focused on his charm that he failed to notice two people creep up from the ladder behind him.

Knox was the first to notice their presence, releasing his spell as the hawk still soared in order to ask, "Scamander?"

That made Al turn around, though he didn't let go of his grip on the Elder Wand. He had expected to see one of the twins before him upon hearing the Scamander name, but neither Lysander nor Lorcan was there. It was just Eleri, only now she'd found the prisoner _she'd_ been looking for.

As Al looked at the man whose cloak was as torn as his skin and whose Azkaban tattoo was brandished against his chest like black fleas on a white dog and whose long blond hair needed a serious comb through, he slowly put the pieces together. James had mentioned to him once or twice that Lysander had sent his father to prison, so this must have been him. Rolf Scamander.

"Didn't think I'd last that long before they kissed me, did you?" Rolf asked Knox lightheartedly. "I'm not like you – I wasn't put straight at the top for my crimes. I've been on every floor of this wretched building in my time here, and I've learned how to survive the loneliness."

But Al was barely listening to him, because there was still a piece of the puzzle that was missing. The dementors were beginning to break through his Patronus when he asked Eleri, "Who are you?"

"I should be asking you the same question!" She spat at him with suddenly perfect annunciation. He supposed it was too naïve of him to hope that she hadn't heard what Goyle had said to him. "But if you really want to know, Rolf is my big brother, and I've been waiting to break into this place for _years_. The dragons never got me very far, but I had a feeling you might be able to."

As soon as she'd finished speaking, Eleri was shuffling Rolf to the edge of the floor and hoisting him atop the shortened wall. Then the siblings were falling off the side of the building, and Al ran up to the ledge, stretched neck head over it, and caught sight of the Lidell ship waiting to catch its pirates.

The only thing that managed to distract Al from his thoughts regarding Eleri and the long night he'd had was Knox's voice yelling, "Black Hawk, the dementors! I can't hold them off much longer!"

Al's Patronus had broken during his run, but it didn't matter. With a single whistle, the dragons were there, and Zephorien flew right through the dementors and grabbed Al and Knox in his claws without even stopping to catch his breath. Once the group was well out of the dementors' range, the boys climbed up Zephyr's legs and hoisted each other up onto his back, where they sat between his spikes the whole way back to Hogwarts.

Knox seemed to enjoy the ride, and Al understood how he must have felt. He'd spent months in that single cell, and now he was free. Now, he wasn't alone anymore, and he was vowing to himself that he never would be again. He asked Al to set him down with the dragons in the Forbidden Forest, and when Al asked why he didn't want to see Astoria first, Knox said to him, "As far as I'm concerned, my debt to her has been paid." With that, Al gave him a nod and walked away, knowing full well that regardless of which side Knox was planning to fight for in this battle, Al would see him again.

When Al walked back into Hogsmeade, a disgruntled Astoria was waiting for him there beside Vega and Wynn. When she asked him where he'd been, he replied with a smile and said it was a surprise, and then they both saw the outline of the sun peeking over the Black Lake's horizon line.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked as soon as they saw it. "You have an army to lead, Albus. Now _lead_ _it."_

And with those words, Al's nightmare from last spring came to life before him, only now it made perfect sense. He followed Astoria's command as he led Vega, Wynn, and company down to the Black Lake and around to the Quidditch pitch, and he didn't once question her control because he knew without a doubt that he had even more control than she did. He heard the great dragon flapping its wings above him as he approached the Order of the Phoenix, and he knew that it was only Zephyr. He took in the sight of Scorpius standing beside his peers, and he knew why Rose wasn't there and he knew that Scorpius was crying because Astoria had refused to give her back to him. He said, "Today, we end this," and he meant it, because now there was no going back. All eyes were on Albus in that moment, but their stares no longer intimidated him. He was far more powerful than they knew.


	37. Fresh Blood and Stone

_**Note: **I'm doing my best, guys, I really am. I'm back at school now and am a little over my head in terms of schoolwork and actual work, so bear with me. I have not and will not abandon this story; it's just going to take me some time to adjust to the new semester before I really get back into the fanfic groove. _

_Anyway, this chapter is pretty gruesome and somewhat "gory", so please be aware of that when reading. I really hope you enjoy it, though, and I can't wait to hear what you have to say in a review!  
_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**37 - Fresh Blood and Stone**

Scorpius used to tell Rose that insomnia felt like going senseless. He would describe losing his hearing first and panicking when he couldn't get it back. Then he'd lose all feeling, then sight, then smell, and finally taste. The weaker his senses became, the more in tune to the world was his mind, doing all that it could to keep him awake. It would fight and keep fighting as if sleep was as terrifying as death. Rose had sometimes wondered if that senselessness came from fear, but now she knew that it was caused by something else entirely. It came from freedom.

She knew this because unlike the way Scorpius used to lose all his senses during his sleepless dreams, Rose's senses felt heightened as she tried desperately to wake up. Sleep was too easy and far too enticing in the surrounding silence. It called out to her in screaming dreams – dreams of Lucy and Lorcan saying "I do," dreams of Al apologizing for the pain he'd caused and of Harry forgiving him, dreams of Scorpius saying "I love you" – dreams that she might never hear. But she didn't listen to them. She listened to the silence.

Then came feeling. Rose's legs, which had been weightless in her slumber, suddenly felt heavy and cold against what she assumed was a marble floor. The feeling stretched to her stomach and she winced with pain. She had no doubt been jabbed in the abdomen a number of times since she'd been taken, and now her insides felt like they wanted to come out. Sleep was offering her comfort and the illusion of a certain boy's arms around her, but she didn't feel him. She felt the pain.

Her blue eyes opened slowly and took a long time to focus enough for her to see where she was. It didn't help that she ended up staring at a mirror, only confusing her into thinking that she was dreaming again. The glass showed nothing but a girl she didn't recognize, with chapped lips and swollen cheeks above a neck bruised purple and grey. Her flowing, floor-length dress had been torn around the shoulders so that its sleeves were falling off, and its hem was completely ripped above her shivering, shackled ankles. Behind her was a red curtain that looked like her family, but she didn't see them. She saw herself.

The memories flooded back to her when she smelled the body odor. A man with red eyes had pointed his wand straight at her as soon as she'd walked inside the Entrance Hall of the castle. Rose had attempted to fight back with a disarming spell, but Astoria's pawn had been expecting her. He hadn't said a word, but somehow she'd ended up frozen on the floor, and then her eyes were covered until she was inside the Room of Requirement. The same man had hit her before she'd heard Al's voice from the other side of the curtain, but Al hadn't listened to her screams. A part of her felt like she could still smell the lies and betrayal smoking from his skin, but she wouldn't let herself breathe it in. She breathed loneliness.

Rose had to clench her jaw to swallow, and it was then that she tasted it. It was thick instead of pure, sticky instead of soft, copper instead of rain. The albino had used a tongue-tying curse to keep her from saying anything, but Rose had fought hard against it. She'd bit her tongue about fifty times to try to regain control of the organ, and in so doing had punctured its surface and sent her skin ballooning. She wanted to taste Scorpius again, but she didn't. She tasted blood.

She was trying to cough up some of that blood when she saw the small flash of a color that wasn't red. The light was being reflected in the far corner of the mirror, which was about ten feet in front of her, same as the curtain. Its blue shone across the red like waves riding a solar eclipse. For a long time, Rose was too focused on the light itself to notice its source, but between flashes she caught sight of the small, shiny contraption that was lying next to a ten-inch stick made of rosewood. Her wand was just _sitting _there, but it didn't mean anything to Rose compared to the deluminator it was next to...

_ "'The shoe fit perfectly around a foot that was calloused from years of hard work. The prince kissed her and she knew that their midnight would never end. They would all live happily ever after,'" read Ron monotonously. "'The end.'"_

_ Rose's tiny eyes were loosely shut, so she didn't see her father stand up from her bed and walk through her attic bedroom to its open door. What she did notice was the mattress going from completely caved in to almost entirely firm, and the sound of Ron's pounding footsteps creaking against the old wooden floor, and the click of his deluminator sucking the light from above her head._

_ Her eyes opened to darkness, but the little girl didn't wait for them to focus before she asked amidst the emptiness, "Daddy, why are you so sad?"_

_ Ron stopped breathing then, though his daughter didn't quite understand why. "What makes you think I'm sad, Rosie?" he asked after taking a few steps back into the room. He tried to tune his voice to its usual cheerfulness, but it didn't work. She was right: he sounded sad._

_ "You read _Cinderella_," replied Rose. "You hate _Cinderella._" Ron read Rose a bedtime story every night, and normally he'd ask her to pick one and she'd always pick _Cinderella_, but then he'd always convince her to change her mind and they'd compromise with something like _Babbity Rabbity_. She only ever picked the Muggle stories that to him sounded like diseases because she liked it when he argued with her – it was the same way he acted with her mother, Hermione – but tonight he hadn't argued. Tonight, he'd just read._

_ After taking a deep breath, Ron said to himself in a whisper, "So perceptive, just like your mother." She heard him and she was always happy when he compared her to Hermione, though Rose didn't actually understand what the word 'perceptive' meant._

_ She didn't ask her father, since she was far too proud to admit her ignorance, plus she still wanted an explanation for his sadness. Soon, he was back at her bed and she could just make out his silhouette in the dark. It grew clearer when he put his giant hand on her shoulder and squeezed it tightly enough so that she felt safe, but not so tight that it hurt._

_ "Rosie, do you remember when Mum and I told you about your Uncle Fred?" Ron asked, his eyes staring directly into Rose's, four orbs cast on each other through a single shade of blue. "Remember when we told you that he's George's twin, but that you'll never be able to meet him because of what Lord Voldemort did? D'you remember that?"_

_ Rose nodded. She had turned six years old last fall, and the spring before that she'd gone to a Weasley family dinner that had confused her. It was different than the ones she was used to, and Al had teased her about it because she hadn't understood why everyone was so somber. That night, Ron and Hermione had put little Hugo to sleep and had told her what death was._

_ "Well, tomorrow is April First, your Uncle George's birthday, which means that it's also Fred's birthday. We've never much honored the day he died, because so many went with him in that war, but his birthday belongs to him and George, and only them. So, tomorrow, all of my brothers and Aunt Ginny are going to visit Fred's grave."_

_ "What will you do there?" asked Rose. She didn't know why they needed to be somewhere to remember someone they loved, especially if he was somewhere they could never get to themselves._

_ Ron thought a lot about his answer before he said, "We'll tell him everything that's happened that he hasn't been here to see. We'll tell him that we miss him, but that we're doing all right anyway. Then we'll probably tell him some stupid joke just to make sure he's listening."_

_ Rose tried to picture all of her uncles and her dad and Aunt Ginny standing in front of that rock that had Fred's name on it, in the middle of the green graveyard in town, but she couldn't see it very well. She wanted to see it, so she asked, "Can I come?" When Ron looked skeptical and was about to shake his head, she added, "I want to tell Uncle Fred about my daddy, because he never knew you as a dad."_

_ There was a moment when neither of them said anything. Rose just furrowed her eyebrows and Ron just wiped away his tears. Then the latter said, "Yes. Yes, you can come."_

It was the thought of her father crying that made Rose crawl across the floor with a sort of fury she'd never known. The blue light was still flickering, so much so that she almost thought it was growing stronger, as the shackles chaining her ankles together crashed against the marble with loud clanks. She knew that the chains had been put on her for this exact reason – to make noise if she tried to escape – but she didn't care. Somewhere outside, Scorpius was saying her name and her father was crying, and she needed to get to them. They were her blue speck of freedom.

She was halfway to the deluminator when she felt a gust of wind nearly push her over on her side, and for fear of what it might have come from, she turned her head around. For whatever reason, she'd been expecting Albus to be standing behind her somehow, but of course it wasn't him. There was no way in or out of this room except for walking through that curtain, and the curtain remained still.

As it turned out, the wind had come from the flying ghost of Ravenclaw Tower. Most people knew the middle-aged woman as the Grey Lady, because of her pale skin and sadly sunken eyes, but Rose knew her true name. In the library, in the books, she was called Helena.

Helena had her translucent finger crossing the middle of her lips as if shushing Rose, but Rose knew that a ghost couldn't help her now. When she pressed on, however, Helena disappeared and Rose only made it one more foot toward Scorpius's light before the curtain opened and sent her literally flying against the opposite mirror. She slid down it more slowly than she should have, and that was when she realized that her body had been placed under the Imperius Curse.

"Nice try, Weasley, but please don't insult my hearing again," droned a voice that Rose had never heard before, but that she also didn't particularly want to hear again. It took a minute for her to take her eyes off of her uncontrolled hands, but once she calmed down, she saw that the face of the woman in front of her was much prettier than the voice attached to it. The voice was husky and rude, and while the face was just as dark and tense, it was also sculpted and fine.

With a closer look, Rose also noticed the olive-colored skin, dark features, and sharp jawline that reminded her of a certain hooded figure who she'd never forget. Knox's sister looked just like him, and as far as Rose could tell from her recent first impression, Ryder was also just as powerful as her brother.

The Imperius Curse had lifted by this point, but that didn't stop Ryder from tormenting Rose in other ways. Her heels clanked against the floor much more gracefully than Rose's shackles had, and as she bent over to pick up Rose's wand and showed off her petite body all suited up in black stretch fabric, Rose found herself wondering why a young woman so naturally beautiful would ever make an effort to turn so internally hideous.

Was it possible that, unlike Rose, Ryder had never known love? Was she secretly desperate for affection or had she already given up looking for it? Was her family's racist legacy enough to guarantee her lifelong loyalty to the Forbidden Flock, or was she playing this game for her own reasons?

Rose didn't know the answer to any of these questions, but it was the first one she was hung up on. She herself had never felt more beautiful than she had only a few hours ago. She wasn't very sure of how much time had passed since she and Scorpius had been alone in that locker room, but when it was happening it had felt like years were going by – years of questions answered, years of secrets told, years of self-consciousness disappeared. Maybe Ryder had never experienced that, and even if Rose's theory was completely wrong, she believed it was true anyway. She figured that if she pretended to understand Ryder, she wouldn't blame her so much for what the helpless witch was about to do.

Ryder was standing in the center of the curtained half of the room, and now she had Rose's wand in her hands. Staring at it, she mused, "I thought Astoria was insane when she asked me not to destroy all of your possessions, but I suppose she was just in thinking that you wouldn't get far enough to gain them back."

Rose was busy biting her tongue again, wishing that she could speak because her voice might just be the strongest weapon she had left, when Ryder took a few steps forward and asked, "How powerful is this wand, anyway? I've never been good with telling the core by touch, but then again, I am quite talented at taking what ought not be mine."

_It's dragon heartstring, like my parents', _thought Rose_, and if you want it, take it. But I'll kill you if you touch that light._

Luckily, Ryder didn't even notice the deluminator flashing behind her, still assuming that Rose had been after her precious wand. It was a little known fact that the deluminator could also act as a portkey, and clearly Ryder wasn't in the know. Instead, she continued to look between Rose and the wand in her hands, and then she was clasping it in her right fist and flicking it toward the mirror.

The glass Rose had been leaning on shattered instantly, its jagged pieces cascading onto and _into_ her like hail into snow, only to reveal a whole new layer of glass behind it. Ryder was laughing with entertainment as Rose keeled over with pain. She could feel blood running down her legs and shoulders, but those parts of her quickly went numb. The part that didn't was a finger on her right hand, where a shard of glass had hooked itself around her ring and dug into the skin until reaching bone that was now cracked in more places than one.

Rose told herself to take three deep breaths as she counted down to what she was about to do, knowing that now was the time to draw in all of the strength she possibly could. On three, she pulled the glass from her skin and slipped the ring off with it. The pain was very real and very prolonged as it shot up her arms like arrows pushing through her veins and taking her blood as they went. But once the arrows arrived at her head, they disappeared, and suddenly the pain was bearable again. She still felt the bone in her finger vibrating against the broken skin, but she didn't feel the sharpness anymore.

Pulling out the shards from her shoulder and leg was far easier, since those wounds didn't seem to have any feeling at all. Once she'd freed all the glass she could find, Rose tucked her ring away in the leg strap that she'd used for her wand and deluminator, then held the red-stained mirror bits in her flattened palm. She wasn't sure what Ryder was doing at the moment, though she didn't hear the evil laughs anymore. She heard the silence again, the dreams echoing in the back of her head, and all she wanted was to be in Scorpius's arms. The deluminator could get her there, but maybe her voice could too. And even if it couldn't, it could at least convince Ryder to tell her what was going on outside in the battle, for surely one had started by now.

With this in mind, Rose readied herself just like she had earlier and then she did something that she could never have imagined herself doing before today. Picking up the sharpest of the three glass pieces, she opened her mouth and directed the glass's edge for her tongue. She was just about to plunge a hole into it when a blue jay came flying toward Rose's face and kicked the glass out of her hand with its tiny talons.

When Rose finally caught her breath, Ryder was back in her human form and was standing about two feet away with her own wand in her hand and Rose's on the floor. This time, her laugh was impressed instead of amused, and she pointed the wand casually at Rose's mouth to undo the curse, saying all the while, "I must admit, you're far feistier than I imagined you'd be. Between you and your Potter cousins, Astoria might just have reason to be frightened. But of course, you already know how scared of you she is. That's how you knew I'd have to stop you, isn't it? Because you knew that she needs your voice."

It was true. Rose had been terrified to attempt the self-mutilation, but she knew it would work. Astoria was holding her captive for a reason, and she was also staying away and letting the albino and now Ryder do her dirty work for her, and _that_ was for a reason. Everything she did had reason, though Rose had never considered that the reason might be her.

"I knew," Rose admitted, smiling slightly due to her newly gained ability to speak. "What I don't know is what she needs my voice _for_."

Still standing high above her, Ryder scoffed and said, "Do you really think she'd tell _me_? My brother, maybe, or that _arse_ Albus, but never me. I'm called the secret keeper, but you can't keep secrets if you aren't ever told what they are in the first place, can you?"

Rose listened closely to what Ryder told her, for she sensed an opportunity. Ryder was an unhappy soldier, and perhaps Rose could use that knowledge to her advantage. Thinking this, she carefully considered her response before saying, "Why are you inside, then? If you're not keeping the secret, why didn't you leave with that albino? Why aren't you out there right now?"

That did the trick. Ryder answered, "I don't know," with a certain grit and envy that Rose knew could be her ticket out of here. Her confidence only increased when Ryder became so enthralled in the prospect of war that she mumbled subconsciously, "I bet Black Hawk's out there right now, and that _werewolf_ sister of his too. I bet the Order of the Phoenix is _pummelling_ us, and I bet the rest of the Flock has no idea why. I bet they don't understand that loyalty isn't made out of threat."

_No_, thought Rose_, it's made out of love. That's why the Order is going to win – because of their loyalty to me, and because of my love for them._

Ryder might have said the same thing had she not been suddenly distracted by a noise coming from the other side of the wall. Something or someone seemed to be causing a great raucous in the hallway, and if Rose had to name the noise she would say it sounded like walls being blasted apart.

With a frustrated sigh, Ryder turned around to leave while yelling, "Better not be that _barmy_ Peeves again!"

The mention of Peeves the poltergeist made Rose immediately think of his fellow castle ghosts, and soon she realized what was happening. Hogwarts was fighting back in the only way it could, with the only people who were still trapped within its walls. The ghosts were trying to help Rose escape, which was why the Grey Lady had wanted her to be quiet in her last attempt: because Helena had a plan and Rose just needed to be patient enough for it to be put into place.

Because she didn't know how much time she had, Rose got right to it. This time, the crawling took a harder toll on her body, but she made it farther than she did before. Once she got to the spot where Ryder had dropped her wand, Rose took the wand in her left hand (which was still intact, unlike the right one), pointed it at the deluminator in the corner, and stated firmly, _"Accio!"_

She just barely caught the flying deluminator in her right hand when she saw Helena's ghost appear from behind one of the mirrored walls. Rose was shuttering as her eyes glared into the lighter, for no blue was emanating from it at the moment. She was terrified of what might happen if Scorpius didn't say her name in the short amount of time she had left to escape, but she was even more terrified of what Scorpius might be doing right now that was keeping him from thinking about her.

Seeing her just sitting there rather than getting her act together, Helena glided toward Rose and said, "Sir Nicholas agreed to provoke Peeves, but you only have a few minutes at best." Gesturing to the curtain, she added, "There's an exit on the other side – a tunnel behind the portrait that leads into Hogsmeade."

Rose shook her head at Helena's suggestion. Not only was she uncertain that she could make it through a tunnel that long in her current state, she also knew that the if Hogsmeade was the exit point then the Flock would have it teeming with wizards by now. Rose didn't stand a chance of getting past them alone.

"No," she said, because Helena still couldn't see Rose's perspective well enough to concede. "No, I need to wait for Scorpius. As soon as he says my name, I'll be with him again, and once I'm with him I'll be safe. He'll say my name again; I know he will."

Helena was still confused, but Rose tried to ignore her. She had heard the stories through the school about the Grey Lady and the Bloody Baron, about his one-sided love for her. Helena Ravenclaw had died before she'd known love, or at least any other kind than her love for books and knowledge, so Rose didn't expect her to understand her own love for Scorpius.

But after a few minutes passed, Rose's worry overtook her obstinacy and she realized that Helena's lack of response could be attached to reasons other than her own short life. Rose was looking straight through the ghost when she said in a panic, "Unless he's-"

"He's alive," replied Helena before Rose had to say the last word. "Scorpius is leading the vanguard through the dragon fire, with Harry and James Potter at his side. He's placed the Longbottoms at the helm of the forest edge, and your parents are headed for Hogsmeade. Sir Nicholas's knights have been keeping us informed on their watch from the windows."

There weren't enough words in any language to express how thankful Rose was to have news of the battle at all, let alone to know that the people she cared most about were still alive. But the more she thought about her parents and James and Scorpius, the more she worried that they might be acting too hastily. What if this was all just a trap to get Scorpius back in Astoria's grasp like she'd claimed to want so long ago, or what if who she really wanted was the Chosen One? Was it at all possible that, like what Ryder said to Rose, they were all still alive because they needed to be?

She didn't think that Helena would have an answer to her questions, but Rose found herself having to ask anyway. "Is she going to kill _me_, or is there somebody else she's after?"

Helena looked away from Rose as she answered, "The people who kill are rarely the ones who want to. They do it out of fear, not longing. What they long for is love. What they _want_ is life." When Rowena Ravenclaw's daughter had refused the Bloody Baron's love, he had killed her and then himself, just to deal with the immediate guilt. They'd since spent hundreds of years at Hogwarts as tower ghosts, yet even now they weren't naked enough to see past each other's thickening skin.

Both Rose and Helena were too deep in thought to notice how quiet it soon became. There had been a consistent blasting and banging in the hallway since Ryder had left, but now there was no noise at all. At least, not until Rose's deluminator clicked and a blue light started floating toward her heart.

_"EXPULSO!"_ yelled someone from behind the curtain, sending the fabric bursting into flames and causing Rose to fall over from the vibrating floor and pillowing smoke. Her deluminator had flown well across the room by the time she opened her eyes, coughed the fire from her mouth, and saw Astoria standing in front of her, Ryder sulking from behind.

The mighty witch said nothing to Rose, but she didn't need to. Her stare told enough through the aftermath of the explosion for Rose to know that she'd be dead in a minute if she dared to move. That was what made Rose stay perfectly still as Astoria turned to Ryder and gave her a look that reminded Rose of the way a mother would look at her child upon dropping out of school.

"You left the room because you heard a poltergeist _banging POTS?_" she yelled.

"I just thought-" Ryder attempted to argue through gritted teeth.

"_Think? _Think is good. _Know _is BETTER!" Astoria took a few steps back then, leaving Ryder to hang her head against her chest and guiltily ponder the error of her ways. Helena was long gone by now, but Rose almost felt like another ghost of Ravenclaw's past had taken her place when Astoria sneered, "I knew I should have sent _you_ to Azkaban instead of Knox. There is always a _better_ twin."

Rose could see Ryder's chest heaving with anger, but the Rookwood girl didn't retaliate against Astoria. She merely stood her ground and waited to be told what to do, just as she had her entire life. Still, Rose was more intrigued by what Astoria had said about 'sending' Knox to Azkaban. Had Knox been imprisoned on purpose? And if he had, did that mean that Al really was the guilty one in Arthur's murder?

She didn't have much time to contemplate such, though. Astoria had finally accepted the fact that Ryder couldn't handle her current job, so she decided to give her a new one. "No matter; you're of no use to me here anyway. Get out, go to Hogsmeade, and then make your way through the grounds until you get to the Shrieking Shack. Do _not_ stop along the way, and do _not_ get yourself killed. I want my pensieve, and you're going to bring it to me."

Ryder's smile must have been too faint for Astoria to notice it in her determined state, but Rose saw it. She also understood that there was no way Ryder was coming back once she closed the portrait door behind her. She was going exactly where she wanted to go, because just as Helena had said, Ryder wanted life, and for that she was convinced that she'd have to kill...

_The first line of the tombstone read, _Fred Weasley, 1978-1998. _The second line read_, Anything's possible if you've got enough nerve. _The last line read_, Forever the better twin. _Rose had been very focused on reading the words for the past half hour, mostly because there wasn't much else to do. She was standing in front of her father, who was next to Aunt Ginny on one side and Uncle George on the other. Next to George were Percy and Bill, and all five of the siblings had taken turns talking to the earth that covered Fred. Rose hadn't been able to follow most of their stories, so she'd decided to practice her reading while she waited for everyone to finish._

_ She was reading the lines over a third time when she felt her father kneel down behind her and heard him whisper in her ear, "It's your turn, Rosie."_

_ Suddenly nervous, Rose took a step toward the stone and gently placed a jar full of Bluebell flames in front of it, at the head of all the flowers Percy had brought and the puking pastilles from George and the Quidditch trophies from Ginny. Then she pulled a piece of perfectly folded paper from the pocket of her black coat, unfolded it until it was a single flat sheet, and read, "Deer uncle fred, i dont no wye you had to go away, but becos you did and becos i am very perseptive, i want to tell you wats happend since youv bin gon. My daddy use to be sad a lot. I remember becos when it got dark out, he wen outside and look up at the stars and aks you to com back. But he dont aks anymoor. Now he ony gets sad some of the time and thas okay. I think thas allowd. I hope you can allow that."_

_ Once she was finished reading, Rose folded the paper back up and stuffed it inside her coat, in the same pocket it had been stuffed in before. She didn't look up to see her family smiling at her, but she did look for Ron so that she could hold his hand. Once connected, Ron and Rose both said goodbye to Fred and turned around to walk away, the rest of the family following their lead. The only one who stayed behind was Uncle Fred, kneeling down in front of his brother's grave and mindlessly pulling blades of grass out of the dirt._

_ They had only taken a couple of steps when Rose asked her father, "Was I okay, Daddy?"_

_ "You were brilliant, Rosie," he said, and she believed him._

_ What she didn't believe was that George was as okay as everybody thought he was or at least wanted him to be. She didn't believe it because in the background of the graveyard, George was saying to Fred in a whimper, "I still want you to come back."_

It was just Astoria and Rose left in the room, though now the room was twice as big as it had been with the albino or with Ryder. The side that had opened when the curtain exploded looked exactly like the side Rose had been confined to, with the exception of the portrait Ryder had disappeared behind. Plus, the mirrors made everything seem larger and somehow smaller as well. At least, the room was infinitely large with every wall reflecting against itself; it was only Rose who felt small.

When Astoria walked over to where Rose's deluminator and wand had been blasted, Rose felt like four Astorias were circling her, one from every side. But there was solely one voice when Astoria said, "These are your only possessions? A wand and an enlarged _lighter_?"

"Yes," answered Rose without thinking, unsure why Astoria was so curious about her things.

Immediately, Astoria was disappointed. She took her time in turning toward Rose, but once all four pairs of icy eyes were staring her down, Rose knew that for perhaps the first time in her life, she'd given the wrong answer. The Cruciatus Curse came at her from every possible direction, bouncing from Astoria's silent mind against the surrounding mirrors and landing directly in the center of Rose's body, even though it felt more like it was going everywhere inside of her.

She could do nothing but cringe and scream, but barely any sound exited her mouth once the inside of her throat cracked and collapsed in on itself. Every part of her was ablaze with the kind of fire that wasn't good. This was the burning kind, leaving its mark as it went and impossible to be rid of. This was a forest fire and she was the dried-out wood begging for her rain.

"You're lying," said Astoria as if it was the most true thing she'd ever known. Rose wouldn't have been able to hear her from so far away if it weren't for her own dissipated screams. Still, she tried to pretend that she hadn't heard anything so that Astoria might stop.

Her idea didn't work. Astoria pressed the curse further, saying once more, "You're _lying."_

"I'm _not!"_ yelled Rose when she didn't know what else she could do. As she'd expected, Astoria didn't believe her. Attempting to explain the circumstance would surely get Rose nowhere, especially since she didn't actually know what the circumstance was. But as the fire spread across her forehead, it became increasingly difficult to think of something else that _would_ work.

Wishing that her senses would disappear the way they did with insomnia, Rose thought of Scorpius. She thought of the boy she'd met in the Great Hall on her first day at Hogwarts, then of the man she'd made love to under a waterfall. She thought of all the things he'd ever told her about Astoria, and about all the times he'd needed to run away from his own mother or the times she'd run away from him. Rose thought about families and how complicated they could become after such a simple start. Because no matter how far back their roots stretched, families were always started by love.

Rose had to bang her fist against the floor to concentrate the fire somewhere other than her head, but once she did she was able to say, "Scorpius wouldn't want you doing this!"

The fire was gone as soon as it had come, like summer showers that moved too quickly to persist in just one spot. It still left Rose weak, but at least once it was gone she could breathe again. That was about all she could do, her thoughts so set on taking in oxygen and letting it out at a steady pace that she didn't notice Astoria coming closer until the witch was standing inches away.

Rose slowly looked up at her and found Astoria's eyes empty of emotion, but then she saw her lips trembling. "You think I don't know my own son, don't you?" Astoria asked.

Rose knew what she was supposed to say. She was supposed to say that no, no, of _course_ Astoria knew her son. But she couldn't lie when it came to Scorpius's rights. She couldn't deny him the truth because she loved him, and because Astoria didn't. Perhaps she had once, but she didn't anymore, of that Rose was certain. That was why she said, "Yes. Yes, that's _exactly_ what I think."

Once the women had stared at each other long enough, Astoria walked around so that she was facing Rose's back and then wrapped one of her frighteningly bony hands around a tuft of Rose's hair and pulled. It didn't take very much force to bring Rose to the ground, and Astoria even let go of her early enough so that the back of Rose's head slammed against the floor. It was nearly impossible now to hold back her tears as she asked helplessly, "What are you doing?"

Smirking, Astoria straddled her legs around Rose's waist, leaned toward Rose's ear, and whispered through breath that reeked with death, "I'm proving that you're a _liar_."

She was absolutely still as she saw Astoria pull a small knife from the depth of her robes and felt her place its blade right below Rose's left earlobe, on the flab of skin that joined her neck to her jawbone. She was absolutely still as Astoria pushed and pulled in short, straight lines and as Rose tried to tell herself that it was just water on her skin, just water breaking from its dam. She was absolutely still as Astoria finished cutting and as Rose turned her eyes to the faraway mirror and squinted to see the mark that had branded her.

It was a snowflake, unique amongst its peers yet perfectly matched to one that she had looked at nearly every day for the past seven years. Now, she had Scorpius's same markings, only hers was a scar. For some reason, she smiled upon seeing it. She would take any piece of Scorpius that she could get, and in a way she was glad that it had come in this form. Scorpius didn't need any more scars, so she was happy to wear them for him.

Astoria was still crouched on top of Rose as she said, "I was there the day he was born and I will be there the day he dies. Defile the love I carry when you can say the same for your own child."

They were locked in another stare now, and Rose was questioning whether this one would ever end when she heard the double doors open and saw a man saunter inside with a large goblet floating behind him. Rose had to break her gaze with Astoria to get a good look at the man who wore nothing but some torn pants and whose bare chest was branded with a black number and a symbol that Rose could have sworn she'd seen somewhere before. Noticing her new focal point, Astoria followed Rose's eyes and stood up as soon as she saw the better twin.

"Knox," breathed Astoria in a manner more shocked than Rose could ever have imagined her to be.

"I saw Ryder running into battle and saw that you'd asked for this," said Knox as he gestured to the pensieve. He was speaking as if he'd never been to Azkaban, and Rose was beginning to wonder if maybe he hadn't.

Astoria didn't even say thank you before she asked, "How did you escape?"

"Black Hawk."

Astoria laughed in a sort of grunt. Shaking her head, she mumbled, "I knew that boy would be good for something. He may not follow orders, but he certainly does know how to make his own."

"He brought dragons." Knox had his hands in his pockets and his shoulders were shrugged as if he was shivering from the cold, but then Rose noticed him glimpse in her direction and she knew that seeing her there was making him uncomfortable.

A smile spread across Astoria's lips as she pictured her army headed by a whole family of dragons. The idea frightened Rose more than she could say, and she only hoped that Scorpius was being smart about taking down the beasts. If they were under Al's control, they'd be capable of anything; Al had proven such of himself time and time again over the past year.

Still excited, Astoria began walking out of the room and only stopped on her way to tell Knox, "Wait here, will you? I'd like to find a window."

Knox nodded and she was gone. Rose couldn't help but feel relieved now that Astoria wasn't in her same room, though she wasn't sold on Knox just yet. She remembered him from the battle at her house last Christmas – the way he'd gone after Scorpius and had then told Astoria very confidently that it wasn't Scorpius she wanted anymore. At the time, Rose had feared that Knox held some sort of bizarre control over Astoria and her motives, but now she wasn't so sure. All she knew was that Astoria trusted Knox, possibly more than anyone else in the Flock, and that alone put Rose in a perilous position.

Knox slowly walked toward her as she thought through all of this, and unfortunately she was too weak to back away. All Rose could do for now was lay there and wait for Knox to say or do something, and she was thankful when it was the former. He was kneeling down so that he could be closer to her eye level and she was busy staring at the triangular mark on his chest when he asked rather simply, "Who came to the wedding, Rose?"

"What?" she replied, confused as to what he was getting at.

Sighing, he closed his eyes as if reminding himself to be patient before he repeated, "Who came to the Longbottom wedding? Who was there? Were the _Lupins_ there?"

It was the mention of Teddy and Victoire's last name that made Rose remember that the man she was talking to had once been the love of her cousin's life. Dominique had been a different person ever since Knox had left her, though Rose had always defended her by saying that she was growing stronger every day. She didn't think that she needed to tell Knox that now, though; he would know that she was lying.

Instead, she said, "Yes. They were there. They're _here_." Teddy had brought Dominique as his date to the ceremony, and only the pregnant Victoire had stayed home with Remy.

The look on Knox's face upon hearing the confirmation was something between ultimate joy and guilty determination. Rose still wasn't sure what Knox was planning to do with the knowledge that Dominique was fighting somewhere on the Hogwarts grounds, but she was too scared to ask him point blank. He had murdered about as many people over the years as Astoria had, and Rose had no time to pity any more murderers.

She was telling herself this as he stood back up, and soon she had enough courage to ask, "Did Al really kill my grandfather? Did you really just go to Azkaban to protect him?"

"No," Knox said without even thinking about it, making sure that Rose had reason to believe him. "Your friend did nothing wrong._ I_ killed Arthur Weasley, and _that _was what I did to protect Albus. Going to Azkaban was what I did to protect myself."

Rose didn't know what to feel in response to Knox's confession. A part of her was relieved to know that Al was innocent in at least one crime, but the other part of her wanted to rip Knox's heart out right then and there for causing such grief for her family, for Al, for Dominique. She might have gone through with it even in her injured state if it hadn't been for the way Knox was looking her over, his eyes piercing into every part of her like bullets and then wincing like he could feel her pain.

His eyes made it to hers and he said, "She won't hurt you again so long as you listen to her story. And if you listen, you'll understand. You'll understand it all."

Something about Knox's tone told Rose that she shouldn't ask anything more regardless of her utter confusion. She wouldn't have had much time to ask anyway, though, because within thirty seconds Astoria was back inside, her previous smile still plastered to her face and making Rose frown in dismay. If Astoria was happy upon looking out the window, then surely Rose would feel the exact opposite way.

Seeing Rose again appeared to be the only thing to make Astoria's smile fade, for she merely glanced at Rose and her lips tightened in frustration. Knox must have noticed this as well, for he said to her before Astoria could say anything to him, "She has what you want."

Astoria turned to him with wide eyes full of hope and a speck of disbelief as she watched Knox pull up the pant of his left leg as if gesturing in a secret code. She was still staring at the leg when he said cordially, "Now, if it's all right, I'd very much like to get back out there. Albus can't handle this on his own, not even with Oreo's help."

"Fine," Astoria permitted him. Knox was on his way out when Astoria added, "Thank you for coming to me, even with your debt already paid."

Knox turned his head to the side in acknowledgement but didn't say anything before he vanished through the doorway. Astoria watched his shadow until it was gone, and then she returned her attention to Rose, this time with another smile on her face. She approached Rose with more confidence than she'd displayed all night, and some of it must have even rubbed off on Rose.

Once she was only a few feet in front of her, Rose asked, "What do you want, Astoria?"

"I want a _lot_ of things, Weasley," she answered with crossed arms, waiting to move forward with her plan because she was curious to see what Rose might ask next.

She was not so pleasantly surprised when Rose pushed herself into a sitting position, pulled on her broken finger until the bone snapped back into place, and said, "You're lying. You want _one_ thing; you just happen to be willing to do anything _else_ to get it."

"Oh, really?" asked Astoria as if Rose was an idiot, but the crack in her voice didn't go unnoticed. "And what makes you think that that's all I want?"

"Because that's all anyone wants. Ryder wants revenge, Albus wants his own life, Knox wants the woman he loves, and they're all willing to put up with you to get it." Then she thought of the one thing _she_ wanted right now, and that was when she knew that she was right, because what she wanted _now _was the same exact thing she'd wanted seven years ago. "As for me, I want Scorpius. I didn't know what wanting was until I wanted him."

Which part of Rose's speech made Astoria listen, Rose would never know. But somehow, it did, because after a moment of silence Astoria uncrossed her arms and said, "What I want is the stone that you have hidden beneath your dress..."

_ "What do you want to read tonight, Rosie?" asked Ron as he settled himself into her undersized bed. His legs were so long that his feet bounced off the edge of the mattress even when he was sitting up, and Rose couldn't have been more than a quarter his size as she snuggled into his chest._

_ "You pick," said Rose. It had been a long day at the graveyard, and she was struggling to be happy after being surrounded by so much sadness. She didn't care which story they read so long as her cheeks got to feel the softness of his red wool sweater. It was one of the ones her grandmother had made for him, and although she was pretty sure that this wasn't true, Ron always told her that the 'R' stood for Rose._

_ Sighing from the prospect of such immense responsibility, Ron leaned over the bed to reach down to the bottom of Rose's six-foot tall bookshelf and grabbed a worn-out copy of _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_, Rose only able to recognize it by its binding since she couldn't read the symbols inscribed across its cover. Hermione had told her once that the book had been written in ancient runes and that even though he like to pretend otherwise, Ron couldn't read them any better than Rose could; he'd just memorized all of the stories by now._

_ He turned to the first page and Rose was barely able to make out the symbol on its top right corner that she'd always thought didn't really belong there. The mark was of a darker ink than the actual print, its shape a triangle enclosed around a circle with a vertical line running straight down the middle._

_ Then Ron flipped to the story Rose knew as _The Tale of the Three Brothers. _"'There were once three brothers who were traveling down a lonely, winding road at midnight,'" Ron began to read._

_ "Twilight!" Rose corrected him instinctively. Curling himself into him to avoid his annoyed gaze, she mumbled, "Mum always said twilight."_

_ Ron began again, this time saying 'twilight.' The rest of the story was told just as Rose would have wanted it to be, and her sadness slowly faded away as she found herself engrossed in the brothers' adventures. She shuttered when the first brother came upon the wand made of elder wood and then lost it after going on a killing spree. She smiled when the second brother was given a black stone from the river that brought his wife back to life. She was ready to hear her favorite section – the one in which the last brother, Ignotus, asked for and was given a cloak of invisibility and later greeted death as an old friend – when she found her thoughts caught up on the stone and she asked her father to stop reading all of the sudden._

_ "What is it, Rosie?" he asked with worry. "What's wrong?"_

_ Her parents had always explained death as being infinite, unavoidable, and something one just had to accept, but if that were the case, why would the second brother have been able to use a Resurrection Stone?_

_ "Rose," Ron nudged her when she didn't respond, too caught up in her thoughts yet again._

_ Jolting back to the present, Rose looked up at Ron and said, "Daddy, what if Uncle Fred _could_ come back? What if we could find a stone for George? What if the story's true?"_

_ Ron gave her a look that she'd never seen him wear before. His face was cold, his hair spiked upright, his ears pure white instead of their usual red. She wondered if it was fear she saw in his eyes and almost expected him to call for Hermione, which he often did when he didn't want to tell Rose something important by himself. He didn't call for her this time, though. He answered Rose all on his own, and she believed him._

_ "The story isn't true, Rosie. It's just a story. I know that you want Uncle Fred to come back so that George and I can stop missing him, but not even the most powerful wizard can bring people back from the dead. Okay?"_

_ "Okay."_

Rose didn't need to ask to know what Astoria wanted her ring for. It was the Resurrection Stone, it had to be, and Astoria was under the impression that its mythical powers were real. Rose tried to tell herself that it wasn't true, that Astoria was mistaken, that her father was right, but then she saw the blue again. Somewhere out there, Scorpius was saying her name and a portkey was appearing to take her back to him, a kind of magic that no one but her father seemed to understand. If this story, _her_ story, was real, then why couldn't _The Tale of the Three Brothers_ be? Why couldn't the Deathly Hallows exist – the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, the Invisibility Cloak? Why couldn't those three objects really be the ones that were currently in Albus's hand, on Rose's leg, in James's shirt? Rose had learned long before she could remember that not even the most powerful wizard could bring people back from the dead, but perhaps the most powerful _witch_ could. It may not be possible if done out of fear, but Rose didn't think that Astoria was doing it out of fear. She was doing it for freedom.

* * *

_**Note: **So, what do you think Astoria's master plan is now that you have such a major clue? I'm very curious to hear your thoughts, and I'd also love to know how you're liking the flashbacks (because I'm personally having a lot of fun with them)._

_**The next five chapters are going to be the most intense ones of the entire story**, so I won't be giving too much away before uploading them, but the titles will be released in the spoiler section as always. I'm not sure when exactly I'll be able to update, but I will try to have **Chapter 38 done sometime within the next two weeks**.  
_

_Thanks for reading/reviewing!  
_

_-Hailey  
_


	38. The Battle of the Blood

_**Note: **I hope you're prepared for this one, readers. I most definitely wasn't when writing it.  
_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**38 – The Battle of the Blood**

"Rose," whispered Scorpius.

Nothing.

"Rose," he said again, louder this time. "Rose. Rose. Rose."

Nothing.

"_Rose._"

Nothing.

"_ROSE!"_

Nothing.

Scorpius ran both of his hands through his hair, which was becoming greasier by the second. He told himself to take three deep breaths, but he only made it to his second when he heard the sound of unmistakable grunting from behind him. Sighing, he silenced, pointed his white wand over his shoulder and thought without voicing the incantation, _Petrificus Totalus._ Then he came out from the group of small trees he'd been hiding within and looked down upon his latest victim.

The man was lying flat on the frozen grass and he looked about twenty years old, wearing grungy clothes with tears at his joints that were pinned tensely to his side. He was still smiling even in his stillness, which made Scorpius both scoff with disbelief and also feel better about what he was preparing to do.

"I can't for the life of me understand why you people get so _excited_ to see me," Scorpius said bitterly as he cocked his head to the side and looked into deep brown eyes that were swimming with confusion. "It's as if you think that you can beat me, but you don't know just how much I'm fighting for."

That was when he revealed a second wand in his left hand and watched as the confusion was replaced with fear. The man was trying to move, but it wouldn't work. It never worked. With both wands now pointed at him, Scorpius twisted his hands ever so slightly and whispered, "_Obliviate_." Instantly, the man's memories, which were few and far between in comparison to all the ones Scorpius was protecting within his own mind, were pulled from his forehead and into Scorpius's wands. He still wasn't quite used to the spell, but the doubling of his power helped to ensure that it worked anyway.

Once it was over, the man's eyes went blank and Scorpius knelt down to place one of Hermione's DA coins in his fisted hand. Before the battle had ensued at sunrise but after everyone in the Order of the Phoenix had arrived at the pitch to prepare for it, Hermione had had the genius idea to gather all her old coins from people and change their messaging charm into that of a portkey. She'd then redistributed them amongst the Order so that everyone could use them on their victims before whatever stunning spell placed on them let up, and it would take the Forbidden Flock to Diagon Alley, where employees from the Leaky Cauldron were waiting to help them start their lives over. So far, the practice was working brilliantly.

Scorpius waited for the man to disappear before he set off for the Whomping Willow, which he was only a few yards from him. On his way, he dueled with two other Flock members who attempted to corner him, but they both ran away before he could stun them. Once he was near enough to the deadly tree, everyone ceased to come near him or it, for they were all far more afraid of the willow than Scorpius was. In fact, he hadn't felt much afraid at all since this morning; instead, it seemed as though he was in a perpetual state of determination.

By his best estimate at the sun's spot in the sky, Scorpius thought it was nearing ten o'clock. It had been the longest two hours of his life and the worst Christmas morning of all time, but at least he was still here. Of course, he wasn't sure if he could say the same for the people he loved. At sunrise, when Rose hadn't been returned to him just as everyone had expected, Scorpius had lined up with his allies and faced off against Al with Harry and James, but the four of them had only fought for ten minutes before Al gave up and rode away on one of his six dragons. After that, Scorpius had split up the core alliance to designate leaders for various flanks of his army, sending the Longbottoms and Scamander twins to the side of the Forbidden Forest since they were the best people to deal with the magical creatures. Ron, Hermione, Hugo, and the Creeveys headed for Hogsmeade in hopes that it would bring them closer to a castle entrance. Scorpius had stayed in the center of the grounds with his father, the Potters, Mercy, and Teddy, but he couldn't stand not knowing if everyone else was safe, or even alive. Mostly, though, he couldn't stand not knowing about Rose.

After only a few minutes of waiting, Scorpius heard the branches of the tree thump against something that then landed on the ground and groaned in pain. Turning around, Scorpius saw the outline of James's Firebolt broom and ran over to it. He searched for a sign of the boy's mousy hair and, upon finding a large tuft of it, reached down and pulled the Invisibility Cloak off James's body. Then he offered his hand to help James up, but of course James didn't take it.

He was standing all on his own, wiping the sweat off his brow and wrapping up the cloak so that he could store it in his sweater, as he reported confidently, "There are no ways in our out of that castle except through whatever secret passage the Flock's using. Didn't spot Al either, but he's only got one dragon on the Hogsmeade side and five by the forest, which is being burnt to a crisp and won't survive much longer, making me assume that Al must be there. Only he could spread so much wrath so quickly."

"Perfect," muttered Scorpius. A part of him didn't completely believe James or the survey of the castle he'd just taken, but he still had McGonagall's advice ringing in his ears: _Think like an Auror. Your Animagus is your secret weapon. Don't reveal it until you need to_. He could so easily transform and take flight on his own, could even vanish himself while doing it, but he knew that he needed to save his falcon for the right moment. Plus, the Order needed him here, _in_ battle, not above it.

Scorpius was so lost in thought over the matter that he almost didn't hear James when he finally caught his breath and asked, "Where have my parents gone?"

"They and Teddy left to look for Lily," Scorpius explained. She had vanished soon after Scorpius had spotted Ryder Rookwood down by Hagrid's Hut, and during James's ride, Harry and Ginny had grown too worried to stay in their positions. Teddy had agreed to leave with them in case Lily's animal instincts had something to do with her disappearance; he'd be able to track her better than his surrogate parents would.

"And Draco's still not back?"

Scorpius shook his head. He'd been separated from his father about an hour ago, though he still wasn't sure how exactly it had happened or where Draco had gone. All he knew was that Draco would find a way to Astoria no matter what, whether or not Scorpius found his way to her first. But, for now, "It looks like it's just us."

James was in the middle of a sigh and Scorpius was wondering what to do next when an oddly harsh voice said from behind them, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, don't give yourselves _too_ much credit!"

"Oh, bullocks, we must have forgotten about you," said James as he and Scorpius turned around to face Mercy Golding. She looked as beautiful as ever even in her stocky Auror uniform, her blonde hair tied up in a braided ponytail that was as thick as the broomstick handle sitting in her right hand, and the few spots of her exposed skin shining in the sun like Rose's deluminator in the night. Scorpius hated it.

Smirking, Mercy replied, "How _very_ hard to believe. But, in the minute chance that you're interested, we just wiped twenty lads in a single lap." Stretching his neck so that Scorpius could see over Mercy's shoulder, he found the rest of Mercy's group resting for a moment by the giant tree trunk. All of the old Slytherin Quidditch team – graduates Aaron, Salem, and Maddi, along with Lindsay and Arnia – were there, as well as some of the Gryffindor team. Mercy had been leading them around the core of the Forbidden Flock and shooting spells in from the army's borders. It was odd to Scorpius that old rivals were flying together, but clearly Mercy was a better captain now than the player she'd been before.

While James was busy thinking up some unnecessarily snarky response, Scorpius told Mercy in as genuine a voice as he could muster, "Nicely done. It looks like we're holding our own all right out here."

"Aye, but it's still not enough to get Rose back!" argued James. If anyone wanted to rescue Rose even close to as much as Scorpius did, it was James. In fact, their mutual goal was probably the only thing keeping James and Scorpius together as they fought side by side. Normally, they'd be at each other's throats by now. They nearly subdued to such again when James added, "I mean, at this point, it might be too late. She might not even be-"

"_DON'T_ say it," warned Scorpius, his eyes staring straight through James. He knew what a bad sign it was that his voice wasn't triggering Rose's deluminator, but he couldn't accept the idea that Ron's old light switch might be working but that _she_ might not be. His world wouldn't exist without her, so surely if she'd been killed he would have seen his life disappear with hers.

The tension was palpable between the three of them as James and Mercy waited for Scorpius to continue the conversation. They listened closely when he finally said, "But James is right. I know that I should be here, in the core, so that I can be the leader that McGonagall always wanted me to be, but we can't take care of everyone else if we haven't first taken care of ourselves."

"What exactly are you saying, Scorpius?" asked Mercy behind squinted brown eyes.

"I'm saying that Harry left to look for Lily because he knew that doing so was more important than anything else. Well, getting to Rose is more important to _me_ than anything else." Scorpius paused there before turning to James and asking him, "Do you have any more ideas on how we might get into the castle from here, or how we could possibly fight through enough of the Flock to break a window open? Maybe some war strategy inspired by battles won over the ages?"

Scorpius was trying to sound desperate, which admittedly he was, but he also knew the answer before he'd asked the question. He was just trying to reach a conclusion that seemed mutual even though he'd long since come up with the idea himself, which was why he wasn't surprised when James laughed and exclaimed, "_Battles won over the ages?_ Of course I don't know of any! I didn't _ever_ pay attention in History of Magic; I'm not Hugo!"

Nodding solemnly to pretend that he was disappointed even though he was smiling on the inside, Scorpius said, "Well, then I guess we'll just have to go to him, won't we? And maybe that's a good thing – it'll bring us closer to the Hogsmeade passageway."

James took a moment to consider the plan, but he never once objected to it. That appeared to be Mercy's job, since she was the one who dropped her jaw and looked at Scorpius like he was insane. "Have you gone _mad?_" she yelled at him. "It's bad enough that Harry left and took Lupin with him; you can't seriously consider leaving too!? I'd be the only core alliance member left in the center, which might I remind you is the thickest section of our enemy army."

Scorpius was amazed by how quickly Mercy's previous confidence had disappeared. In that moment, he finally understood where her arrogance and ridiculous sense of entitlement – something that had driven him crazy all of last year – came from. Mercy liked to belittle people into listening to her because she never listened to herself. She made others feel intimidated because they intimidated her. She made people believe in her because she'd never once believed in herself.

Pitying her for the first time he could recall, Scorpius put a hand on her shoulder and said, "Hold the fort, Mercy. You can do this."

"Are you sure?" she asked just after he took his hand back. In the background, Scorpius could smell smoke pillowing from fires in the Forbidden Forest, could hear screams echoing against the ice of the Black Lake, could see the fear spotted across Mercy's shining skin, but his senses didn't last for long. Numbness was the only thing that could keep him awake.

"Yes," said Scorpius.

"Why?"

Knowing that whatever he said wouldn't be able to convince Mercy of the obvious truth, Scorpius looked to James and hoped that his expression could be read correctly as a plea for help. He knew that it had worked when James stated just as confidently as Mercy had spoken earlier, "Because you're talented. That's why."

Scorpius almost thought that Mercy was going to cry when he saw her jaw suddenly clench in a way more vulnerable than angry. James Sirius Potter never admitted to talent in anyone other than himself, but of course, Scorpius had always known that Mercy would be James's exception. That was also why he hated to break up the pair, but they were wasting time by standing there.

With a single kick at James's leg, Scorpius communicated silently that they'd better get going. Then they simultaneously turned around and headed away from the tree and into the crowd, Scorpius keeping his ears open enough to overhear Mercy calling out orders to her Quidditch posse. He wasn't sure if he was doing the right thing by leaving so many of his friends behind, but he at least knew that he was leaving them all in the best possible hands.

As soon as they were outside the Whomping Willow's precarious protection, Scorpius and James were open targets and wands were aiming at them from every direction within seconds. Everywhere Scorpius looked, wizards and witches dressed in black with smiles that had wide holes in them were licking their lips in hunger. They were walking slowly toward him, almost as if they thought they had time to spare before killing him, but they had no idea what they were in for.

"Maybe we should have taken the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack," suggested James nervously, but James was never nervous. It was all part of the act.

Playing along, Scorpius clutched only one wand and said, "The Flock would have been waiting to ambush us in the shack. Maybe you should use your Invisibility Cloak."

James's responding laugh started out fearful but ended with excitement. A smile was spreading over his cold cheeks as he said, "What, and miss out on all the fun?" Then he winked at Scorpius and turned to face his adversaries, surprising them when he yelled, "_REDUCTO!" _and sent them all flying backward into oblivion.

Taking this as his cue, Scorpius put his wand back into his pocket in an attempt to confuse the beggars who had all gone still around him. Then he pointed his hands back at them, only now each of them had three wands, and the Flock couldn't run fast enough. "_Avis_," he said, because it was his favorite spell. "_Oppugno,"_ he added, because it was Rose's favorite charm.

Birds flew after the fleers like hail in a blizzard, and all Scorpius could see before they were too far away were the splashes of blood rising into the air and then falling on the snow, where it seeped through the white and stained it the color of both life and death, though all Scorpius could see was Rose's red hair spreading across his white skin.

"_Expelliarmus!"_ screamed James from behind Scorpius, for the latter had been too distracted to see someone coming at him. The two of them could have fought through anyone, especially these poor folk Astoria had surely bought for her battle, but they were still outnumbered. They couldn't risk having to ward off every attacker that came their way or they'd be here all week. They _had_ to get to Hogsmeade, so they started running.

Scorpius didn't even look at the man whose wand had been taken from his hands and snatched up by James; he was now more focused on the road ahead of him than he was the dead end he was leaving behind. They ran back down the hill and past the Quidditch pitch that was now being used as a quasi-hospital wing, then back up and around the side of the castle with the greenhouses and vegetable garden. In order to be as efficient as possible, they only used defensive spells and only when they needed to, and they must have gone over a mile before they exhausted themselves and had to start walking. By then, though, they were coming up on the Ivy Curtain that ran across the Black Lake, where there were substantially fewer Flock soldiers thanks to the heavy presence of dementors guarding the ice.

They were squirting water straight into their mouths from their wands when Scorpius saw one. At first, he thought it was a person, since he could have sworn he'd heard a twig snapping, but then he saw the cloak floating hauntingly across the horizon line. Soon after he spotted it came the Patronus, which he couldn't quite make out, nor could he find its source. All he knew was that the spirit animal was a rather large bird.

Scorpius tried to forget about the Patronus as he and James started moving again, walking along with cautious steps but no longer in as much danger as they'd been in by the willow or the pitch. In fact, they both felt safe enough to even dare to talk, which proved to be something they desperately needed to do just so that they didn't succumb to their mutual worries.

"Thanks, by the way," said Scorpius as they were wading through some deep powder, the only part of the grounds that had yet to be touched.

"Well," James replied, "I couldn't very well let you be killed, could I? What possible flying competition would I have then?"

It was nice for Scorpius to hear James joke about Quidditch even after his shoulder injury had taken him off the Montrose Magpies team. It was nice to hear that life could go on even after losing the thing most important to someone. Still, though, Scorpius had to cut him off. "Actually, saving me wasn't what I was referring to," he said. "I meant, thanks for getting Mercy to believe me."

Mercy was quite possibly an even touchier subject for James than Quidditch was, but he took it like a professional. James sounded completely serious when he shrugged his shoulders and said, "I didn't do it for you."

Scorpius knew what he meant. It didn't matter what or how much of your talent you lost as long as you still had the person you loved by your side. That was why he asked in what he expected to be a rhetorical question, "You still love her, don't you?"

"Er, I was actually talking about Rose." That was a surprise. "I mean, you were right, Scorpius – Hogsmeade is the only way in or out of the castle anymore, and that means we have to get there if we want to get to Rose. I did it for _Rose_."

Scorpius had been hoping that he and James wouldn't wind up talking about Rose, because he needed a distraction from such thoughts. When James brought her up, though, Scorpius was oddly okay with hearing her name so many times, and the only effect it appeared to have on him was serving as a reminder to say her name himself. So, just in case the deluminator started working again, he whispered the word _Rose_ ten times. When nothing happened in response except for James beginning to stare at him with concern, Scorpius asked James a question that wasn't at all rhetorical, "Do you really think she might be dead?"

He had been the one to nearly say it, just before Scorpius had cut him off, but that didn't mean that James had meant it. Realizing this, the latter answered now, "I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry."

Their trail of footsteps stopped forming as Scorpius shook his head. "That's not the point!" he spat, then steadied his breathing to ask again, "Do you _believe _it?"

"No. Of course not. She has to be alive." James spoke without a single pause so that Scorpius would know that he wasn't lying. In fact, he was probably being more honest than he'd ever been, especially when he admitted, "Al would never let any of us be killed, especially Rose."

They were walking again now, and for the second time Scorpius thought he heard a twig break behind them. Just to make sure that they weren't being followed, he and James decided then to start covering their tracks with a simple charm spell. They didn't forget about their conversation, though, since Scorpius picked up right where they'd left off by asking James, "So, you still believe in Al, then?"

"Yeah, I do. He's my brother."

"I believe in him too. He's my brother too."

A few minutes and another mile later, the tiny town of Hogsmeade could be seen in its valley amongst the mountains. It was different than either Scorpius or James remembered it from their last respective visits. The houses that were usually tall and narrow with steep roofs and crooked chimneys were all broken, their windows shattering and shingles crumbling. Small fires were spreading from door to door, and people were screaming with both terror and exhilaration. Between the boys and the buildings was yet another army, this one smaller than the last but quite possibly more powerful. White was on the side closest to Scorpius, black was on the side that bled into town, and in the middle was the largest creature Scorpius had ever seen.

All Scorpius could think of as he looked at the black dragon who was spitting fire and stomping pits into the snow was that there were five more of them in the Forbidden Forest. Hopefully, Hagrid, Colin, and the giants would be fighting back against them by now, but would they be enough to take the beasts down? Scorpius had learned a lot from his years of training with McGonagall and the summers he'd spend with Rose and her parents, but he didn't know a single thing about dragons.

Sensing his fear because of course Scorpius was supposed to worry about his soldiers, James turned to him from where they were kneeling down to try to hide in the snow and said, "Forget about the dragon, Scorp. Our first goal is to find Hugo, remember?" James was right in that Scorpius had suggested such earlier, but they both knew that they didn't really _need_ Hugo. They just needed to feel like they'd fabricated some sort of workable plan, and Hugo happened to be all they'd come up with so far.

Trying to get back on track, Scorpius nodded and said, "Right. Hugo. Okay." Then he was at a loss, at least until he continued to watch the army in front of him that was clustered together like a herd of cattle and realized that there was no way they could run into the battle without the Flock seeing them first. After all, Astoria's army still had the higher ground thanks to that dragon.

"We should split up," Scorpius announced before he could change his mind. James looked at him skeptically, but Scorpius pressed on. "You run into the army with your cloak on, find Hugo and pull him out with you and a big group of other Order members. That way, it'll just look like you're retreating.

"Meanwhile, I'll go back down to the lakeside and see if I can get a better view of the town. Maybe I'll be able to spot some of the Flock going in and out of a certain building, which would give us a better idea of where the passageway is." Truthfully, Scorpius was going to go down to the abandoned lake and transform in private so that he could survey Hogsmeade from above, but he didn't want to say so to James just yet. "I'll meet you back here in ten minutes?"

"Sure thing, boss," agreed James without a hint of hesitation. He was a good actor. Then he had his cloak on again and Scorpius could no longer be sure if was still there or if he was already gone.

The walk down to the Black Lake was scarier than any moment of this battle had been thus far. Scorpius remained quiet and kept his favorite wand – the one Nigel had made him – clasped tightly in his right hand, but nothing could dissipate the paranoia. He still found himself turning his neck every few seconds just to make sure he wasn't being crept up on and he still thought about all the people who could be dead already even amongst the peaceful crystals that were forming from the cold.

Just for a minute, Scorpius decided to kneel down next to the ice that stretched all the way to the island he'd once inhabited with Rose and even farther onto the shores he couldn't see. He placed a flattened palm onto the frozen liquid as he turned his gaze back to the castle, with its stained glass windows that were too bright from the combination of sun and ice to have the tears of their subjects at all visible. He waited to feel the cold tingle through his nerves as he squinted his eyes to try to look over every one of those windows, wondering which one Rose was hidden behind. His hand never felt the cold, but he picked it up off the ice anyway when he heard a familiar voice echo off the various glass surfaces.

"You look like you could use some help," she said, and Scorpius breathed a sigh of relief to finally know whom that Patronus had belonged to and who'd been breaking so many twigs.

"Ilana Higgs," he said as he stood up and turned around. "I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever see you again."

She looked different than she had last summer, when he'd talked to her outside Grimmauld Place. Her hair was still thick, flowing, and blacker than night, but now it was longer and wilder and far more abandoned. Her eyes were still green like leaves, but now they were the color of leaves that had fallen before turning gold. Her skin was still white and pure, but now her arms were covered in the thick wool of a violet sweater and her hands were dried and cracking.

Ilana didn't say anything before she walked straight up to Scorpius and hugged him. She wasn't a very good hugger; she was bony and tense, but somehow Scorpius still felt like he needed the body heat. Gingerly, he wrapped his own arms around her and they held each other for a long while even though they both wanted to be holding someone else.

When they finally broke apart, Scorpius found himself whimpering, "I lost her, Ilana. I lost her _again_." Ilana had been the only one to even acknowledge him when he'd returned to Hogwarts last year, following the reveal of Astoria and her leadership of the Forbidden Flock. Ilana had been the one to help him rebuild his Quidditch team. Ilana had been the one to help organize the reunion that had brought Rose back to him. She had been there through the worst of it, so it felt right that she was here now.

"So you'll get her back," Ilana told him, her hands on his shoulders and her eyes staring into his. "You'll get her back like you always do."

Having heard what he needed to hear, Scorpius was now able to focus on Ilana. After all, he had plenty of questions for her, including what had brought her here, now, _today_, when he'd sent her Al's letters half a week ago already. More than that, though, he wanted to know what Ilana had been doing following _him_ when it was Al she should be looking for. Curious, he asked, "What are you doing here, Ilana? You do know that most of the dragons are in the forest, don't you?"

"Just because Potter's dragons are in the forest doesn't mean _he_ is," she said. "And just because those papers had his handwriting on them doesn't mean _he_ sent them." Of course she knew. Al could never have sent those letters on his own; he wasn't brave enough and Ilana knew that about him. Scorpius remembered how it had seemed as though she'd known everything about Al before they'd even gotten together last summer. He could see pieces of Albus in Ilana the same way he felt Rose in himself.

"And anyway, I didn't come back for him," Ilana continued. Then she started rolling up the sleeve of her sweater to reveal a browning scar that Scorpius had seen on others more times than he'd ever wanted to, but one that he'd never seen on her... one that was made up of eight letters carved into flesh... one that read _Mud-blood._ "I came back for my family. I came back for _you_. I came back to fight."

With that, they set off together. Scorpius no longer had any time to transform before he was supposed to meet James, so instead he led Ilana back up to the snow bank that overlooked the town, explaining to her everything that she'd missed on the way. He didn't get much out of her in return, but Scorpius knew how private Ilana was normally, let alone at a time when anyone could be listening and anything she said could put her family in danger. Most of the Flock members where well trained to seek out the Muggle-borns, which Scorpius didn't need to explain for Ilana to understand.

They were half way up the hill when they came across her. Myriam Vane, a Hufflepuff girl Scorpius recognized from his Astronomy classes, was writhing in the snow, and upon kneeling down to examine her, Scorpius could see that she had a broken leg. There were no Flock members around that Scorpius could spot, but he knew that they must be waiting in the surrounding trees.

"I asked James to bring a big group with him," Scorpius told Ilana. "But he must have lost a few along the way. Myriam's not going to be able to Apparate to the pitch in this state." He didn't like talking about the poor girl this way when she was right in front of him, but there was nothing else he could do. Myriam didn't even realize that he was talking about her; she was in too much pain to focus on anything else.

Scorpius didn't know what to do, since he couldn't very well leave Myriam here but of course he needed to get on his way. Luckily, Ilana came up with a plan before he gave up on one, ordering him to hold Myriam's head down as she crouched around the girl's leg and then pulled it back into place. The screams that issued from Myriam were terribly loud and terribly high-pitched, but Scorpius had already placed the _Muffliato_ charm around them in hopes that it would lessen the noise.

Then Ilana reached into her pocket and pulled out a soft, plastic vile filled with a creamy ointment that she rubbed on Myriam's exposed leg. Instantly, Myriam let out a sigh of relief and thanked Ilana for cooling her down before she Apparated away.

"What was that?" Scorpius asked, confused as to all that Ilana had just done. "Some sort of potion?"

"No potion," Ilana shook her head. "No magic. Just medicine."

Scorpius didn't ask any more questions and they didn't come across any more wounds or casualties on their way to James. Sure enough, he was right where he'd promised to be, and by his side was a group of twenty or so Order members, none more noticeable to Scorpius than Hugo, Nigel, and Nigel's parents, Dennis and Natalie.

James greeted Ilana with both confusion and acceptance as Scorpius approached Hugo and Nigel and asked the former without a word of hello, "Where are Ron and Hermione?" He needed to make sure that Rose and Hugo's parents were okay before he could start formulating the next plan.

"They're buried deeper in the flank," said Hugo as if it was a sort of side-note. "Squirmsnail and I have been focusing on all the outliers that try to get past us to stop them from running off toward your side."

"Speaking of," Nigel went on for him with a voice full of adrenaline, "Why are you over here, Scorpius? Did you already pound the daylight out of the entire center?"

Scorpius answered, "Sadly, no. But even if we had, there's no way into the castle from over there. Every entrance is being blocked from the inside as well as out. We _have_ to get into Hogsmeade."

Now it was the Creevey couple's turn to butt in. Dennis was the one to say, "But we've been trying to get through for hours now, and we're still on the outs. The memory-wiping is taking too long, and not everyone knows how to properly perform the spell, so they wait for us to do it. Then, by the time we get there, the stunning spells have worn off and the Flock's back to fighting us."

Scorpius sighed because he didn't know what to say. It had been a risk to agree to the memory-wiping system the Order was using, but Scorpius was still convinced that it was the right thing to do. Just looking around now, he saw some of the surrounding Order members keeping guard of the group and Obliviating the straggling Flock members as they began slyly appearing from the woods and snow caves. Every last one of them looked exactly the same, just like the one Scorpius had driven off back at the Whomping Willow. They weren't bad people; they were just acting on their wrong sides.

Telling himself to snap out of the reverie, Scorpius said to the people watching him, which now included James and Ilana, "Clearly, whatever we've been doing _isn't_ working. We're not going to start killing everyone, so we need a new strategy – some way to keep the Flock in control until we get close enough to all of them to Obliviate their minds."

James was the one to ask then, "Hugo, do you know of any sort of historical war tactics that might give us inspiration – maybe something from the Goblin Rebellions or the Giant Wars?"

"No, all of those were pretty self-explanatory," said Hugo, making Ilana laugh. After giving the question a minute of thought, though, Hugo looked down at the muddy snow and wondered aloud, "But _war_ might not be the best place to look. I mean, Astoria is this all-powerful witch who's under the impression that she can do anything herself."

"True," nodded James, which made Hugo smile since he was always after his older cousin's approval. "You said it yourself, Scorp – all this blood is just a distraction from whatever she's doing in the castle right now. If it weren't, then she'd be out here fighting and every Muggle-born would be dead by now." Both Dennis and Natalie shuttered to hear that, their hands linked together tightly in the support of the Muggle-born family member they'd lost in the last war. When Scorpius saw those hands, he absent-mindedly reached his own out to look for Rose's, but all he found was air... cold, empty air.

When Scorpius shrugged in assurance, Hugo continued. "So, what if we turned things around and started thinking less like war generals and more like radical witches?" If their furrowed eyebrows were any indication, nobody seemed to be following where Hugo was going with this, so he added impatiently, "You know, like Carlotta Pinkstone!"

Still, nobody understood. Nigel was the only other one of those present who knew anything about the history of magic, which was obvious when he was the only one who actually recognized the name Hugo had mentioned. "Isn't that the one who thought that she could do magic without a wand?" asked the youngest Creevey, naturally only caring about the wandlore aspect of the story.

"Not the point!" Scorpius and Hugo scolded Nigel in unison.

"_Anyway_," Hugo went on, "Pinkstone wanted to stop spell suppression, so she advocated for the repeal of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy. Before she even had anyone on her side, she was already performing magic in completely public places, but she didn't use so much magic that the Muggles questioned its reality."

"Then what did she do?" asked Ilana, who knew just how little magic had to be done for Muggles to question its reality.

Hugo smiled, thankful that she'd asked the question because that meant that she might be on board. "It's simple, really. She didn't play with fire; she played with _smoke_." And then everyone smiled, because it was the perfect idea. Al's dragons were spreading enough fire as it was, but this war could use some shades of grey.

The group took about twenty minutes to plan and suit up before Scorpius gathered everyone together and announced that they were ready. Nigel had given them all an extra wand (Hugo was given five) that he hoped would match their personalities, Ilana had distributed a burn-repellant potion to all those with sensitive skin, and James had gone ahead to make sure that their path back to the Hogsmeade army was completely clear. Before they set off, Dennis and Natalie gave Hugo and Nigel blubbering kisses on their cheeks and made them promise to stay safe and James returned to shake hands with Scorpius as a sign of their newfound camaraderie.

Scorpius and James led the way, each of them blasting smoke from two wands until they could barely see where they were going. Around them, the rest of the group blasted their smoke, and soon it was racing down the hill and into the outskirts of town until nothing was visible except the slanted roof of the Shrieking Shack. Then Hugo passed out the bundle of Spectrespecs he'd stolen from Neville and Luna's wedding gifts and the group descended into their carefully controlled chaos.

The smoke had seeped through the first few layers of Flock members, which proved to be relatively easy to rid of. Scorpius stayed close to James, Ilana, Hugo, and the Creeveys as they all maneuvered through the smog and took their opponents out one after the other. Even after nearly all of the victims had taken their Portkeys back to London, the rest of the Flock's army had no idea what was going on because they couldn't actually see anything past themselves. Still, the distraction didn't fool the battered Ron and somehow blemish-free Hermione, who found Scorpius and company after their first "round" and, upon being explained what exactly was going on, joined in on the action.

Together, the group sent in even more smoke this time as they pushed their way farther toward the Shrieking Shack, and this time Scorpius actually felt like they were given a challenge. The Flock members whom they were taking down now were faster and smarter than any Scorpius had come across thus far. They fought back even though they couldn't see what they were aiming at, sending spells everywhere and making the Order waste some of their time by ducking and avoiding any offensive attacks. Still, everyone managed to make it through the second round unscathed, and Scorpius estimated that, all in all, they'd vanished about forty percent of Astoria's Hogsmeade flank.

"This time, let's shoot for fifty," Scorpius told the Order in a huddle before going in for a third time. They were only a quarter mile away from the shack now, and Scorpius knew that one of Astoria's core members just _had_ to be stationed there.

He was right. They didn't even make it all the way to the shack before Scorpius spotted the red eyes glaring through the smog. "What the?" he heard James gasp from beside him, but he too could tell that this man was dangerous even though James didn't know who exactly he was. This was Wynn Traylor, and years of hearsay had taught Scorpius that he was not to be trusted.

"On three," Scorpius whispered to James without taking his eyes off of Wynn. The albino was still trying to make his way through the smoke, and the last thing Scorpius wanted to do was draw attention to his distinct voice.

When James nodded, Scorpius counted. "One... two... THREE..."

"_STUPEFY!"_

Wynn was blasted straight into Dennis and Natalie's path, which was perfect because Scorpius didn't trust anyone else performing the next spell on Wynn but the professional Obliviators. Scorpius and James stood still as they waited for the spell to complete, and once it did, James turned around to move on to other opponents. Scorpius held his ground, though, just to make sure that Wynn was given the Portkey and was taken away.

He was still looking in Wynn's direction when Dennis and Natalie started mindlessly ruffling through their pockets in search of a coin, and Scorpius was about to walk over and give them one of his own when he saw Wynn's white hair spike atop his head and saw his white hand clasp around a black wand with fervor and hate. Scorpius was running toward them then, but it was already too late. All it took were two flicks and two words said two times for two people to have their fear forever fragmented.

"_Avada kedavra!"_ Dennis went cold and fell into the smoke. _"Avada kedavra!"_ Natalie went with him.

Wynn didn't dare stick around and was gone by the time Scorpius knelt at the Creevey couple's sides. A part of him wanted to call out to Ilana in hopes that she could help Dennis and Natalie the way she'd helped Myriam Vane, but he knew that she wouldn't be able to. The bodies he was staring at were frozen, and not in a temporary way like the ice that would melt come spring. They were frozen like time on its axel – irrefutably, inarguably, permanently. They were gone.

"How did this happen?" Scorpius asked aloud, cursing both himself as well as Wynn Traylor. "He'd already forgotten. How could he have done this after forgetting?" But the truth was that, yet again, Scorpius knew the answer to his own question. Wynn wasn't like the other Flock members. He wasn't like the ones Astoria had paid to be here, and who therefore completely forgot where they even were and often what magic was when their memories were wiped. It had been Wynn's choice to join Astoria's army, and even more curiously, it wasn't his history with Muggle-borns or with the Dark Arts that made him the killer he was. He'd been born a killer, not because of the blood that he shed over the years, but because of the blood that ran through his veins. Killing wasn't something Wynn had ever _learned_, but rather it was all he knew, so of course he would resort to it even in his amnesia.

"N-N-NO! NOOOOOOO! No." Nigel's voice was a freight train halting to a slow. Scorpius hadn't known where he was before or how long it had taken him to get there, but it must have been a while because the smoke was beginning to clear. The sky actually looked quite beautiful now, with the smoke floating up in the blue like clouds but leaving the denser, colder pillows to bounce against the snow like ripples forming on the surface of a tepid lake. It was almost peaceful, or at least it should have been. Instead, everything was hazy.

Scorpius moved over to make room for Nigel as the boy threw his body over those of his parents, his hand grasping his father's and his face crying into his mother's shoulder like a small child with a tantrum. His ears had gone from bright red to a haunting, stark white, and Scorpius could see his stomach collapsing as his every breath grew harder to take. Upon staring at him, Scorpius almost felt like he was looking at the boy he'd seen in his second year at Hogwarts and had watched follow Hugo around for three whole years after that. This was not the strong, wandlore-obsessed, confident-in-his-feelings Nigel. This was not a man anymore. This was an orphan.

The whimpering continued and Scorpius kept his distance, but soon Hugo was there and he refused to give Nigel any room at all. He sat opposite from Nigel's spot, looking down at the couple who had known his secret before his own parents had, and closed their eyelids with a touch of each hand. Then he put those same hands around Nigel's still buried face and moved him into his own shoulder, where Nigel crumbled into a ball but managed to cling onto pieces of Hugo's clothing just to make sure he stayed upright and breathing. Around the boys, it was snowing, but unlike the snow that had fallen during their first kiss, these flakes were real.

They combined with the smoke to look like ashes, and Nigel was the flame that had just gone out. Scorpius couldn't take his eyes off him, not even to look up and notice that the Order had lost its upper hand and that the Flock was now fighting back fervently and successfully, that James and Ilana were doing all they could to hold off the opposition but they wouldn't be able to keep doing so for much longer, that Dennis and Natalie's bodies were not the only ones on the ground.

Those bodies and their grieving loved ones were making the air colder than Scorpius thought possible, and it was when he noticed the temperature change that he finally refocused his eyes on the goings-on in the distance rather than those that were right in front of him. Hooded dementors were flying toward them and the Shrieking Shack from all edges of the Black Lake, naturally attracted to the breaking, vulnerable souls that would make for easy prey.

Ron and Hermione had also noticed the cloaked figures. When Scorpius looked back at the cluster of tears that was Hugo and Nigel, still lodged between the slowly decaying bodies, Ron was kneeling behind Hugo and was trying to pull his son off of the catatonic Nigel. Hermione was trying a more plausible tactic, crouching right in front of Scorpius and yelling at Nigel to gain his attention.

"We have to go, Nigel!" she cried. "We _have_ to move!" but he didn't respond. All he could say was 'no.'

The dementors were too close for them to wait any longer. Since everyone else was busy fighting or talking sense into Nigel, Scorpius was the only one to stand facing the dementors and yell, "_EXPECTO PATRONUM!" _His light falcon came roaring out of him in its full form, but he couldn't hold onto the happy thoughts of Rose without questioning himself, letting the dementors periodically break through his short-lived barrier. He just needed one more person to join him and he might be able to shoot them all the way back to their ice.

He got exactly what he'd wished for, though not from the person he'd expected. Scorpius wasn't sure when Hugo had finally let go of Nigel, but soon he was standing only a foot from Scorpius's side and had all six of his wands pointing toward the dementors as he swallowed his flood of tears, yelled the same incantation Scorpius had just voiced, and watched a giraffe-sized kangaroo hop straight through the black holes of the dementors' mouths.

Beneath the impressive spells, Ron had picked Nigel up and was cradling him in his arms as if Nigel were his own son, carrying him to safety in the confined gardens around the Shrieking Shack. If anything, seeing his father and Nigel only intensified Hugo's Patronus, and within a few moments the dementors had retreated, James and Ilana had warded off the Flock and put a few simple protective charms around the shack, and Hermione had gathered everyone who was able to magically move all the dead bodies into the garden. Scorpius and Hugo were the last two to enter the safe haven, waiting to release their spells until they were certain that the coast was clear.

Once in the garden, Hugo rushed back to Nigel, who was sitting stunned against one of the haunted house's peeling walls. Ron was already there with him, but when Hugo leaned over to plant a heavy kiss on Nigel's forehead, Ron didn't look at all uncomfortable or taken aback. He looked happy to see his son accomplish something he hadn't been able to before, and to see him so in love that it hurt. He looked proud.

Around the huddle of men stood James, Ilana, Hermione, and Scorpius, their bodies blocking the corpses Hermione had laid down behind them. For a few minutes, everyone was just silent as they hung their heads down, but then James grew impatient and let into his anger by saying, "The Creeveys were right – memory wiping _isn't_ working. We have to do _more_ than that. That albino deserves to die for all I care."

James had been one of the core alliance half who'd wanted to keep the Flock alive, unlike Ron. Still, Scorpius could understand how he'd changed his mind so quickly. When the Creeveys had been killed – two parents at the same time, with two sons who would now be orphans – James had pictured them as his own parents, had pictured Nigel as himself, had pictured the whole situation as something that could easily happen to him and his siblings. He was picturing something that could have _already_ happened to parts or all of his family, because he didn't know where Harry and Ginny were. He didn't know where Teddy was, or Lily. He didn't even know about Al. And Scorpius understood that, because the same could be said for him about Rose, and she was more of a family than his true blood relatives had ever been.

He and James had their eyes locked on each other as Scorpius tried to silently communicate that he agreed, however difficult it was to admit it. The only thing that made them break contact was Hugo, for he came up with a plan before either Scorpius or James could think of something other than simply running with their rage.

"I can't be touched," he stated monotonously, with absolutely no emotion in his voice, though he was looking up at the four people who were staring at him with the utmost worry in their wrinkles. Hermione was the first of them to understand, laughing breathlessly before Hugo even added, "On this same day last year, my dad made an Unbreakable Vow with Astoria that promised her the Auror department in exchange for my and my mother's safety. So long as all of these wizards are officially part of the Forbidden Flock, Mum and I can't be touched."

Now, Scorpius knew where Hugo was going with this. Everyone was skeptical when Hugo stood up straight and looked to Hermione for permission before facing Scorpius and stating questionably, "Let me and Mum march into Hogsmeade and take every blast they throw our way. Let us go inside every shop and every basement until we find the tunnel. Let us break into the castle, Scorp. Let me avenge these deaths. Let me find my sister. Let me _end this_."

Scorpius was about to nod, because he figured that Hugo was going to make this happen with or without his formal permission, but Ron cut him off. "Wait a minute!" he yelled without standing up, for he refused to take his arm out from around Nigel's shaking soldiers. He was looking back and forth between his son and his wife as he said, "You can't go! _I_ won't allow it! There are plenty of spells that they can use without touching you themselves; th-they could use Fiendfyre or they could have bombs already set up in the shops just waiting for you to walk inside! You can't go. I can't lose you."

He was crying, but Hermione was quick to rush over to him and wipe his tears away. "Ronald, listen to me," she told him. "We can find Rose, okay? Hugo and I can find her together. We _will_ bring her back, and we will all be _fine_."

"What if you're not?" asked Ron helplessly.

Ignoring the question because she'd already answered it, Hermione clenched her jaw and said in an order, "Take Nigel and his parents back to the Quidditch pitch. Wait with him until his brother gets there. Do _not_ let either of them out of your sight. They are our responsibility now, and they will need you." Beside her, Nigel was staring at Ron like he was a stranger, but the kind of stranger that he could have sworn he'd seen before.

Ron the Auror didn't want to put Hermione or Hugo into a position that they couldn't handle; he wanted to save Rose himself, or at least go with his family to protect them while they all rescued her together. Ron the _husband_, on the other hand, knew by now that Hermione was _always_ right. And then there was Ron the father, and he was the most important of the three, because he was the one who knew that his daughter was alive just as James had known when Scorpius had asked him, and he was the one who knew that the best kinds of fathers were the ones who took in strays, just like Arthur had once done for Harry and like he himself had done so many times for Scorpius. So, Ron the Auror swallowed his pride while Ron the husband kissed his wife goodbye and while Ron the father lifted Nigel to his feet, gave both Hugo and Scorpius enormous bear hugs, and then Disapparated with his new family by his side.

Hugo sniffled to see his father and Nigel go, but Hermione was still there to make sure he stayed strong. They wouldn't let go of each other as they prepared themselves for what they were about to do, and Scorpius was both anxious and concerned to tell them, "Go slowly. Be smart. And please, whatever you do, don't get killed."

Smiling, Hermione said, "Please! Need I remind you that this isn't exactly my first rodeo?"

It was as if Hermione had known exactly what to say to make Scorpius relax. "Leave your tracks so that I can find the tunnel once I fight all the way through the town," he said to her with more confidence than he'd had since the wedding. Then he added to Hugo, "She'll be in the Room of Requirement, but you'll have to blast it open." He hadn't known this before, but as he said the words he was certain that they were true. Where else would Astoria keep her captive but in a cell that couldn't be opened by anyone but here?

"Okay," Hugo nodded, and Scorpius watched closely as he and Hermione walked out of the barrier and ignored all of the Flock members who surrounded them but received no wounds from their spells.

Convinced enough that the Unbreakable Vow would hold true for the mother/son duo, Scorpius turned to the waiting James and Ilana and asked almost wickedly, "So, you two ready for this?"

"Oh, I'm ready," replied Ilana as she rolled up her sleeve, once again revealing the scar that she'd been waiting nearly a year to carve into somebody else.

When it was James's turn, he squinted his eyes, tilted his head, and seethed, "Let's kill this bastard."

Scorpius decided to follow his instincts by taking James and Ilana down to the lake. He didn't much like the idea of dementors interfering with the fight, but he was sure that Wynn had been the one to send them the Order's way in the first place, which meant that he must have gone to the Black Lake in order to do so. He could be long gone by now, of course, but Scorpius wouldn't yet know where else to look.

They found him waiting on the ice, and Scorpius took it as a gesture of arrogance rather than kindness that Wynn had seemingly sent the dementors away. He was simply standing there with an obnoxiously firm stance atop the slippery surface and his hands were clasped in front of his stomach with more patience than he had ever shown. His eyes were blank but still filled with fire, because of course he didn't recognize Scorpius, but it didn't matter. It didn't change the fact that he was waiting to kill _anyone_.

James and Ilana were attempting to circle around Wynn's side as Scorpius approached him from the front, but Wynn wouldn't let them get that far. All of his spells were silent because he didn't know the incantations for them, though this didn't have any effect on their strength. Ilana was the first to land on her face, sliding across the ice and spreading muddy blood from her nose into the cracks of the glass.

Running over to her and helping her up, Scorpius momentarily forgot about Wynn's presence as he tried to focus on Ilana's, but it turned out that Wynn had refocused his attention as well. He was now staring at the lake's island, where the dementors were slowly returning. "They can smell my blood," said Ilana chillingly.

"They don't matter," Scorpius said. Then he pointed a wand at Ilana's broken nose and fixed it by saying, _"Episkey."_

James had missed the whole conversation between Scorpius and Ilana, too focused on the dementors and getting ready to procure a Patronus that he knew wouldn't be strong enough in his saddened state. It wasn't until Scorpius told him not to bother trying that he remembered he wasn't the only one on that ice, which was currently freezing all over again as the dementors neared and flew for the blood and the leader and the talent, but were careful to avoid the albino.

Noticing this pattern, Scorpius hoped that James would understand what he was thinking the same way Rose could always read both of their minds, since he was too far away from James to say it aloud without Wynn overhearing. Meanwhile, Ilana was still right next to him and was growing more and more confused about why Scorpius didn't want her blasting her hawk at the ghoulish ghosts.

Backing away from Wynn and letting the dementors follow him, Scorpius whispered to Ilana, "Look at the ice. The dementors are making it colder everywhere they fly, but look at the parts they _don't_ fly over."

Ilana followed his orders, widening her eyes upon understanding what exactly Scorpius was insinuating through his cryptic spy games. She was the one to finish voicing his plan, saying, "It's cracking around the edges, because it's a different layer from the ice that's cooling beneath us."

"So, if we just let the dementors stay close to us like they want to and if _we_ encircle _him_, then maybe we could crack it." Scorpius could smell the dead breaths from above him, could hear the screams of victims echoing through the dementors' throats, could feel the way he used to feel every time his mother had left him as a boy, or every time his parents had fought on the other side of his bedroom door.

Not being able to take it any longer, Scorpius ran from the dementors and around Wynn so that he was equidistant from both James and Ilana. Wynn was now shooting spells at Scorpius because he'd been the one to move so suddenly, but in between ducks Scorpius gestured to James and Ilana and soon all three of them were sending a laser over the ice's surface, making three straight lines that intersected in the exact place Wynn was standing.

It took a full minute for Wynn to completely grasp what was happening, and in that time the ice began to split. Still, it was too thick to break before Wynn broke into a run, and Scorpius and Ilana were being overtaken by the dementors when he started heading in their direction. That was what made James sprint after him, procure a knife out of thin air that he thrust into the ice, and then yell, "_AVADA KEDAVRA!"_

As Wynn fell forward, the ice opened up just enough for him to slide into the water and be swallowed by the sea, right where he belonged. Scorpius was riveted by the sight, but of course the ice was now cracking beneath _him_ as well, and James was already well on his way to the shore. After one last glance at Wynn and not even being able to find his bright hair anymore, Scorpius yelled for Ilana to run and then went on his way. Unfortunately, he was halfway to shore before he noticed the black army marching toward the Lake.

Hermione and Hugo must have caused some sort of stirring in Hogsmeade, because the Flock looked as if they were well aware that they were under a very threatening, very _real_ attack. Scorpius couldn't see who was leading the flank, but he could see James up ahead trying to defend himself from green sparks and could hear Ilana's quiet, steady thumping from behind him.

As James slowed down, Scorpius sped up to see if he could help him, but the Forbidden Flock had brought the smoke back with them, or at least the dragon fire. It was grey everywhere, making it impossible for Scorpius to see two feet in front of him as he caught up with James. He couldn't see who was leading the opposing army, nor could he see exactly who he was hitting as he sent stunning spells every which direction. He couldn't see anything at all, so he tried to focus on what he could hear.

That was when James fell. They couldn't have been back on land just yet because Scorpius could feel the ice beneath his feet, but amidst all the far-off battle cries he just barely heard a male voice say in what sounded to him like a whisper but was surely just coming from far away, _"Sectumsempra."_ Then he heard James grunt in pain. Then he heard the light tapping of a wand falling on the ground. Then he heard the moans and grunts and screams.

"HELP ME!" yelled Scorpius as he ran to James. "ILANA, HELP ME!" He was the first to reach James, but Ilana wasn't far behind, clearing off some of the smoke on her way so that she and Scorpius could better see the extent of James's injuries.

He was bleeding all over, red seeping out from his shoelaces, to his belt buckles, to the bottom of his blazer sleeves. "Scorpius," he managed to say as Scorpius pulled off the jacket and saw the scars that had opened up his shirt and that were so numerous and deep across his chest that Scorpius couldn't actually differentiate one from another. The scarring on his shoulders was the worst, and even though Scorpius hadn't been there to see the injury James had received from shattered glass back at his grandfather's funeral, he was fairly certain that _this_ glass was a hundred times sharper.

Scorpius completely ignored him when James said his name again, instead looking over James's body in search of Ilana, who was sitting on his other side but had yet to take out one of her trusty potions or Muggle medicines. "Do something," Scorpius begged her when she looked at him blankly. "Please, do something."

James's breathing was growing shorter as Ilana shook her head. "I can't do anything, Scorpius. You know I can't. You know who did this, and you know how powerful he is. You know that _every_ spell he casts is fatal."

The green in her eyes made him furious. Needing to look away from them, Scorpius searched in the direction the spell had fired from, and he didn't need to be told that it was Albus whose black hair he saw floating above the smoke. The spell had come from that _stupid_ book of his; Scorpius remembered Rose telling him about it before. Al hadn't known what it would do, but now he did. He hadn't known just how much _worse_ it would be if cast from the Elder Wand, but now he did. He hadn't known how he could possibly cause his family any more pain, but now he had.

"Scorpius," James said again, more faintly this time. "Scorp."

He turned back around to face the man who was calling his name. Scorpius looked into the brown of James's eyes so that he wouldn't have to look at the various scrapes that covered his cheeks and forehead, and he watched the orbs point him in the direction of the abandoned blazer. Following James's gaze, Scorpius saw the Invisibility Cloak tucked up in one of the sleeves and, with a nod of permission from James, pulled it out and held the silky fabric in his sweaty hands.

"Take it," said James with all the energy he had left. "Find her."  
Rose was the only thing Scorpius and James had ever agreed on. They had both loved Quidditch, they had both loved the Potters, and they had both loved to lead, but those were all things that they also _competed_ over. Rose was different. They loved her in different ways, protected her in different ways, rescued her in different ways. But they both agreed that she deserved to be rescued, to be protected, to be loved. She deserved everything.

Scorpius could have told James that he didn't really need the Invisibility Cloak, that he could simply use a Vanishing Spell on himself or fly away in his falcon form as a way of hiding from the Flock, but he chose not to say any of that. He chose to take the cloak because James had given it to him to ensure the promise that Scorpius would rescue her without him. _She_ would need the cloak, so he would have to get it to her.

So, Scorpius merely thanked James for the gift and then said to him, "I will. I'll find her. I'll rescue her. I promise." But as he looked into James's eyes for what he was sure would be the last time, all he saw reflected in them was nothing.

* * *

_**Note: **Before you all start hating me for what I've written here, you should know that James is my personal favorite character (I think I've told a few of you that before). I wouldn't have done this if I didn't think that it was absolutely essential to the future of the story. Anyway, I would really like to hear your thoughts on this chapter, especially since it was filled with so many surprises and deaths._

_The next chapter will follow Al's perspective again, so think of that what you will. If you want spoilers for it, ask me in a review, because I won't be giving out any on my profile page (except for the chapter's title). I'll try to update within the next two weeks again, but I apologize in advance if it turns out to be in the next three instead._

_Thanks for reading/reviewing!_

_-Hailey_


	39. Black Hawk Returns

_**Note:** I made it through my mid-terms and had to convince myself to write this because it was so hard for me to return to the scene that bridges this chapter with the last. I hope you can enjoy it even in its painfulness, and also please be open-minded when reading from this particular perspective._

_Thanks,_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**39 – Black Hawk Returns**

There had been a short period of Al's life, sometime between the ages of three and seven, when he'd been obsessed with laying his eyes on a real, honest, breathing phoenix. All children of wizarding families were told stories of magical creatures when they were young – the girls liked the ones about mermaids and unicorns, the boys about werewolves and dragons. Most of those creatures tended to scare Albus because of the way his older brother would impersonate them when jumping on him after hiding in a corner somewhere, but the one sort of animal Al had never feared were birds. Perhaps that was because most birds were innocent, small, and free. Even the predatory ones weren't very frightening, thanks to their human-like eyes, which was exactly why Al had searched so religiously for the phoenix. It wasn't because of the bird's beauty or mystery; it wasn't even because of its immortality. It was because a phoenix could cry.

Now, however so many years later, when Albus was a full-grown seventeen year-old wizard, he suddenly found himself looking for a phoenix. He saw one rising up in the mixture of fire and smoke that surrounded him. The smoke was the ash encircling the ice of the Black Lake, and the fire was coming from a nearby dragon that was writhed over in pain. The people who were running toward the ice were all dressed in black, their clothing beginning to meld with the slowly darkening sky, but the speckles of blood that covered them were the bird's wings. Those wings were flapping in wave-like motions against the shores that were as still as Al. He was the phoenix's beating heart, his breathing keeping a time that seemed unnaturally slower than everyone else's, maybe because it was connected to another heart that was barely beating at all.

It was the cold wind – coming from the ice or from Ilana, he would never know – that brought Al back to his senses. Suddenly, his vision of the phoenix disappeared, his heart started racing like it should have been before, and time sped up so that it was going twice as quickly as it usually did just to make up for when it had slowed down. Al was yelling at the Forbidden Flock to stop in their tracks, though he didn't actually hear his voice say anything, and then his feet were dragging his body to the shoreline, where another body had painted the sand a brilliant red that would soon turn brown, where that same body had been laid across a layer of ice that would soon be melted, and where that same body had been hit by a curse that would soon be fulfilled.

_"EXPELLIARMUS!"_ yelled a male voice that made Al's ears ring like they'd just heard three consecutive blasts of thunder. His wand flew from his hand almost willingly, for Al didn't really care who was taking it or where it would land. He was more concerned on where _he_ would land, which turned out to be a patch of miraculously clean snow beside the miraculous girl he thought he'd never see again.

Ilana remained silent as Al took in the sight of James and his manifold scars that were still opening up across his chest and arms and face, but Al could feel her eyes on him. They felt like arrows puncturing every bit of his skin, and oddly enough, they made him feel better. He knew that he deserved every last one of them.

The worst daggers of all came from James's eyes, which were the only parts of him yet to be tarnished. When Al looked at them, he wondered for a moment if James was already gone, because his pupils were so small that they could barely be seen and his blinking was so weak that his eyelashes barely vibrated. All this was the opposite of what Al's eyes were doing, with their constant dilating and crinkling and watering. Al's eyes were the blowing leaves on James's steady trunk, and they would survive on their branches even after the trunk's death but would die themselves if they fell to the floor.

Al still hadn't said anything, but if there was any hope that James could hear him, he had to get the next words out of his mouth. "I didn't – I – I didn't see you. I didn't mean it, not – not this time. Not this. _Never_ this." With every sentence, maybe even every word, his breathing hitched like it was threatening to forever disappear.

He didn't realize how tense he'd become until he banged his closed fist into the snow, where it made contact with the ice, and then felt the freezing water seep into its fingers. Just like Ilana's glaring eyes, though, the pain was almost comforting, because at least it let Al know that he could still feel.

"Al, I think he's-" Scorpius tried to say from his spot on the other side of James's body, but he was interrupted by a croaking voice that was just as difficult to believe as it was to understand.

"Nnnooo. Is _o... kay._" The final syllable had been made with a clacking of James's tongue against the top of his mouth, and a groan came after as if even that amount of pressure was painful.

Realizing this made Al completely break down, the veins in his neck throbbing like a swelling fire and his chest rising and falling so tremendously that the simple act of breathing cracked one of his ribs. Soon, spit and tears were flooding out of every orifice on his face, and, as if succumbed to waterboarding, he started to feel like he'd drowned in his very own sea. It took all the energy he had left to exhale with sounds that were even slightly comprehensible, "I'm. Sa. Ree. So. Sa. Ree."

Then, because he couldn't hold himself up any longer, Al let his spine curl over until his body formed a complete circle and his sweaty, soot-stained forehead was leaning against James's bloody one. His own hands were still buried in the cold snow where they were starting to turn various shades of violet, but soon James's hands had moved from his sides to the back of Al's head, his fingers grabbing hold of Al's black hair as his wrist dug into Al's scalp. At first, Al wondered if James was trying to kill him too, and if he was then surely Al would let him, but then he felt the grip on his head loosen and tighten over and over again and he knew that James wasn't trying to hurt him at all. He was trying to hold on.

"Is o... kay," he repeated, and this time Al believed him.

In response to his fight, Al told his brother, "You're the bravest man I've ever known."

"Yeah," James tried to laugh, but he stopped himself when blood trickled out of his mouth. At this point, he and Al were breathing at very different rates, almost as if the harder it became for James to take in any air, the more Al tried to breathe for the both of them. So, as Al heaved warmth onto James's cheek, the latter used that warmth to say his final words before letting the cold take over. "But, you're, the, sur-_vi_-vor."

Breathing came in pairs, except for twice. "You know, brother, sometimes I really love you," said Al, and it was then, on Christmas Night of James's eighteenth year, there, at the Boat Landing in Hogsmeade where James had first laid eyes on Hogwarts School, that Al's breathing began and James's said goodbye...

_"Bye, Mum! Bye, Dad!" waved James from the edge of the back porch. Harry and Ginny were just about to Disapparate separately, Harry off on an Auror mission and Ginny heading to the final Quidditch tournament of her professional career._

_ "Bye!" yelled Al, who was much smaller than his brother and also seemed much more concerned for his parents' well-being, since his voice was noticeably trembling._

_ Harry and Ginny turned on the spot the exact moment that the teenage Teddy, who was holding an exhausted ginger-haired girl in his arms, was the last of the three boys to wave goodbye. Once the adults were gone, Teddy's previously black hair turned a shade of dreary blue as he lifted Lily higher onto his chest so that she could cling onto his shoulders, turned around, and walked back inside._

_ Al, however, stayed where he was, still staring at the green grass that didn't bear any sign of his parents' presence. Would the place miss them if they never came back? Would the four year-old Lily even remember who they were after a few months? Would there be anyone left to make James stop tormenting Al for the various mud potions he desperately wanted to store in his room? Al was completely certain that he would miss his parents more than any of his siblings would, but would Harry and Ginny miss him more than they would Teddy or James or Lily? For some reason, he didn't think so._

_ The paranoia had started years ago and it had never faded. For as long as Al had been alive, Harry would leave multiple times a year, sometimes for just a few days and sometimes for an entire month, to go on his missions. Granted, he'd always come back, but there were cases when Ginny would sit Al and his siblings down to tell them that she didn't know where Harry was, or that Daddy would be coming home with what she liked to call 'fragile bones.' It had only taken one of these instances for little Albus to learn that Harry's bones weren't _fragile_. They were broken._

_ "He's going to be okay, Ally McNally." There was only one person in this world who called Al by such a nickname, if only because it matched the nickname he'd come up with for Lily the day she'd been born._

_ Al hadn't realized that James had yet to follow their babysitter inside, so he was slightly surprised to turn his head and see his brother standing next to him, his hands stuffed in his pockets as if he was completely relaxed. James was always relaxed, even though Al never was._

_ "How do you know that?" Al looked to James with pleading eyes. He was disappointed to find that James's eyes were the opposite, his brows raised with one eye showing more than the other as if the answer to Al's question was privy information that only he had access to._

_ Al was relieved when James let him in on the secret. "Because," he said while shrugging his shoulders, "Dad's a survivor."_

Blood was still seeping from James's wounds even after Al closed his eyes with fingers that were as cold as his brother's skin. Al didn't like the idea that a person could keep bleeding even after they were gone, like a tap that kept leaking even after being drained. It was sickening, because of course when people died their loved ones needed to believe that their soul had fled to a better place, and seeing their body be anything but completely still was a test of that theory. Maybe people were no more than skin and bones after all.

Thinking this, Al pulled himself back up to a sitting position and said to anyone who would listen, "We have to get him out of here."

His eyes remained locked on James as he continued to grimace at the red bubbles that were popping around the scars that _Al_ had brandished him with, but somehow he could feel Scorpius and Ilana having a silent conversation beside him. Al already knew what they were going to ask him; he was just waiting to find out which one of them would dare to say it.

It was Ilana, of course. Her voice was hesitant yet steady as she asked, "Then what?"

Then what? After he took James's body away from here, what would Al do then? Would he stay with James or would he keep fighting? If he kept fighting, who would he fight for – the Flock or the Order? For once in the last two years, the choice was clear to Al; he only hoped that it wasn't too late to make it.

It took a minute for Al to clear his throat and get his thoughts in order, but finally he wiped the soot and blood and spit off his face and said, "My dad used to tell me, 'It's not our abilities that show who we truly are. It is our choices.'" For the first time since facing him at dawn, Al looked into Scorpius's frozen eyes to ask, "Can I still choose, or is it too late?"

Scorpius took the question seriously, which was made clear when he resisted the urge to run a hand through his hair. In this moment, he was the spitting image of Al's very best friend, a boy who had never learned to judge and who had spent his entire life listening to other people make ultimatums that never included him. He was the one person in the world who understood what it felt like to be forgotten, to _want_ to be wanted, so much so that the first person who'd truly wanted him had become his everything. Really, the same thing had happened to Al, only the first person to want him had been the wrong one.

"The Sorting Hat put you in Slytherin because you never asked it not to," he told Al, because he had been there that day. "Maybe you could ask it now," he added, because he was there now.

Because one opinion was not enough in this circumstance, Al found himself turning to Ilana as if it were her turn to speak. He was still unsure how she had gotten here or when she'd arrived on the Hogwarts grounds, but for whatever reason he wasn't questioning her presence. She was supposed to be here for this, just as Scorpius was. They were the only two people who could witness something this unspeakable and still forgive Al so quickly, because Harry, Teddy, Lily, and even Rose all loved James far too much to remember that they also loved Al. And Al needed people to remember that... he needed people to forgive him, because there was no way he would ever forgive himself.

Just as she always had, Ilana understood, and Al let himself sink into her perfect skin that didn't look hollow to him even though it was, and fly through her dark hair that to him didn't look ratty even though it was, as she said, "Do you remember what you said to me when we first met? How you told me not to judge you for your name or your family?"

Al nodded. It felt like a hundred years ago, but he remembered – Rose had taken him down to the dungeon knowing that they would find Ilana in the Potions classroom, and when they did she had refused to help them, at least until Al had convinced her that they were no better than she was and that they were therefore worth her time. Looking back on it now, Al supposed that he hadn't exactly held up his own beliefs lately, what with the Forbidden Flock's treatment of Muggle-borns and his simply standing by.

"You can still be what you want to be," continued Ilana, and her purple-tainted lips had never looked more beautiful. "What you thought you were when you met me," she added, and her life-filled eyes had never looked more inviting.

Al didn't know how long it would last. He didn't know how sure his decision was, or how long he would be able to keep going like this. He already hadn't eaten in days, let alone slept, and he wasn't sure whether he was in denial of James's death or still in shock. He didn't know if or when gravity would pull him under, but for now, he did know what he needed to do. He knew that he needed to start making the right choices, because _this_ couldn't happen again. He wouldn't let it.

Sensing what he'd decided, Scorpius reached over James's center very carefully so as not to brush over his torn shirt, the Elder Wand lying flat in his palm, and said to Al, "You'll need this."

"No," Al replied, holding up his hands to make Scorpius take it away. That wand was the last thing he wanted right now, for it had only ever led to his worst mistakes. Rose had told him about its origins just before the summer he'd aligned with Astoria, he'd used it that Christmas to make the Unbreakable Vow between Astoria and Ron, and now it had been the wand he'd used to kill his own brother. Rose had been right about that bloody stick all along: it was dangerous, and Al wasn't strong enough to handle it.

But that wasn't the only reason Al refused to take the wand from Scorpius. "It doesn't belong to me anymore," he explained. "You – you disarmed me just now. You defeated me, which means that the master of the Elder Wand is _you_, Scorpius."

Now, it was Scorpius's turn to go into shock. He should have been used to titles being thrust upon him at this point, especially after the leading position of the Order of the Phoenix was simply given to him without any forewarning. Yet he still seemed taken aback as he pulled the wand toward him to inspect it more closely, tried holding it in both of his hands to see if it made him feel any different. He was still looking at it when he began to shake his head and say, "No. No, I don't want it. I have my wand – _multiple_ wands. Nigel would want me to use the one _he_ made for me, so that's what I should do."

Scoffing because this sort of righteousness was typical of Scorpius, Al pushed aside another wave of pain and guilt so that he could refute, "Nigel would say that the wand chooses the wizard, and the Elder Wand has chosen you."

"Maybe it'll help you get her back," Ilana piped in, making Al remember why exactly Rose wasn't here. Astoria was still holding her captive, and Al had no idea what she was planning to do with Rose since this was one of many plans Astoria had been keen on keeping Al out of.

"Except that it won't help me get into the castle, which is what needs to happen if I'm to get to her," Scorpius argued. Al was surprised by this as well, because he hadn't expected Scorpius to be so willing to leave his army behind just so that he could rescue Rose himself. That sounded like something Al would do, not Scorpius.

The more Al considered this, though, the more he realized that he was lying to himself, because this was _exactly_ what Scorpius would do. Before these two years – before Astoria had gone crazy and Draco had divorced her, before Scorpius had taken on the role of the next Chosen One, before McGonagall had been killed and had left Scorpius all alone to lead the Order in a war – all Scorpius had ever cared about was Rose. Before these two years – before his two best mates had fallen in love and made Al the third wheel, before Astoria had made him feel more powerful than anyone in the world, before Ilana had taught him how to love one person over everyone else – all Al had ever cared about was leading. Through a series of both fortunate and unfortunate events, Scorpius and Al had attempted to take on the wrong roles. Maybe this was their opportunity to return to the roles they'd each been born to play.

Finally feeling like he had a goal, an _actual_ destination to steer for, Al said to Scorpius, "Then I'll get you in. I'll get everybody in." When both Scorpius and Ilana looked at him with understandable skepticism, he added, "I'm not saying that I can lead the Order of the Phoenix to victory for you; I'm well aware that none of them will listen to me. I'm saying that I _can_ lead the Forbidden Flock to defeat, or at least to momentary failure that will allow you enough time to get inside. Those twats won't see it coming from me!"

Al had tried to play both sides once before, and it hadn't exactly gone well. Because Scorpius had been the one to convince him to do it, he was the one to try to talk him out of it now. "Yes," he agreed, "But who knows how easy it will be for them to figure it out? And remember, you won't be as powerful without the wand you're used to! I mean, what wand do you even plan on using?"

Without even thinking of his answer, Al let his eyes fall back onto his brother and the corpse that was beginning to smell something foul, and let his gaze move from James's tousled hair, to his shoulder that had been shattered three times over and twice because of Al, to his limp arm that was attached to a half-severed hand. There, nearly obscured by the explosion of blood and tendons, Al found James's wand. He picked it up and held it gingerly, and even though it was an inch too long for him, even though it was pliable instead of stern, and even though it was made of rosewood instead of elder, it felt right. It felt like this wand, with its phoenix feather core, was the one Al had always been meant to have.

"I'll be fine," he said with a newfound confidence, pointing the wand over James's body and silently cleaning off the dried blood from his skin. "And anyway, I've got Higgs."

Now it was Ilana's turn to be stared at by both of the boys, for of course she didn't need to give in to Al if she didn't want to. Still, she found herself looking back at Al in order to ask him, "I thought I was your greatest weakness?"

That was something he'd written in his letter. Al's jaw dropped when she said it, because he remembered very clearly the moment he'd written those words, just after Astoria had said that the notes he'd been keeping in his pockets were holding him back from his utmost potential. Tears began to well in his eyes now, because Astoria had been so incredibly wrong, because without Ilana here he might have died with James, and because he didn't know how Ilana had gotten that letter but would be forever grateful that she had so that he could set her straight himself. Trying to make her see all of this, he said, "No. No, Higgs, you're my greatest _strength_."

At that, a plan was set in motion. Al and Ilana were to take James back to the Quidditch pitch, and Scorpius was going to stay close to Hogsmeade to keep fighting this flank until Al sent him some signal to say that the front doors of the castle had opened. Then, Scorpius would somehow get inside, and although Al wasn't sure how he would get across the grounds quickly enough, Scorpius assured him that he'd be capable.

"The Flock will come at you as soon as I Disapparate," said Al after agreeing to believe Scorpius. His orders were the only things keeping the army from swarming the lake right now, and once Al was gone the orders would be defunct.

"I know," said Scorpius while shifting in his spot, collecting his various items and straightening his blue bowtie. Holding up his three wands for Al and Ilana to see, he added, "But I can handle them." And then Al discovered that Scorpius hadn't been straightening his tie at all; rather, he'd been loosening it. Once it was off his neck, he wrapped it around James's wrist, just next to the watch Harry had given his son nearly two years ago now.

With the tie secure, Scorpius decided that he was ready, so he stood up and walked all the way around James's long legs to plant a kiss on Ilana's cheek. Then he came to the now standing Al, his arm extended and hand waiting to shake, but Al didn't take it. Instead, he stepped forward and pulled Scorpius into the tightest hug they'd ever shared.

"I'm sorry. For everything," said Al as he tried to hold back another wave of tears. He wondered if Scorpius knew that _he'd_ killed McGonagall, or that _he'd_ brought these dragons here, all while Scorpius wondered if Al knew that _he'd_ sent Ilana that letter, or that _he'd_ been the one to convince her to leave him in the first place.

"Me too," said Scorpius as he clung onto his best mate's black sweater. "For everything." They both understood the risks they were taking and that they may never see each other again, so in that moment none of their lies mattered. The only thing that mattered was the truth, and the truth was that they were brothers. They'd always be.

When they broke apart, Scorpius walked away without turning back, straight into the awaiting Forbidden Flock. Al and Ilana, on the other hand, kneeled back down so that they were low enough to the ground to each grab hold of one of the few parts of James's body that were still fully attached to the rest of him. Then they spun on the spot, whirling themselves through space in the most difficult Apparition Al had ever experienced, until they opened their dizzy eyes to the Quidditch pitch that seemed more like a lurid graveyard.

James's body landed perfectly within a row of other bodies that were less messy, and for a moment Al thought that it was because they hadn't put up as much of a fight. He stood up as soon as his nausea wore off, but precisely when he was back on his feet another had taken his spot on the crowded ground. Looking around for some clue as to whom else might be there, Al saw an inert Nigel sitting in a ball beside two covered bodies beneath the Christmas tree and, not far from him, Ron Weasley was slowly walking toward Al.

Gulping with fear, Al tried to think of what he might say to his uncle, who surely wouldn't be pleased with him. Luckily, though, he didn't have to do anything, since Ilana's piercing glare made Ron go still and take in what had really happened, from _whose_ body was on the ground to who was crying next to it.

Mercy was, if at all possible, a bigger mess than James himself. She was weeping uncontrollably, her entire face that normally looked so stunning now all crunched up so that she looked like a cross between a troll and a ghoul. Al was taken aback by the idea that Mercy could actually look ugly, even if only in the most extreme circumstances, but not in a bad way. In fact, he thought that he liked seeing her this way, at least more than he liked seeing her any other way. She was more human like this... more like him.

Ilana was asking Mercy why she was there in an attempt to make her talk, and the only explanation Mercy could provide was, "Broke a leg. Keyes. Sa – Salem." Al had no idea what she was trying to convey, but Ilana seemed to, since she immediately summoned a flask from a bag that was hanging off her shoulder.

Because he was the only one of the three still standing, Ilana handed over the flask to Al, stating urgently, "Bone-mending potion. Get it to Salem."

"Er-" Al started to say in an attempt to express his confusion, but stopped when he heard the blonde girl speak once more, a little clearer this time.

"I love you, James," she said before kissing the part of James's forehead that Al had been connected to before. After kissing his lips one last time, she shuttered from their temperature and inhaled sharply. "I wish you could have believed me."

For a while, everything was quiet. Mercy just sat there crying, Ilana sat there watching her, and Al stood there trying not to move. When Ilana saw that he hadn't, however, he tried to turn around but didn't get the chance to walk away before Mercy finally noticed his presence. That was when her beautiful, terrifying, dangerous face returned as she looked up at Al and said without any questioning, "It was _you_."

"Go, Potter. _Now,"_ hissed Ilana as she grabbed Mercy's wrists so that the witch wouldn't be tempted to hit Al. He wasn't convinced that Ilana's restraining technique would work, but he followed her command nonetheless, heading off to look for his old Quidditch teammate while trying to ignore Mercy's screams and Ilana's subsequently harsh tones that surely wouldn't be calming enough.

Smoke wasn't billowing here like it was at the lake, but it should have been. Al may not have had any way of knowing just how many bodies were piled on this pitch, but as he walked the line between the dead and the injured, going from a wasteland to a chaotic frenzy of professors and nurses and students and parents, he realized that just about as many people stood on this side of the field as the amount that laid in the other. There must have been at least fifty, maybe closer to a hundred.

The last cold face he saw was one of few that hadn't been covered with a body bag yet, and the only reason Al paid particular attention to it was because its hand was connected to Salem's. Knowing that the Slytherin graduate was close enough to the person to hold his or her hand, Al found himself having no other option but to look at the body's face, even though he'd promised himself that he wouldn't look at any of them. When he saw her, he wished that he had kept his promise.

He had never technically met Arnia Samuels, but she had been the young girl to sign up for the Quidditch team the same year Al had signed off on it. Scorpius had had some ridiculous faith in her flying and Beater skills even though no one else had seen the same in her, but Al swore that he could see it now. She was fierce even in death, the bones that stuck out of her body looking sharp and strong, the dark curls around her face looking soft but sure. She reminded Al of Lily, who was her same age. Al didn't know why, but he hadn't ever considered that underage witches and wizards could be killed too. That was until now.

"How did this happen?" asked Al as he sat beside Salem, who looked completely fine but for the swollen leg that he had magically propped up. Salem's best friend, Aaron, sat on the other side, and the latter's girlfriend had just stood and was slowly making her way over to Arnia's side of the pitch. Caitlin Finnigan must have heard Mercy screaming James's name.

The rest of the Quidditch team was standing in small groups around them, but Al only wanted an answer from Salem. He told him this by opening the flask and pouring the potion into Salem's mouth. Two seconds later, the swelling on his leg subsided and Salem found enough trust in Al to say, "We were fighting in the center with Mercy; she was leading us. But the Flock's made up mostly of bandits over there, and Astoria must not trust 'em, 'cause she's got 'em all corralling the Muggle-borns to take 'em inside the castle for a so-called 'inspection.' When Arnia tried to stop 'em, some crazy blonde just killed her and then broke my leg as I was trying to carry Arnia away."

Al didn't know about any of this. _Why didn't he know about this?_ In a mixture of confusion and fury, he pointed a finger at Salem's chest and asked, "You said this is the center flank, yes? The ones by the Whomping Willow?"

"Yes," replied Salem.

"And a crazy blonde, you say? Were her eyes even crazier than her hair? Eyes like a forest?"

"Yes."

It was Vega; she was the one leading them. Al had one last question for Salem, and this was the one he most wanted an answer to, but for some reason he wouldn't let himself ask it. He wanted to know how the Muggle-borns were being "inspected." He wanted to know what was happening inside that castle, but he also knew that it would more beneficial if he didn't know, at least not yet. That way, he'd have even more reason to keep his promise to Scorpius, even more reason to open the doors.

So, before he had the chance to say any more, Al thanked Salem, stood up, and started the long trek back to Ilana. Throughout the journey, he tried to think up a plan, because of course he already hadn't been sure _how_ he would make it all the way to the castle even amongst his old allies, and Mercy's retreat combined with Vega's ongoing secret made things all the more complicated. The bandits may be easy enough to fool, but Vega wasn't an idiot. She'd see right through Al unless he had a legitimate reason for leaving the army he was meant to be leading and going inside the castle. Then there was the issue of Ilana, whose life would be put in just as much jeopardy as his if he tried to sneak her through an army that was training itself to be able to smell _her_ blood.

He was still thinking of her when he caught sight of her again, and only stopped walking to figure out what he would tell her. The thing that made him stay put for more than a minute, though, was his overhearing the ending of Ilana's conversation with Mercy.

The air was admittedly calmer between them now, but Mercy still sounded frustrated as she asked, "How can you be doing this? How can you fight with _him?"_

Al was far enough away for Ilana not to notice him, but he could still see her thanks to the lack of people standing around the dead. There was something subconsciously wrong about standing with people who had no choice but to lie flat; it felt better, more respectful even, to huddle beside them as if waiting for them to wake up.

"I'm not fighting with _him_," Ilana fired back at Mercy, though the flaming arrow was aiming directly for _Al's_ chest. "I'm fighting with the Order. It just so happens that Potter is our only chance of _winning_."

His mind hadn't ordered them to, but suddenly Al's legs were moving. When he grew close enough for Ilana to hear his footsteps, Mercy returned her focus to James in an effort to ignore her anger with Al, but Ilana was focused completely on the living Potter as she jumped up and ran over to him. He tried to tell his heart not to flutter as it was absconded by her wind, because she didn't want him after all. But he was okay with that, because he didn't deserve her and never had. What he wasn't okay with was that his heart fluttered anyway.

"Mercy told me that the center flank's gaining power, and with that power they've turned themselves into snatchers and are marching all the Muggle-borns into the castle like Jews into concentration camps." Al had never heard Ilana speak so much or so quickly, but then again, he'd never really known the Muggle side of her before.

Nodding, Al said through the thickest skin, "I know. Salem told me. I'm still trying to figure out how to get in there with them."

Ilana must have had her response planned, because it was perfectly timed, perfectly concise, and perfectly confident. "Use me. I _am_ one of them."

* * *

He didn't even bother to fight her on it. In retrospect, Al supposed that he should be more protective of Ilana, like Scorpius had always been with Rose, even before they'd become an official couple. But then there was the voice in his head reminding him that he and Ilana weren't together in any sense, and his double-sided nature made him fear Ilana's own plan of action. Plus, Ilana's idea was a good one, and it was the only one Al had.

That was what brought the pair to the Whomping Willow, where they camped out in safety and waited for some snatchers to show. This didn't take long, since these grounds were teeming with the Forbidden Flock thanks to Mercy's retreat, and after a while Al began to wonder if any of the Order of the Phoenix was left here at all. They were all battling in the Forbidden Forest or Hogsmeade, and Al doubted that they were winning on either field.

Voices could be heard all the way from Hagrid's Hut, one of them asking about a list and another shouting Bobby Dormer's name. All of them had wretched cockney accents, so they must have been part of the runt litter that Al had walked past on the moving staircases before leaving the castle for the Hebrides. Thinking this, he finally thought he recognized one from afar, though it was hard to tell considering the fact that the last time Al had seen him, he'd been hanging helplessly upside down.

"They're talking about Bobby Dormer; I know that name – he was one of the Gryffindor prefects, and I'm pretty positive he's a Muggle-born as well," Al whispered to Ilana from their crouched positions next to the tree's magical knot. "This is our chance. Let's go."

"Wait!" Ilana grabbed Al just as he was leaning forward to start running down the hill. When he turned around, he almost felt hopeful – hopeful that she was as scared as he was, or at least scared enough to back out. But of course, she wasn't. She was just a step ahead of him, evident when she said, "You can't just _run_ down with me. I'm supposed to be your prisoner, remember?"

He hadn't said no to her yet, maybe because he'd said no to everyone else in the world at one point or another, but this was too much. Al could read straight through her eyes and into the dark thoughts she was having, and they reminded him of ones that Lily had as a werewolf, or ones Astoria had in her sleep. If he was ever going to say no, now would be the time.

"If you won't do it, I will," said Ilana when Al had waited too long. Then she pointed her wand to her neck and shut her eyes with a grimace, but Albus made sure that she felt no pain.

He put his hand around hers so that he could seek the control of her wand, and instead of letting her perform the Cruciatus Curse on herself like she wanted to, he used a simple charm that painted fake bruises in blasts of purple and yellow all across her perfect skin. Once her neck was covered in one large blotch, he paused, reaching out his hand so that he could tear open the collar of her thick sweater, letting its sleeve fall down and expose her left shoulder. She opened her eyes but didn't move to help or stop him. He pulled that soft hair off her shoulder and then painted some more, and continued this way until her entire arm looked like it had been stood on by a giant troll. When he was finished, Al let go of her hand but held onto her wand, using it to procure a rope out of thin air that he fastened around both of her wrists, tight enough that they burned in their rubbing. Looking at his masterpiece, he wanted to kiss every part of her that he'd hurt, whether fake or not, but he resisted the urge when they both stood up to be on their way.

Ilana was a terrific actress, though of course Al shouldn't have expected any less. She limped the whole way down the hill, and once they made it to Hagrid's abandoned homestead, she was heaving from exhaustion. Al was a few steps ahead of her with her rope in his hands, and he pulled on it ever so slightly as he called out to his fellow Flock members, "Oy! I think you forgot one!"

The runts were all sitting inside the dying pumpkin patch, kicking on three lads who were also bound with rope and were squirming sadly in the snow. Al didn't wait to be invited in, pointing James's wand at the gate and blasting it open. The Elder Wand would have blasted it off its hinges to make for an appropriately intimidating entrance, but upon missing it Al reminded himself exactly what else that wand had been capable of.

He had just crossed the threshold, Ilana yet to have stepped inside the patch, when Al heard a rather familiar barking sound from the other side of the group. Telling himself to look past the staring Bobby Dormer and two of his Muggle friends, Al found Saber the hound standing by the opposing fence with his tail pinned mercilessly to the wood. The sight of Al was making the dog, whose normal golden color had been absconded by splashes of mud and blood to turn his fur a terrible brown mixture, attempt to jump out of his imprisonment in order to visit with his favorite student. Al had never particularly liked the slobbering Saber, but hearing his cries and seeing him pull harder and harder on his punctured tail made Al's own blood coil in anger. Hagrid's bloodhound may have been dumb, but he was more human than the men he'd been taken hostage by. Albus could attest to that, because of course he knew a certain human who'd always been more animalistic than the rest...

_Lily's cries woke Al before they did anyone else. His bedroom was the closest to hers, and all he had to do was walk through their shared bathroom to find his little sister sitting in the middle of her floor with her entire collection of stuffed animals sprawled around her. She made up the center of their circle, with the majority looking like they'd been thrown behind her with very little care. Only three animals made up the part of the circle that Lily could actually see. On one side of her was a brown rat about twice as big as it should have been, on the other side was a too-small stag with dilapidated antlers that drooped over in their softness, and directly in front of Lily sat a shabby, black dog with its sharp teeth snarled at the ready._

_ One would think that Lily had been crying simply by the sight of this ferocious animal, but Al had been there the day she'd picked it from the magical toy shop. She'd looked for the perfect dog that Harry had told her about for years, and none had been fierce enough until this one had come along. There must have been some other reason for her tears, and in an effort to find out what it was, Al tip-toed around the animals that were now staring up at him in curiosity and sat down next to Lily, on the side of the stag that attempted to buck Al's knees but was obviously unsuccessful._

_ Lily's howling was louder than ever now that her brother was there to hear it, and because Al didn't know how to handle such a situation, he soon found himself placing a hand over Lily's open mouth and telling her, "Shh! You have to be quiet or you'll wake up Teddy. Or worse, James."_

_ The idea of waking up James must have done the trick, since when Al took his hand off her mouth, Lily went completely silent. The animals seemed to appreciate this just as much as Al did, many of them curling up into balls to prepare for sleep, as it was well past their bedtime. Only the three Lily was most focused on stayed awake, because the rat and dog were nocturnal and the stag was too fearful of the latter's presence to close its eyes._

_ Al watched closely as Lily turned her gaze from the rat, to the dog, to the stag, and back again, but he still didn't know what the problem was, or why she needed to sort it out at three o'clock in the morning. Finally, he caved and asked, "What is it, Lil? What's wrong?"_

_ "Only three!" Lily practically screamed at him, her eyes wide with urgency and her hand held up to show him three short fingers. "Should 'ave FOUR."_

_ "Four what?" asked Al in the midst of a yawn._

_ "MARAUDERS!" This time, Lily's words came with a slap on Al's shoulder. Once she was sure that Al was listening, she pointed her index finger at the rat and said, "Wormtail," then the dog, "Padfoot," then the stag, "Prongs."_

_ By now, Al understood. Finishing her explanation for her, he said, "Moony's gone."_

_ Her nod was heavy, her tears even heavier. Moony was the werewolf dog, with a longer body shape than Padfoot and the ability to stand only on his hind legs. He had always been Lily's favorite, though Al was rather grateful that he'd disappeared. There was no telling where he'd gone, but Al had learned many moons ago that it was always best to wait till morning when searching for something, because chances were that it would simply show up. At least, that was what Al told himself every time he woke up in the middle of the night with the sudden urge to find his father._

_ It was this thought that made Al realize that Lily's worries were most probably concerned with more than just her missing stuffed animal. So, as he copped hold of Lily's hand and steered her back to her bed, leaving all the animals right where they were, he told her, "Maybe Moony had to go away for the full moon. He'll prob'ly be back tomorrow, just like Mummy and Daddy."_

_ "What if don't?" asked Lily while tucking herself under her Holyhead Harpy-themed bed sheets. "What if they die like Marauders?"_

_ Harry had told all of his children about the Marauders and their deaths with as much honesty as he could, saying that Moony – Teddy's father – had been killed by one of Voldemort's people in the Battle of Hogwarts, that Wormtail had died earlier and cowardly, that Padfoot had died earlier and admirably, and that Prongs – Harry's father – had been the first to go but the last to truly leave. They had all been ghosts to Al and Lily, so sometimes it was hard to believe that they'd ever been real in the first place._

_ What _had_ always been real to the Potter children were their parents, and how much they'd already survived. It was like James had said – surely, they could survive a little more. So, Al told Lily with the utmost certainty, "They're not going to die. None of us are. We're Potters, and that means we survive. Trust me."_

Somebody was snapping in Al's face, and as his eyes re-focused he saw that it was the man he'd spotted before – pot-bellied, dark rags as clothes that were either too big or too small, little to no hair on his round head, with crooked teeth that matched Saber's new fur color. Up close, Al was given a whole new appreciation for just how desperate Astoria must have been to have sought out the likes of this git.

"How _dare_ you snap at me!" Al spat at him, and though he was embellishing his tone for effect, a part of him really had just wanted to say that. "Do you have any idea who you're talking to?"

Behind Al and the fat man, Ilana cowered in fake fear, and the Flock bought it. Soon, one of the other runts, thinner and most likely smarter too, had stood up behind his superior, whispering in his ear, "That's Albus Potter, tha' is."

"Right," laughed the fat one. With a full smile that only made him look uglier than he already was, he bowed as far as his stomach would allow him to and said to Al, "My apologies... _sir._"

Around them, fire was being engulfed by the black sky and screams all blended together into a subdued humming noise. Al's ears were trained to hear it, though, as were Ilana's. With one look at her, he knew that she was thinking the same thing that he was: they were running out of time.

"And who's this pretty little thing?" asked the fat man just after Al broke eye contact with Ilana. He had turned his body around and was now stepping toward Ilana to inspect her. When he reached out his puffy hand to cup her chin, Al flinched instinctively. The runt may not have noticed it had it not been for Saber's subsequent bark, making the man turn back to Al and ask suspiciously, "You sure this one's a _Mud-blood?_ She seems pretty pure to me, and I dare say you think the same, _Potter_."

Al already had his fists balled, but he couldn't ruin the plan now; he couldn't do that to Scorpius, to Rose, to James. Instead of punching the man in his hidden jaw, Al stepped between him and Ilana, pulled up Ilana's sleeve roughly so as to expose the scar she'd expertly faded with both magical and Muggle concoctions, and said, "Here, look."

The man peered at the word but looked only half convinced. Gesturing to the skinnier one, he took a piece of paper from his hand and prepared himself to start reading before asking Al, "Name?"

"Higgs. Ilana Higgs."

It took a minute for the man to peruse the list, but Al already knew that he would find no such name on it. He knew this because Al himself had been the one to write the list, back when he'd observed Astoria's marking ceremony in order to record the names of every Muggle-born student at Hogwarts. Ilana had been careful to avoid him that morning, and had run out of the Great Hall before he'd caught sight of her dripping blood.

Sure enough, the man stated with an arrogant smile, "Tha' name's not on the list."

"Yes, well, maybe you forgot one," Al offered, thinking too quickly to come up with a better excuse.

In retort, the man suggested, "Or maybe you just want to get your girlfriend a free ticket into the castle." Al knew what he thought. He thought that Al, like the rest of the Forbidden Flock, worshipped Astoria like a god and therefore wanted nothing more in the world than to see her in the flesh. But _he_ didn't know what Al thought. Al thought that he'd already seen Astoria in the flesh a hundred more times than he'd ever wanted to. Al thought that there was only one god in this world, and it most definitely _wasn't_ Astoria. It was the god of death, and the last thing Al planned to do was worship it.

But none of this changed the fact that this man was the one thing standing between Al and the Hogwarts Entrance Hall, so Al had to make him believe. Hoping that words would be enough, he scoffed and said in the peasant's own language, "You think I would ever _taint_ myself by shagging this Mud-blood _scum_?"

The man shrugged. "Maybe she's _not_ a Mud-blood. Maybe she's actually as pure as this snow."

Al had an idea. He had an idea that he absolutely _hated_, but like the one that Ilana had come up with before, he couldn't think of anything better. Before he could change his mind, Al placed his face so close to the fat man's that he could smell rotting meat from the breath exiting the man's flared nostrils, and seethed, "Fine. I'll prove it to you."

Then, as if in slow motion again, Al faced Ilana and grabbed her scarred wrist, being careful not to rub the binding rope too much as he got himself into a position to move his wand ever so meticulously over Ilana's skin. He was just about to begin when he heard her voice in his ear, trembling with fear. "What are you doing?"

Quiet enough so that none of the Flock members would be able to overhear, Al turned his neck so that he could see Ilana's eyes beneath all those bruises and said, "Trust me." He didn't wait for a nod before he started, and soon she was gasping with pain as his wand acted as a carving knife, retracing the same scar that he'd branded her with last spring so that it would be fresh, open, and unhealed.

Just as Al had planned, every drop of Muggle blood poured from Ilana to make tiny caverns in the snow, and the man was convinced of the truth as soon as the snow turned brown. It was common knowledge that blood went from red to brown soon after escaping the body's heat, but purist wizards liked to believe that only _Muggle_ blood did such a thing. The blood of magic folk was red, red, always red.

Ilana was hunched over on the ground and the man was gaping at the scene. Al was simply standing between the two because all he wanted to do was sit down with Ilana and apologize a thousand times over, and all that was stopping him was that fat man's fat face and fat ego. Al was about to tell that face to get a move on when another voice he hadn't expected to hear spoke for him.

"You know, I could have easily seen that she was a Muggle-born," said Knox as he stepped inside the pumpkin patch, his journey to get there having gone completely unnoticed by everyone grouped inside. He was gently pulling Ilana to her feet when he added, "Would have been nice to save the bloodshed for later, no?"

Unlike how he'd acted when Al had arrived, the fat man shot his head down in Knox's presence and listened closely to Rookie's every word. Clearly, he knew who Knox was and didn't have to be told twice that he was far inferior to Astoria's right-hand man. "Y-yes, Master Rookwood. I'm terribly sorry for the misunderstanding."

"Don't waste my time," Knox said back with squinted, judgmental eyes. "Just get this load to castle, all right?"

The fat man nodded and then pulled Ilana away with the rest of the group. Al was about to run after them when Knox put a hand on his shoulder and told him quietly, "Stop. You're supposed to be leading the army, Black Hawk. They'll question you even more if you try to go with them."

This wasn't part of the plan. Wherever Ilana had to go, _Al_ would go too; they weren't supposed to be separated! He hadn't even known that Vega had ordered Muggle-borns to be taken into the castle for custody, so he couldn't possibly know what Vega planned to do with them once they got there. Yet here Al was, standing in the now empty pumpkin patch and watching Ilana being marched to the castle's double doors and not even trying to look back for him.

"Screw that, I'm going with her!" yelled Al, but he had to leap past Knox to get outside the patch, and for whatever reason, Knox was determined to make sure that Al stayed right where he was. He caught Al in his arms before he made it two steps, and the feeling of having any sort of arms to lean on made Al break down again.

His heavy breathing had returned and his tears would have as well had he had any left. Instead, his eyes went so dry that Al felt like his corneas might start peeling at any second. He closed his lips a thousand times over to see if that might help, but it only made it worse, as if his body was rejecting even the idea of sleep on a night like this. The whole time, Knox patted Al's back awkwardly as if burping a baby, for he didn't know how to hold somebody the way Scorpius did, but Al took what he could get because at least he knew that Knox was a good listener.

"I can't lose her, not after everything else," Al complained once he came to, leaning away from Knox but crossing his arms against his chest so that he still felt confined, less alone.

"You did the right thing. You got her inside." Knox sounded completely serious, but Al still had a hard time believing him.

For a moment, Al debated telling Knox that it wasn't just Ilana he was trying to get inside the castle, but outing Scorpius seemed like too much of risk, even when the subject was someone Al trusted implicitly. That was why he decided to reveal his own secret, because Al knew that he needed to say it aloud, whether it made facing the truth any easier or not. "James is dead."

It wasn't any easier. Knox didn't know what to say as he looked at Al and as Saber whimpered inconsolably in the background. Still, Al preferred Knox's silence to the question that he knew everyone else would eventually ask: who killed him? When Knox did think of something to say, it was exactly what Al needed to hear, asking almost worriedly, "What about your other siblings? Are they okay?"

Al didn't take time to consider why Knox might be asking such a question before his thoughts went straight to Lily. Surely, she'd be fighting with the Order, but she hadn't been with Scorpius or James at the lake and she hadn't been with Nigel at the Quidditch pitch. Mumbling more to himself than to Knox, Al said, "Lily – she's probably still with our parents. I'm sure she's fine. Ryder was supposed to stay in the castle, so as long as Astoria kept her there, then Lily will be okay."

"_My_ Ryder?" asked Knox with ten times as much interest as his previous questions had contained. The last Al had seen of Ryder had been before he'd rescued Knox from Azkaban, so it was entirely possible that Knox hadn't laid eyes on his twin sister since before his imprisonment, and therefore had no idea of Ryder's not-so-secret plan to avenge Calder Anhinga's death by killing Lily.

Al nodded. "Your sister wants my sister; it's a long story."

"Sure," Knox dismissed the quick explanation. "But I saw Ryder running outside at dawn, and she most definitely _wasn't_ headed for the castle."

Jaw dropped, head leveled back, knees ready to snap in half, eyes going dizzy, thoughts swimming with pictures of the worst possible outcomes of what Ryder might have done to Lily, Al breathed, "Bloody hell."

Trying to refocus Al, Knox put a hand on each of his shoulders in an attempt to steady him, searched for his eyes with his own, and said, "Never mind them; there's nothing you can do if you don't know where they are. What about your other brother? What about Teddy?"

"I – I dunno'. He's probably in the forest somewhere; he'd want to be in the thick of it." Yet again, Al hadn't thought before he'd spoken, but when Knox released his hold of Al's shoulders as if he'd finally been given all the information he'd needed, Al realized that Knox was beginning to remind him of Astoria. They both liked to confide in Al when they needed him to do something for them, but neither of them ever revealed the whole truth, because Al would always be seen as a liability rather than a trustee. Deciding that he wasn't going to take such treatment any more, Al asked, "Wait, why do you care?"

Sighing, Knox licked his lips before answering, "Because I'm looking for him."

"What? What could you possibly need _Teddy _for?" Teddy had been the one to arrest Knox when he'd first been found guilty for murdering Arthur Weasley, so it wasn't as if they were old friends.

"I can't tell you that. As long as Astoria's alive, her secrets have to remain hidden."

Perfect. Yet another thing that Al couldn't be told. Why was it that Astoria had always trusted Knox but never Al? Was it really only because of Knox's capabilities, and the fact that she wouldn't have been able to hide anything from him anyway? Or was it possibly all about Al, and the fact that he was somehow attached to everyone who'd ever been a part of Astoria's master plan – Scorpius, Rose, Lily, and now Teddy? And if that were in fact the case, why was it that Al suddenly felt even more left out than he had before? Why was he the only person who wasn't part of her answer, and also didn't know what the answer was?

"Are you going to hurt him?" asked Al, as if Teddy was his sole concern.

"No," replied Knox, as if Teddy _wasn't _his.

And Al believed him, because like he was for Astoria, Knox was one person Al implicitly trusted. "All right, then, do what you need to do." Knox was about to be on his way when Al added, "But that goes for me as well, and I _need_ to get inside the castle. The portrait tunnel's not enough."

Knox thought about this for a moment before he suggested, "Why don't you just blast the doors open?" Then he disappeared into the forest that was still hidden in flames.

Flames... and blasting... that was it! Al didn't know why he hadn't thought of the idea before, nor how he could have forgotten his other half so quickly after James's death. He liked this idea better than any of the others he'd come up with today, and because he needed to keep moving if he wanted to get Scorpius in on time while also subduing his own waves of pain, Al practically bolted to the other side of the pumpkin patch so that he could get started. Once there, he magically freed Saber, healed the wound on his tail, and warned the dog, "Get out of here. Hide somewhere safe, and go fast. If you don't, you might become dragon food."

As if the animal understood Al perfectly, Saber was soon running in the opposite direction as Al, who, within minutes, was standing in the castle courtyard awaiting the summoned Zephorien to arrive. He couldn't see the Hogsmeade battle from here, but he could see the forest that was calling his name, just daring him to go looking for the rest of his family. Then there was the center flank that the Order had abandoned, which was being guarded by just a few small Forbidden Flock groups, not including the Muggle-born snatchers. It had been easy to walk through the area to get _to_ the castle, but Al was expecting some serious protective charms would have to be broken to get _inside_.

He was thrilled when he heard Zephyr's familiar wingtips beating through the air, and his thrill only heightened when the dragon landed in the very middle of the courtyard without knocking over a single wall or stone. Regardless of how he may have treated it lately, this place – Hogwarts, and the castle itself – was sacred to Al, and that was one thing he and James had always agreed upon, as well as their father. Al had to protect it.

Al took a moment out of his time to greet Zephorien and make sure he wasn't wounded. Zephyr had been fighting alone in Hogsmeade since Al had Disapparated from the lake, and he wasn't completely sure which side the dragon had been fighting with. He was bound to Al, sure, but was he bound to the old Al or the new?

Trying to think through his plan so that he could give Zephyr an accurate picture, Al placed his hands on his pet's giant, burning hot nose, and said confidently, "You've got this, bud. No pressure." When Zephyr snorted, Al knew exactly which part of him the dragon was bound to after all.

Under Al's command, Zephyr started to hit the bolted double doors with his spiked tail, pounding them harshly to the beat of his own breath. Meanwhile, Al sent all sorts of spells racing for the doorway, trying to burn the molding with a laser in hopes that it might soften the hinge, and even blasting the giant knockers off until they smashed onto the tiled floor. Every bit helped, but what finally did the barrier in was when Zephyr leaned back onto his hind legs and used his front talons to claw his way through, growling with bared teeth the entire time.

Once a big enough hole was made in the door for Al to squeeze through, he ordered Zephyr to stop pounding and then scurried his way into the Entrance Hall alone. This wouldn't exactly help Scorpius find his own route inside, but Al was temporarily distracted by the thought of making sure that Ilana was safe before he did anything else. Plus, he was hoping that he could blast _out_ just as easily as he'd blasted in.

That hope disappeared the moment he took in the sight of what the Entrance Hall had become. Al must not have smelled it outside because of the thickness of the doors, but now both his senses as well as his entire lower body were, quite literally, being flooded with blood. All around him laid puddles of it, some so large that they formed rivers flowing down the steps from the Great Hall, where young Muggle-borns were seated against walls with expressions that made them look like they were dying. When Al squinted his eyes to get a better view, he realized that they were, for every single one of their right wrists were collapsed on the marble floor, and every one of those wrists bore a vertical scar from which the blood was gushing like badly brewed Polyjuice Potion. Beside each of them was a member of the Forbidden Flock with a stoutly pointed wand bearing what Al knew to be the Imperius Curse, a precaution to make sure the victims didn't try to stop their own blood from being drained. In the middle of the line-up, sitting in the center of the top staircase, was Ilana looking paler than Al thought possible, and in front of her was a woman with wild hair and even wilder eyes.

Since beating around the bush hadn't worked for him so far, Al decided to just say what he wanted to say. Standing right in front of the doorway and waiting for everyone to notice him, he called out in a voice as biting as Zephorien's teeth, "That's _ENOUGH!"_

As expected, Vega was the first to turn around and fully face Al, who was fine with her glare because it meant that she had temporarily lost control of Ilana. Or at least, Vega seemed to be under the impression that Al's distraction was only temporary, as she smiled smarmily at him and said, "Black Hawk, _so_ nice of you to join us. Astoria forewarned that you may not be very pleased with our process, but we did hope that it would stay behind closed doors. You know, for _your_ sake." She was speaking to him like he was a toddler and she was the wicked babysitter, but she didn't know about the nightmare he had waiting for her.

"How kind of you," said Al as genuinely as possible, right before he disarmed Vega from afar, threw Ilana her wand, yelled at all of the Muggle-borns to follow him, and made for the Great Hall.

But they were too weak, and because of such were also too slow. Al had nearly all of them in the hall and was about to close its doors when he saw that he wouldn't be able to do so before Vega found her way in as well, and she was the last person he wanted to survive this. Changing his plan on the spot, Al silently urged Zephorien to come inside while pointing his wand toward Vega and surprising her when, instead of yelling out the Killing Curse, he screamed, _"PROTEGO!"_

The barrier went up instantaneously, but Al wasn't sure how long it would hold. Yelling for the Muggle-borns to crouch down low, he made sure that he was close to Ilana as she joined him by procuring her own invisible barrier right against his. A fire ball was coming their way, straight from Zephyr's mouth and through the door hole. The Forbidden Flock was running in their direction to escape the flames, no longer caring if they were halted by the barriers along the way. Al could feel the heat growing stronger and closer, but he tried to hold onto his wand and his spell and Ilana. Especially Ilana.

They were huddled into one being, clinging onto each other the way they used to tear each other apart, and as Al grabbed her open wrist and held so tightly that not one more drop of beautiful blood would escape, he yelled at her over the fire, "I'M SORRY!" He shouldn't have put her through the trauma of receiving that scar all over again; he shouldn't have put her through her through the trauma of receiving that scar in the first place.

Her eyes were distant, almost hollow, with frailty as she placed her good hand on Al's cheek and mouthed, "I forgive you."

He couldn't help but reply with, "I LOVE YOU." And as soon as all the fire exploded within the Entrance Hall and spread across their barrier, he kissed her.

They broke apart as soon as the fire vanished, releasing their spells and opening their eyes to a blackened room that was now covered with even more ashes than blood. Ilana stayed where she was, looking around at her peers and trying to figure out how she might help them, but Al stood to inspect the premises.

He didn't find any trace of Vega – not her flawless skin, nor her forest eyes, not even a strand of her long locks – or any other member of the Forbidden Flock. They had all been reduced to ashes, and the only reason Al hadn't heard their deadly screams was because he'd been too enraptured by Ilana. He was about to return to her when he glanced at the ground, searching for the marble floor that he knew so well but that had been utterly obscured by the muddy brown mixture of blood and ash, and saw the first sign of life rising from the liquid.

It was small but sharp, steely but slick, stained red but purely gold. It was made of two parts clasped tightly together, pointing up at Al like an arrow. As it rose, more red came in boundless feathers, and then there were beady black eyes and outstretched wings and curled talons and a tail as long as a peacock's. The phoenix was rising and then flying, a child and then fully grown, naïve and then wise. It was a stunning sight, and Al was so focused on the one bird that he didn't even notice the others.

There must have been ten of them flying around the Entrance Hall by the time Al broke his gaze with the first, which was now perched on Ilana's shoulder and dropping tears onto her wrist, healing the cut and the scar until she was whole again. The other phoenixes did the same for the other Muggle-borns, restoring their skin and in it their hope, and Al watched the scene unfold as if he was seeing magic for the very first time...

_"Those stuffed animals are the only magical things Lily owns, except for her miniature broom of course," Al stated as if this was an obvious fact that absolutely everyone would know. "But she gets upset once in the night and throws them all on the floor as if most of them don't mean anything to her. She needs to treat magic with the respect it deserves, otherwise she'll end up just like that bogus werewolf of hers... lost."_

_ Teddy laughed as he sat down at the breakfast table across from Al, placing a bowl of steaming porridge in front of the black-haired boy. His own hair went from blue to black as he said, "Your dad used to tell me to respect magic as well, Al, but you and Lily are still young – you don't need to worry about that sort of thing just yet." Teddy was going to enter his fourth year at Hogwarts once the summer was over, and Al hated to think about all the magic _he_ must have been dappling with at school._

_ "And anyway, I'm sorry you had to deal with her at all. I should have heard her and gotten her back to sleep myself," Teddy added when Al was still daydreaming about Hogwarts._

_ "Oh, that's okay," Al shrugged him off, taking a bite of his porridge and pretending that it wasn't still much too hot for his mouth to handle. "I talked her back to sleep."_

_ "Good for you. What did you tell her that was so convincing?" Lily was still asleep as the boys ate their breakfast now, so clearly Al's words had done the trick on their sister._

_ Al had resorted to blowing on his bowl now, but in between exhales he informed Teddy, "I told her that she shouldn't worry about Mum and Dad, because they'll be fine. We're Potters. We're survivors."_

_ "We're not _all_ survivors!" came a voice that didn't belong to Teddy, making Al look up in search of its source. James appeared from around the corner a moment later, and though Teddy was glaring at him to shut it, James always liked to stir up a bit of trouble in the mornings._

_ He made his own bowl of porridge and started sipping it without even waiting for it to cool as Al asked helplessly, "What do you mean? You told me that yesterday, when Mum and Dad left."_

_ "No," James shook his head, his body leaning against the kitchen counter lazily. "I said that _Dad's _ a survivor, not anybody else, and definitely not _you_."_

_ Teddy tried to interrupt then, but Al cut him off with, "Why can't I be a survivor too?"_

_ "Because Dad was the Chosen One. One as in _one_ person; you can't just have another!" exclaimed James as if this should be simply understood, even by a six year-old. "And anyway, you can't be a survivor if you've nothing to survive."_

_ Al was on the verge of tears at this point, but James didn't seem to care. He merely continued to eat his porridge even as Al splattered his all over the floor on his way out of his seat, storming past James and yelling in his wake, "You know, brother, sometimes I hate you!"_

Ilana must have sensed the void into which Al had fallen, for it was the feeling of her hand on his arm that pulled him from his past. But he avoided making any eye contact with her, turning his head to the entryway of the castle that no longer held any sign of a door once existing. Through the hole that was left, Al could just make out the tip of Zephyr's tail swinging peacefully at the far side of the courtyard, and beyond that the fires blazing above the Forbidden Forest. There were other dragons there, dragons that didn't know to switch sides, and the giants wouldn't be able to hold them off forever. Lily was there, Al could feel it, and Harry and Ginny too. They needed to survive, _he_ needed them to, and he couldn't possibly know that they would unless he was there with them.

When he finally turned back to Ilana, her eyes looked full again, her skin was no longer peaked, and behind her the phoenixes were breaking through windows in their search for freedom. He remembered how strong she'd been when he'd cut her, how confident she'd been to put herself in so much danger, how swift she'd been when Salem had needed her bone mending potion. The only question he had for her was, "What do you see in me, Higgs?"

"What do you mean?" she asked with a tone that was genuine, or at least as genuine as Ilana could ever be.

Al looked at the other Muggle-borns, who were staring at him with puzzled expressions that showed both gratefulness and fear, when he explained, "I mean that when most people look at me, what they see is a murderer. But you don't. You see something else. I'm asking you what it is that you see."

After taking one long, deep breath, Ilana moved her hand up to Al's cheek, turned his eyes until they met with hers like magnets meeting across a plane, and said as wisely as the phoenixes flew, "I see someone who's willing to take risks – risks that will put himself, the people he loves, the people he _wants_ to love, in copious amounts of danger. But I also see someone who isn't willing to give in to the danger of those risks. I see someone who wants to live, who wants to _survive_, but possibly too much."

Al had his own hand placed over hers now, and when she finished speaking he slowly pulled their hands off his cheek until he was gripping hers at their sides. He nodded solemnly to thank her for what she'd just told him before gesturing toward the waiting Muggle-borns and saying to Ilana, "You should stay here. Help them. You're good at it."

Ilana nodded solemnly to thank her for what he'd just told her before she shook his hand off hers and said, "You should go. Protect them. You're good at it."

They each did as the other had suggested, and as Al walked out of the castle and into the courtyard, he hopped onto Zephorien's back and flew into the sky to find his missing stars. Al and his dragon were a good ten meters into the air when the former looked above them for the first time and saw all of the phoenixes shooting in and out of the open windowpanes from every possible angle of the castle. Amongst them was a regal, white falcon that held a bulging blanket in his talons, and as Zephorien flew higher to give Al a closer look at the bird he'd never seen before, Al could have sworn that the phoenixes weren't the only ones that were crying.

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_**Note: **Phew. That was a lot, I know, but I told you it would be intense! I really want to know what you all thought of that, so tell me in a review, along with any questions you may have. Also, feel free to ask for spoilers again, though be aware that I may not provide very juicy ones because the next chapter contains secrets that I have been very careful to hide since I started. **In my opinion, Chapter 40 is the climax of this story, so I will try to have it out quickly for you guys (my goal is this Sunday). **_

_Thanks again, and please leave a review if you can!_

_-Hailey_


	40. The Principal Tale

_**Note:**So, I know that I said I would try to update early; obviously, that didn't happen. Hopefully you've been reading the updates on my profile page, though, and therefore know that I hit a serious block while writing the second part of this chapter. I had the first half finished weeks ago but then couldn't write the rest until now. Anyway, I'm so sorry for flaking yet again, but I just don't want this story to end. :(_

_Also, quick reminder: Part 4 will be made up of fifteen chapters rather than the usual ten, so this is_ **not**_ the last one.__  
_

_-Hailey_

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**40 – The Principal Tale**

"You can grieve, you can wallow. You can seek revenge or retribution. You can accept death or you can bargain for life. You can cry until your skin turns permanently red, stay still until your bones grow brittle, search for signs until you've nothing left. You can learn to forgive yourself over time, but you can never forget. Never."

Astoria had been talking like this for hours, or at least that was Rose's best estimate. Truthfully, Rose had no way of knowing just how much time had passed, but she could feel herself fading as Astoria gained momentum. The finger she'd popped back into place herself kept swelling, the ribs that had been broken from multiple Cruciatus Curses were digging into her organs like individual swords lodged beneath her skin, and by the looks of the crusty black layer she could see in the many mirrors her new snowflake scar was infected. But at least she was given plenty of time to rest without being tortured more, because Knox had been right: Astoria hadn't touched her again since he'd left, instead just leaning over the pensieve and pulling silvery threads from her forehead as she spoke in jumbled allusions.

Really, Rose should have used this opportunity to try to escape again, since both her wand and deluminator were still just sitting in the corner, only a few yards away. Even that short distance was too much for Rose to fathom crossing, though, so she stayed right where she was, lying on the marble floor, listening to Astoria when she could and tuning out when she grew too tired to think anymore. This also proved to be a nice distraction for Rose, since she found herself worrying less and less about Scorpius and her family and the battle that she couldn't see. There had only been one point during her alone time with Astoria that she'd felt fresh tears running down her cheeks, and even now Rose couldn't remember why she'd been crying. It had only lasted a moment, and oddly enough, she hadn't been picturing Scorpius or Hugo or her parents at the time. She'd been picturing James, wearing his handsome suit from the wedding and smiling at her from across the Quidditch pitch.

Now, Rose was in one of her faded states, but then Astoria was practically yelling at her, "GET UP! It's time for you to see." Even with all her talk, Astoria hadn't actually provided Rose with any new information about her past or her motives; she hadn't even asked for Rose to hand over her ring. At least, not yet. Rose assumed now that perhaps the time had finally come.

Rose must not have realized how much time had gone by once again, for soon Astoria was standing right next to her and Rose couldn't remember how she'd gotten there. "I said, _GET UP!_"

"I don't think I can-" Rose tried to protest as she attempted to push herself off the floor with the support of her elbows, which were about ready to collapse.

Astoria interrupted, "_Yes_, you _can!"_ The expression on her face was hardened and cold, but not the way it normally was. This was a different kind of cold, like the difference between a dry cold that was almost bearable and a wet cold that froze everything in its path. Normally, Astoria was a wet cold, but now she was dry ice that was melting through its steam.

Without the help of the Imperius Curse or the threat of the Cruciatus, Rose bit the inside of her mouth and pushed down on her elbows until she was sitting up straight. Then she tasted copper and leaned forward to spit it out, rolling onto her knees at the same time. Her shoes were long gone by now, so it ended up being easier for her to stand than she'd expected; the balls of her feet were quite possibly the only parts of her body that, even though ready to break, weren't already broken.

Walking was harder, especially since Astoria refused to bring the pensieve any closer to Rose than where it already was, positioned just in front of that portrait Ryder had escaped through. She had to take a deep breath for every step she took, and those steps were hardly more substantial than her wand's length. As soon as she was close enough to the pensieve to reach out and touch its marble edge, she found herself gasping and leaning against the goblet as if it might catch her, and in a way, it did.

The liquid felt cool upon her skin, the first bit of relief Rose had had since the wedding. She could have stayed swimming in it forever, because she could have sworn that it was healing her, but she was back on her feet all too soon. The silver and the chill disappeared, and suddenly everything was warm and airy, like a heart fluttering when seeing its crush. Then the noises came – loud, screaming, cheering noises from a mob of people – and the stands were constructed from the bottom up, each layer appearing from a cloud of black smoke. The stands were centered around a green Quidditch pitch that was decked out in Gryffindor and Slytherin banners, so Rose knew right away that it was the very first match of the season, though _which_ season it was, she couldn't ascertain.

The two teams were already flying, their robes looking more faded than the ones Rose was used to wearing, and from a tower stand on the other side of the pitch Rose could make out the long white hair of Headmaster Albus Dumbledore sitting with a still alive McGonagall on one side and relatively young Severus Snape on the other. Noticing them made Rose's head turn in every which direction, because she wanted to know exactly who else was here in the hopes that she might recognize others. That was when she turned to the small, dark-haired girl beside her, who was wearing a Slytherin scarf despite the fact that she was cheering for Gryffindor.

Rose was still staring at those icy eyes that she'd seen a thousand times before when an unfamiliar commentator announced that the snitch had been caught by none other than Charlie Weasley. Instinctively, Rose started searching for her uncle, but it turned out that she didn't need to look very far. This memory had been tampered with, like so many were by the dangerous mind, for when Rose turned back to the pitch there was only one player left in the sky. Charlie was flying beautifully atop a Nimbus broom, his arm outstretched toward the clouds to show the wings of the golden snitch flapping through his fingers, and his smile was wide and white.

Suddenly, Charlie froze like a Muggle photograph as Rose heard the girl beside her shout, "GO, GO, GRYFFINDOR!"

"Story, you might not want to flaunt your feelings so blatantly," teased the girl who was standing on Astoria's other side. This one was less innocent looking, with sharp cheekbones and spiked hair that kept changing color from maroon to gold. Rose had seen plenty of Hogwarts yearbooks and Lupin family photo albums to know that it was Tonks, though this version of Nymphadora couldn't have been older than fourteen.

Rose sensed that Astoria idolized Tonks, blushing immediately after being scolded and going completely silent even though she never took her eyes off Charlie or his smile, which Astoria was trying and failing to mimic with her own crooked teeth. But as Rose stared at those jagged edges, suddenly the teeth became giant stones, and Rose found herself floating around the perimeter of the Hogwarts sundial, the covered bridge a few yards away to her right, Hagrid's Hut down the hill to her left, and the Whomping Willow banging its branches on the dirt behind her.

Astoria was older now, looking like a woman as she sat with her back against one of the stones and buried her naturally clear face in a textbook that Rose recognized as her current Charms reference. The rest of her books were piled next to Astoria, and by the sight of the newly blooming flowers around the hut and the chilly bite in the air, Rose assumed that it was spring, just in time for Astoria to cram for her Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests. The only question Rose had was why Astoria was the only one who seemed to be studying.

Her question was answered when Rose noticed that Astoria wasn't reading so much as daydreaming, her cheeks rosy and eyes wide as she stared down the hill. Following her gaze, out of the black clouds two more figures appeared, both of them lanky but strong as they dueled like fierce warriors. Tonks was winning, firing all sorts of jinxes at her opponent while also remembering to defend herself when any attack came at her. Charlie seemed more like he was in it for the fun, laughing at every spell that hit him.

He was pushing himself off the ground, where he'd fallen from a stunning spell, when he glanced up at the sundial and yelled, "STORY, GET DOWN HERE!"

At first, Rose was certain that Astoria would follow Charlie's request, for she saw Astoria close her textbook and put her hands flat on the grass as if about to push herself up, but then she sighed and sat back down in defeat. Smiling courteously, she shook her head at Charlie rather than attempt to shout at him, but Rose heard her mumble under her breath, "Tonks would kill me in an instant, and it's too soon to say goodbye."

The scene changed again at that, though the setting remained, with Rose still lodged at the sundial and using the stone to hold her aching weight as she began to pant in the summer heat. This time, both Astoria and Tonks were standing within the stone circle, each of them jittering with nervousness as they clutched onto large, sealed envelopes that bore their names.

After thirty seconds of silence had passed, Tonks's impatience climaxed and she started tearing her envelope open, saying, "All right, I've had it."

"Wait! Just give him one more minute," Astoria argued, her thick, wavy locks of raven hair cascading all the way down her back and to her waist. Rose didn't know how she hadn't fainted from the heat by now, but then she remembered that Astoria had winter in her veins.

Tonks didn't listen, already pulling out a paper that unfolded so that it was as long as she was tall. It still only took her a minute to peruse it, though, and by the time Charlie showed, she was grinning like a fool and jumping up and down with the utmost excitement. "I did it! I passed!" she screamed as Charlie hugged her, lifting her off her feet and twirling her around. Once he put her back down, Astoria smiled and Tonks breathed deeply as if she needed to convince herself of the news. Her hand on her forehead, she looked dizzy as she said, "I'm going to be an Auror."

"Congratulations," Astoria said with a faint break in her voice, not looking nearly as proud of Tonks as did Charlie, who was standing up tall with his arms crossed over his chest and hiding his own crinkled envelope.

When he heard Astoria's voice, he turned to the smaller girl and said with as much excitement as he always bore, "Your turn now. No more stalling."

The smile Astoria gave _him_ was real, and as she opened her envelope slowly and with the utmost care, Charlie grew impatient and couldn't help but ask once Astoria was reading, "Well? How many did you get?"

Astoria looked up at him with eyes that glistened with tears. "Enough," she said as if her life had depended on these exams, and for a moment Rose wondered if maybe it did. "Enough to get me an internship, anyway."

"That's fantastic!" said Charlie as he pulled Astoria into a hug that was less enthusiastic than the one he'd had with Tonks, yet somehow more honest. And as she looked on at the trio, with Tonks standing to the side and still trying to accept this bright future ahead of her, Rose understood how Astoria could be so hopelessly devoted to her two best friends. Charlie was indisputably handsome, with his broad shoulders that covered Astoria completely and arms as strong as an axe. Then there was Tonks, and it seemed as though everything came easily to her, for to become an Auror one had to pass five subject tests, which was difficult to ask of anyone, and which surely Astoria hadn't done even with all her studying. Charlie and Tonks knew who they were, and someone as confused as Astoria would need people like them in her life.

Charlie was the first to break apart from the girl, Astoria looking disappointed when those strong arms slipped away. Trying to distract herself, she ran a hand through her hair the same way Scorpius always did and said to Charlie, "And what about you? What of your results?"

Now, Tonks returned to the conversation, more curious about Charlie's success than she'd been about Astoria's. Charlie, on the other hand, looked as if he couldn't have cared less. Pulling the envelope out from behind his elbow, he held it with both hands and announced, "I don't want to know."

Astoria was furrowing her eyebrows with worry and Tonks was laughing as if entertained when Charlie tore the envelope into pieces and let it fly off with the wind. His friends' differing expressions only deepened as he continued, "Whatever the results are, I'm not going to do anything with them anyway. All I want to do – all I've _ever _wanted to do – is play with fire. I sent an owl to Romania, to that dragon sanctuary I told you about, and they wrote back this morning. Apparently, it's quite rare for them to have young wizards volunteer to be meat cutters, so they took me up on my offer. I leave tomorrow morning."

"Fantastic!" Tonks exclaimed, though Astoria didn't look at all pleased.

Charlie could sense this just as well as Rose could, only he decided to ignore it. Smiling at Tonks, he turned back to Astoria and gave her a pat on the shoulder before saying to them both, "See you at graduation tomorrow," to Tonks, "Don't ruin your new reputation with too many senior pranks," to Astoria, "You'll look beautiful in that green dress," and then walked away.

Astoria was outright crying as Charlie disappeared within the depths of the covered bridge, and finally Tonks took the time to notice. "Wotcher, Story," she told her. "This'll be good for him, and anyway, it's not as if you ever stood a chance at getting into those knickers." She was joking, the way Tonks was a notorious joker, but of course Rose understood just as Astoria did that that was the last thing Story needed to hear.

The next scene change took longer, as if this memory was farther from the last, and in her spare time Rose contemplated what she'd seen so far. She had never known about Astoria's connection to Charlie and Tonks, but what was bothering her more than Astoria's connection to _Rose's_ family was what Rose found herself feeling about Astoria. She tried to remind herself of all the terrible things that this woman had done, but as she skipped through memories of Astoria's teenage years, all she saw was a girl who looked remarkably similar to herself.

All that changed when a house built itself around Rose, closing her in and hiding her from the light like a ripening batch of Devil's Snare. The house was stark and dusty like it hadn't been lived in in years, and Rose was positioned in the dining room doorway, looking in on a long table filled with witches and wizards dressed only in black. At the head of the wood sat an older man whom Rose assumed was the owner of this house, his hair greying and unkempt, his body frighteningly thin beneath a cloak that draped around his frame like a blanket. Beside him was a woman around his same age who had light blonde hair pinned in a tight bun atop her head, and next to her was Astoria, now in her mid-twenties even though Rose might have guessed thirty-something from the heavy bags under her eyes.

"It's been brilliant to see you again, Augustus" said the blonde woman as Rose looked over all the others in the room, some of them with faces blurred as if even Astoria couldn't remember what they'd looked like and Rose not managing to recognize a single one of them. "I do hope Azkaban wasn't too hard on you."

Grunting as if to say that Azkaban hadn't been difficult at all, the leading man Rose now knew to be Augustus Rookwood said, "It was as easy as this so-called war will be."

Rose could only see the back of the head of the next person who spoke, but she listened nonetheless. It was a man's voice, evil in its high-pitched confidence. "Yes, the Dark Lord has done amazing things in the time you've been gone; his power is _unyielding_."

Around the table, there were many ayes spoken, though Astoria didn't dare say a thing as she kept her head facing her lap. The blonde seemed to notice this, for soon she was poking at Astoria's shoulder with a fake smile as she said, "Sweetheart, tell us of your admiration for the Dark Lord."

"He is a brilliant wizard," Astoria replied mundanely, as if she'd said such a million times and never with any truth. The blonde was pleased at this, and everyone was about to continue their previous conversation when Astoria added in a mumble, "But perhaps we should not underestimate the young Harry Potter. I have heard that his skills are unprecedented – as good as an Auror, they say."

The blonde was worried now, perhaps nervous that her comrades would shun Astoria for her foul words. Luckily, Augustus piped in then and turned it all into a joke, even though Rose was certain that Astoria never meant for it to be one. "Ah, yes," he said, "But what is the power of an Auror compared to that of a _Death Eater_?"

Astoria was now staring at him as Augustus pulled back the sleeve of his cloak to reveal the Dark Mark on his wrist. He met her gaze, daring her to reveal her own, and when she did he said, "That there is proof enough that you needn't worry about facing the likes of an Auror on that battle field, girl. You have the Dark Lord's trust in you, and in that a piece of his power."

"What if I don't want it?" asked Astoria, and just like what had happened with Charlie at the Quidditch match, suddenly it was only Astoria and Augustus in this room, because only they remained in the former's memory. "What if I don't want his power?"

Chuckling to himself, Augustus told her very seriously even in his humor, "Just wait. You will one day. Everyone does."

His words echoed in Rose's ear as the scene shifted, quickly this time, back to Hogwarts and that same sundial she'd stood in before, only now it was dark and half of the covered bridge had disappeared, the place where Hagrid's Hut once was now field of ash. The grounds looked exactly like Rose had pictured the place to look in her present time, with fires burning and giants groaning and spells blasting every which direction. She even found herself ducking to avoid some of those spells, though of course it was pointless. This had already happened, and just as she had no effect on what happened here, here had no effect on what happened to her. At least, that was what Rose tried to convince herself of, though somewhere inside she knew that what she was about to see would affect her in a way greater than she could have ever imagined.

Astoria looked exactly as she had in the Rookwood house, with clothes as black as her hair and eyes as dead as night. She was hiding behind one of the stones, staring down at the hill just like she'd done during Charlie and Tonks's friendly duel, only this time she wouldn't be the one to be asked to join in.

Tonks was running up the hill as she tried to ward off some snatchers, most likely headed for the bridge that she didn't realize had been blown up in the midst of the battle. Rose only caught glimpses of the woman through short blasts of light, but she looked incredibly different now than she had when she'd been a student at Hogwarts. Now, her hair, though still ratty, was more grown out and no longer changed color every two seconds. It was simply mouse brown, and her clothes were similarly plain and loose, no doubt baggy enough to hide the weight she'd gained from her recent pregnancy.

When she made it to the top of the hill, somebody else had drawn the snatchers' attention, and though Tonks seemed concerned for whoever was now being used as bait, she desperately needed to catch her breath before returning her assistance. She was keeled over and heaving, a small smile on her face because this was what she did and what she had missed doing, when Astoria walked out of the shadows to greet her old friend.

"It's been a long time," Astoria stated simply, making Tonks stop breathing as she stood up straight to face the woman whose voice she clearly recognized.

"Story," breathed Tonks; Astoria merely grimaced at the nickname that she only really liked when used by Charlie. It didn't take long for Tonks to take in the sight of Astoria's blackness and to understand which side she was fighting for now, evident when Tonks sighed and said, "Oh, Story, you didn't need to follow in your mother's footsteps. You didn't need to become this person."

"How _dare_ you!" Astoria spat, her eyes showing more life now, but just as much pain. More quietly, she flicked her wand mindlessly at the ground and said, "How dare you tell _me_ about the person I was supposed to become! _You_, who said that I wasn't good enough for Charlie when a bloody _werewolf_ is good enough for you. _You_, who never let me in when we were kids even though I _worshipped_ you. _You_, who knew how alone I would feel when he left and then decided that you'd leave me too. How _dare_ you chastise me for the way I've tried to repair what _you_ broke."

By now, Astoria had picked her wand up and was pointing it toward Tonks in anger, urging her eyes not to water and instead allowing them to succumb to fury. Tonks hadn't had time to brandish her own wand while listening, so she had her hands up in surrender as she spoke in soothing tones, "I'm so sorry, Story. I never meant to hurt you, but I was just a kid back then. I was rowdy and rude and uncontrollable, but I've grown up now. I've grown up and now we can start over."

"I don't _want_ to start over!" Astoria leaped forward and Tonks shuttered at her proximity. "Don't you understand? I don't want to _start over_. I want to _stop_. I want to _end this_. I want to end _you_."

Tonks's shaking was uncontrollable now. She was far more fearful of the Astoria who had her wand pressed against Tonks's neck than Astoria had been of the Tonks who'd teased her when they were young. She didn't know what to do anymore, or what she could possibly say to change Astoria's mind, so she just started begging. "Please, Story, don't do this. You're better than this. You're _better_ than killing a friend, a woman, a wife, a _mother_. You're better than killing a little boy's mother."

Astoria had one hand on her wand and the other buried in her hair, one eye shedding tears and the other red and dry, one half of herself swimming in power and the other more powerless than it had ever been. Rose and Tonks knew which side Astoria would listen to, yet it still came as a shock when Astoria slowly backed away while saying, "But that's just it. I was _never_ better, and we were never really friends."

"You're going to regret this," Tonks argued when Astoria was a few feet away. "You're never going to forget. Never."

"Yes, I will," said Astoria. Then, after taking one more deep breath and without saying goodbye because Tonks had never extended her such a courtesy, she whispered through her tears, "_Avada Kedavra."_

Tonks's body froze and fell to the ground like a stone dropping into the sea, and Astoria would have been just as still had it not been for the screaming man who was running up from behind her. In her own shock and paranoia, Astoria flew her body around and didn't even look at Remus Lupin before she killed him too and fled from the sight, the memory fading the farther she went.

After that, Rose was brought to at least ten more scenes, none of them lasting longer than a moment. In most of them, Astoria was at what looked to be an office cubicle somewhere inside the green glass of the Ministry of Magic. She'd be sitting at her desk, her walls covered in maps of both England and the world, and Rose would watch her grow older as the years droned on. Astoria's face went from tired and lonely to guilty and spiteful, with eyes that bled through scars and skin that blinked in folded wrinkles. Coworkers would pass her by but she would greet none of them as she pulled her sleeve down to hide her Dark Mark, and she would sometimes stay at the Ministry until late at night, making Rose wonder if she had anyone to go home to.

Around her, the rest of the Ministry went from chaotic misery to hesitant acceptance. Everyone was grieving at first, for everyone had lost somebody, but Shacklebolt was a good leader and soon whispers grew into confident statements of the Death Eaters all having been arrested and put into cells at Azkaban. There were a few exceptions to this rule, however, including Astoria herself as well as Draco Malfoy. The latter was brought down to Astoria's department by new Auror Harry Potter, who politely requested that Astoria take Draco on as an intern. She agreed, and soon she showed him the mark on her wrist and he showed her his. Then they were all each other had, and soon he put a ring on her finger and she put one on his.

But even Draco didn't seem to know about Tonks and Remus, and even Draco couldn't make Astoria forget. Rose could see her remembering every time Astoria closed her eyes, leaning forward against her desk and breathing so steadily that she must have been counting her own heartbeats. Whenever this happened, she would take out a book that she'd buried in her bottom drawer, and Rose didn't need to wonder which exact book this was. She knew it would be _The Tales of Beetle the Bard_, and she knew which particular tale Astoria was looking for.

She would always turn it to the same page that Rose had once made her father stop on, and within the next few memories Astoria had hand-drawn pictures of the Resurrection Stone hanging up against her maps. There were pins next to all the places she had any inkling that the ring might have been, all evidence garnered from other books she read and wizards she'd spoken with on her travels. Soon those pins turned into reality, and Astoria was becoming an Animagus through great secret pains so that she could have some way of flying, and Rose witnessed scenes of Astoria and Draco talking from across cubicles or inside the elevator about her various trips around the world.

"Why do you have to leave so often?" he would ask. "I have the same job as you, and you don't see me traveling more than once a month."

"Yes, but I'm your _boss_. I have more responsibilities than you do," she would argue.

But as more pins fell to floor and as the world maps were replaced with solely British ones, Astoria's determination only increased. She started to leave Draco even more and their squabbling became fights, even after Astoria discovered that she was pregnant.

He would yell, "I don't want you Apparating such long distances, especially when you're carrying _my _baby."

"But I don't _want_ your baby!" she would refute, and he would shake his head and tell her that she was wrong, that she didn't know what she was saying, that she was just scared. Rose, however, knew that Astoria was telling Draco the truth. A child would only complicate the situation, and worse, would remind her of the child whose life she'd already ruined.

For months, the cubicle was empty while Astoria stayed at the hospital, Scorpius's birth proving more difficult to endure than most. Rose treasured the sight of the little boy lodged in Astoria's arms, with his soft white hair, puffy cheeks, and snowflake birthmark. He was perfect like this, smiling and unscarred and loved. Draco seemed to cherish him as much as Rose did, and Narcissa would visit often as well, though, much to Rose's surprise, Astoria was not at all indifferent to the boy. If anything, he was her knight in shining armor.

Every time she held him, she looked happy, but when the Healers or Draco or Narcissa took him away, if only for a moment, she would turn back to her old regretful self. Just like she'd always been with Charlie, she was more attached to this one person than she was to herself, and that proved to be a very dangerous thing.

Rose was utterly shocked when she saw her dead grandfather holding another baby from the room next door to Astoria's. An exhausted Ginny was lying in the hospital bed while Arthur rocked Albus to sleep, and next thing Rose knew a one year-old James was racing down the hallways and Harry wasn't there. Al was crying and Harry wasn't there. Windows were shattering, nurses were slipping on their feet, wind was blowing sheets off the beds in Al's power, and Harry wasn't there. Harry wasn't, but Astoria was. She watched every instant of it and clutched her wand more tightly with every speck of magic she felt. Eventually, Al left the hospital and so too did Astoria, and right away she continued her search for the stone.

Leaving Scorpius was the hardest thing she'd ever done, but it became easier as the years passed and as Astoria became more insane with her one life ambition. Arguments between her and Draco were hostile and Scorpius heard them all because he never could fall asleep. He'd escape into Narcissa's room once his mother left, grabbing his favorite chess piece on his way, and Draco would never be able to comfort him because he didn't even know how to comfort himself.

The montage culminated with Astoria back in her office, only this time she wasn't alone. Knox Rookwood was sitting across from her, though at first Rose didn't recognize him. Not only was he dressed, unlike the last time she'd seen him, but he was _formally_ dressed in a suit and tie, with his brown hair recently cut and gelled so that it rolled across his head smoothly like waves. If Rose hadn't known what he was going to become, she might have called him beautiful.

"So, you're sure I can take the day off tomorrow?" he was asking Astoria tentatively. He must have been working with her for a while by now, as he seemed to understand her moodiness and spoke to her in a way that would allow her to shut him down if she wanted to.

She was placing a new pin onto one of her county maps, and Rose was close enough to see that the spot it pointed to was a graveyard in a town she knew well: Godric's Hollow. She also knew who was buried there, from the first James and Lily Potter to Ignotus Peverell, one of Beetle the Bard's three brothers. Astoria seemed to have forgotten about Knox's original request, for now she asked, "What is the circumstance of such an absence?"

Knox looked very nervous to respond with, "My girlfriend's sister is getting married. I was hoping to attend the wedding."

"The wedding?"

"Yes," Knox nodded. "Er, the wedding between Teddy Lupin and Victoire Weasley."

Suddenly, Astoria's interest shifted from the maps to Knox, for of course she knew one of these names. Somehow, she was able to subdue her curiosity about Teddy so that she could tell Knox simply, "Yes, of course you may attend. You _must_."

And before Rose knew it, she was at the wedding that she had already attended, only three summers ago at Shell Cottage, on the outskirts of Tinworth. It was exactly how she remembered it: water lapping on the shores steadily as the sun set, Teddy kissing Victoire before picking her up and running her into the waves, Victoire dancing with Bill as the younger version of Rose danced with her own father and as Teddy sat and watched and cried, not because he felt sorry for himself but because he finally felt like he had a family.

Astoria stood on the edges of both the ceremony and then the reception, staring at Teddy all night even though Rose was fairly certain that it was the first time she was seeing him. Every time Teddy's hair color changed, Astoria would blink and keep her eyes closed for a few seconds, and every time he said 'Wotcher,' she'd cross her arms against her chest to hold herself still.

After Teddy and Victoire Apparated away, Knox walked up to Astoria as she was getting ready to leave, because of course he had seen her there the entire time. Astoria didn't explain why she was there or what she was so upset about, but somehow Knox understood, and when Astoria said to him, "Say I wanted to cash in the debt you owe me, what would you be willing to do for me?"

Shrugging sadly, Knox said, "You saved my life. I wouldn't have a choice what I did to repay you; I'd just do it."

"JUST _DO_ IT!" yelled Astoria, only now she was in Malfoy Manor, and Rose was turning herself around as best she could so that she could really see the place that she'd heard so much about but had never visited. "If you want a divorce, Draco, ask for one!"

When Rose finally stopped looking at the long hallways, empty walls, and glass chandeliers, she settled her eyes on Astoria, but this task proved more difficult than what she was used to. Astoria was running from room to room, grabbing lamps and candles and jewelry and then pointing her wand at them until they blew up in front of her. Rose tried to keep up, the memory helping to pull her along Astoria's path, but her pain felt exponentially worse now than it had only moments ago. Maybe that was because this was a scene Rose had been told about before, and it wasn't one she wanted to see.

"It's not that simple," Draco said as he passed right through Rose, also lost in Astoria's wake. "I love you, Story, I'll _always_ love you, and I don't want a divorce. I just wish that you could tell me what it is that's bothering you. Why can't you tell me what you're looking for?"

Under her breath, Astoria mumbled one-word responses, and while Draco couldn't make them out in his exhausted state, Rose heard them loud and clear. "Stone," said Astoria, "Stone. Tonks. Dead. Not dead." She said them over and over again as she blasted more lamps apart, shattering the bulbs and watching the sparks ignite before they vanished.

They were back in their bedroom now, connected to Scorpius's room by only a wall. Astoria was clawing at her and Draco's pillows, letting their feathers free and making sure that the Resurrection Stone wasn't hidden somewhere inside them, because she was running out of ideas for where it might be. Draco looked on in misery, for it killed him to see her like this. It killed him to see her doing all the things that he had done when he'd been employed by Lord Voldemort in his last years at Hogwarts.

Because he didn't want to love that person – the person within himself he'd spent so many years trying to forgive – Draco said sullenly to Astoria, "Or maybe it is that simple. Maybe you aren't my wife anymore. Maybe I can't even recognize you."

Those words were what made Astoria stop. Draco was standing behind her and she was leaning over the backboard of their king size bed, shuttering until that shutter turned into an almost imperceptible smile. This was all part of the plan, as was the spell she cast on Draco without even turning around to face him. _"Imperio."_

When she did turn around, Draco looked like he'd been Confunded, only unduly and even worse. He tried to fight against the control just like Al once had in Shunpike's classroom, but she was too strong for him. He already had his wand pointed at her, his mouth open and ready to voice those two words that would end it all, when Rose turned her head to the open door and saw a fifteen year-old Scorpius sneak up behind his mother and push her to the floor with his sweaty hands. Then he just stood there, looking at her with his own mouth gaping open, even as Draco awoke from the Imperius Curse, called on some Aurors, stunned Astoria, and told Scorpius to leave and not come back again for the rest of the summer.

"But – but Dad," Scorpius argued, his voice still filled with fear.

"GO!" yelled Draco, sharp and unwavering this time. And as Scorpius left, so did Rose.

Next, she saw swift images of Astoria in St. Mungo's, her hair becoming wilder along with her eyes, and visits from Knox as he brought in books and helped her with her research. She ran into another future protégé at the hospital as well. Vincent Goyle was there to be treated for some sort of Fiendfyre burn after getting a little too frisky with his newly legal ability to perform magic that summer, and he was daft enough for Astoria to have him under her spell within an hour.

They stayed in the hospital for quite some time, since Rose had to see everything from Astoria's eyes as Astoria saw things through Goyle's. She saw him searching all of Hogwarts castle in hopes that he might find the ring, she saw him kill Argus Filch with as much forethought as Astoria had given before killing Remus, fearing that he might uncover her secret that she was unknowingly only a few feet away from uncovering for herself. Rose saw Scorpius get falsely accused, saw Goyle overhear her and Al's conversation about the Elder Wand and felt Astoria's curiosity brewing, then saw her interest returned to Scorpius when she saw that _he_ had the ring after taking it from Rose to protect her.

That summer – the summer following Rose's fifth year, after Astoria had escaped from the hospital and temporarily returned to Malfoy Manor – Astoria wanted Scorpius, because it was Scorpius who'd had the ring at the time. Meanwhile, the wizarding world was still talking about Filch's death, and as Astoria slowly realized just how protected Scorpius was, with Draco and Harry and even Ron looking out for him at every turn, she decided that she'd need more power if she wanted to find him again. That was when she and Knox started building their army, as well as when she came up with her supremacist farce.

"Killed one Squib and went after another," a much more familiar Knox said from across the same table his grandfather had once sat at, except that Knox was sitting in Astoria's old seat while Astoria sat at the head. "And now we go after the Mud-bloods, which will draw in all of Voldemort's old followers."

"Aye," said Astoria with a smile plastered across her very stoic face. Then she squinted her eyes and added, "But there is one other recruit I'd rather like to have... one who _didn't_ follow Voldemort."

Knox didn't ask who as he waited for Astoria to tell him, and eventually she did. "Albus Severus Potter."

"Are you mental?" asked Knox as he leaned forward in shock, no longer fearful of Astoria viewing him as weak or needy. He knew all of her secrets now, and in a way she knew his. They were completely comfortable with each other.

"Relax," Astoria told him. "I've been writing the boy most of this summer, and he seems vulnerable enough. Plus, he has the Elder Wand."

"Do we need it? I thought you only wanted the stone."

"True, but that doesn't mean that I should simply _ignore_ the wand. It is the most powerful wand in the world, Knox, which means that its master has the potential to become the most powerful _wizard_ in the world. Now, if Scorpius still has the ring, then we need to get to him before the Order grows too large, and I don't want Albus to be on the Order's side with that wand in his hand. I may not need it for myself, but I would still like to have it within my _control._"

Knox still seemed hesitant, shaking his head and biting his lip. "Any Potter is an _enormous_ liability."

Astoria considered this for a moment, but then argued, "Not if we treat him like one. If we _know_ that he'll be a liability, then we can use such knowledge to our advantage. First, we get him to trust us, to trust _me_. Then, we leave him be, let him fester, until he makes a decision to causes us to question his loyalty. Finally-"

"We _test_ his loyalty," Knox finished for her.

"Exactly."

Time fast forwarded to that fall, when Astoria used her Animagus form to run from Harry, who'd been tracking her ever since she attacked the Creevey house. Her idea to murder Narcissa was simply a distraction, much like the Squib and Mud-blood attacks themselves, intended to slow Harry down, and slow him down it did. He stayed behind at Malfoy Manor in order to wait for Draco's late arrival, and in so doing lost Astoria's trail until Christmas.

Finally, Rose understood everything that had happened that Christmas. It was terrifying to see Knox turn himself into an Animagus right before heading off to spy on Rose's own house, but it was even more terrifying to know that the Unbreakable Vow Astoria made with Ron wasn't _really _a powerful attempt to gain control of the Ministry so much as an excuse to see if Scorpius still had the ring. When Knox told Astoria it wasn't him she wanted anymore, Rose now understood that it was because he'd already given the ring back to her. That night, _she'd_ been under the Invisibility Cloak, so Knox hadn't seen her and therefore hadn't seen the ring at all. Suddenly, all of Astoria's searching proved useless, because she didn't have any idea where the ring was anymore, but at least now she had Al, along with the Auror Department's records on every witch and wizard in the country.

Astoria cowered over these records for months, but she never found anyone she thought Scorpius might have given the ring to. Deciding that the person must have been someone he knew at school, she used Al's position at Hogwarts to plan her marking ceremony. This brought her and the observing Rose to a forest filled with snow, where Astoria was tending to a small fire and thinking to herself until she heard a crow scurry in the nearby bushes.

Upon turning human once more, Knox sat down beside Astoria and informed her, "It went well. Albus held up his side of the bargain, all the Mud-bloods were marked, and I flew over all of it until I saw it, until I saw your ring."

"Who do I need to capture?" asked Astoria, more out of formality than concern. She needed the name, but she didn't care _who_ the name was attached to.

Knox, on the other hand, had to suppress a great deal of apprehension to answer, "Rose Weasley."

Following this revelation, everything Astoria did brought her a step closer to her ultimate goal of capturing Rose. She ordered the albino to kidnap Arthur and used Al to get him killed, though Rose didn't actually see the murder take place, so she wasn't sure if Knox had been telling her the truth about his involvement after all. Astoria disguised herself as James to try to take Rose at Arthur's funeral, again with the help of Al, who was becoming less and less reluctant as Astoria became more and more distant from anything other than that ring. She had McGonagall killed by Al so that Scorpius would break down and send Rose away, because she knew Scorpius better than Rose could have realized, and when Scorpius had declared war she'd been ready to release her army while she tortured Rose inside.

The last memory that was brought to Rose was one she had no way of placing in time or space, though the room she found herself in was shaped like a hollowed out rock and reeked of humidity and dragon dung. Astoria had tried to make it look like a combination between her travel-themed office and the Rookwood dining room, a lopsided table placed in the center of the poster-plastered walls with four chairs arranged around it.

The albino and a blonde woman Rose had never seen before didn't say anything, and since Knox wasn't by Astoria's side, Rose assumed that he must have been at Azkaban. Ryder was there, though, and it was she who led a discussion with Astoria, the two of them in deep conversation of battle tactics and secret agendas.

"I'll order Albus to lead the army once the battle ensues. That way, he won't try to stop me when I take Rose for myself," Astoria stated, her back hunched over as if she was merely hanging out.

Trying to take over her brother's role as the wingman, Ryder said, "I thought you trusted Albus." She sounded more curious than she should have been, almost as if she had her own agenda when it came to Al and she wanted to make sure that Astoria wouldn't punish her for ruining him.

Astoria wasn't fooled; Ryder would never be good enough. "I trust no one, least of all a Potter," she said. "He has served me well, but now his time is over. There is nothing more he can do for me."

"And what about Scorpius?" asked the olive-skinned blue jay. "I hear he and Rose are together now, which means that he'll probably come looking for her if he finds out that she's been taken. What will you do if he does?"

Astoria was cold, wet cold, when she looked past Ryder and into the ghost of Rose that she couldn't actually see, straight into her innocent blue eyes, and said, "Gaining power is always done at the expense of the powerless. If he dares to get in my way, I'll treat him as I would anyone else. I'll kill him."

The rush of pain that ran through Rose upon hearing those words was worse than anything she'd ever felt, but the silence and the black and the peace that came after was like looking into heaven.

* * *

Her relief didn't last long enough. When Rose awoke, she had returned to the present world, her head heavy but chilled against the cold marble floor, her neck throbbing from the freshly marked snowflake scar, and her hand pressed tightly around the pensieve stand as if those memories were all she had left to hold on to. As she thought about this, and about the fact that Astoria had literally pulled them _out_ of her mind to put them_ in_ to Rose's, Rose realized that she was actually right, only this was the first time she'd ever wanted to be wrong.

She wanted to be wrong about everything – about Tonks, about Knox, about Astoria. Rose wanted to believe that they weren't all people who had multiple opinions and multiple views and multiple morals. She wanted to believe that Tonks was a beautiful wife and a loving mother; she didn't want to believe that Tonks was also a terrible friend. She wanted to believe that Knox was a murderer and that he'd broken Dominique's heart; she didn't want to believe that Knox had also been the one to give Dom's heart a reason to beat. She wanted to believe that Astoria was an evil woman and a dangerous witch; she didn't want to believe that Astoria was also a scared little girl. Mostly, though, she didn't want to believe that Astoria had ever loved Scorpius, because although this seemed to be a pattern in Astoria's life, Rose would never understand how a person could go from loving someone to being ready to kill them.

This change of heart must have had something to do with the insanity. Now, Astoria was walking around the pensieve to gain ground on Rose, and she looked like she hadn't slept in years. Rose had been too preoccupied with her own pain and her own struggles to notice those of Astoria's before, but after seeing the young witch so innocent and pretty in those memories, Rose could barely recognize the grown woman who stood before her. There was still the wintry ice and the raven night and the golden glow, but all the rest – the blushing cheeks and the fingers through the hair and the proud smile – was gone. This woman didn't want success or freedom or even Charlie anymore; she wanted what Al had always wanted with Ilana… she wanted what she couldn't have.

"Give me the stone," Astoria ordered with her hand outstretched as she stared down at Rose from six feet above the floor.

Rose felt like she'd been buried in her grave, but if her chances were already doomed then surely she had nothing left to lose if she continued to fight. She'd learned a lot from Scorpius over the past few years, but the fighting was something she'd learned from Al. He'd taught her that words could be just as strong as magic, because his lies had somehow always sounded like loyalty.

Without moving away because she didn't want Astoria to think that she was telling her this out of fear, Rose looked up and said, "I know what you want. I know you want to see Tonks again, but you _can't_ bring someone back from the dead."

"_Don't _tell me what _I_ can't do!" Astoria yelled with a fury Rose hadn't seen on her since she'd provoked her with thoughts of Scorpius.

"But it's just a _story!_ It's a folktale, a legend, a fantasy. It isn't true!" Rose argued, and at this point she was shuffling her body backward and away from Astoria for fear that the witch might reach down to tear at her dress more and take Scorpius's ring for herself. Astoria didn't look like she was buying a word Rose said, but Rose would keep rephrasing the same statements anyway, because her father had to have known what he was talking about. That was what made her add, "The Deathly Hallows might be real objects, but that doesn't mean that they have any real power."

"Does it?" asked Astoria with raised eyebrows and a knowing glare. "Says the girl whose best friend betrayed her because of a wooden _stick_ that held more power than he'd ever known. Says the girl whose uncle is Harry Potter, the very descendent of Ignotus Peverell himself and who very well may be in possession of a certain one-of-a-kind Invisibility Cloak. Says the girl who has _no notion_ of what it takes to kill and should therefore refrain from stating her futile opinions on the permanence of death."

She was very close to Rose now. Her eyelids were shaking though her hands were steady, and Rose no longer thought that Astoria would go so far as to take the ring from her leg strap. She wanted Rose to hand it over to her, to surrender it, to admit to Astoria that she was just a child. What Astoria didn't realize, however, was that Rose was no child. She was a woman, and one who had seen death in a way worse than personal; she had seen death through the eyes of the people she loved far more than herself.

Staring at the part of her dress that was hiding her leg and ring from sight, Rose whispered, "Stop pretending that you know who I am. Stop pretending that you know who anyone is, let alone who Tonks was. What makes you think that she would come back from wherever she is now just to see _you_ again? You, who took her life before she could watch her own son grow up, before she could even see what kind of man he would become, or get to know the gorgeous girl he would marry?"

Astoria's attention was on Rose now, even though neither of them was really looking at the other. The attempt made by Rose to get under Astoria's skin was finally working, and Rose only had one more idea of what she could say to tip Astoria over the edge. So, with a deep breath and an aching turn of her neck, Rose said, "That's what this is about, isn't it? That's why you can't look at Scorpius anymore, let alone acknowledge him as your son? You _do_ love him, you do _know_ him, but you don't think you deserve to. You don't want to watch him grow up, you don't want to see the kind of man he's already become, and you don't want to get to know me. You don't want any of the things that you stole from someone else."

Their eyes met as soon as Rose silenced, and just like she couldn't tell how much time had passed since the wedding, she wasn't sure how long she and Astoria held their gaze now. All she knew was that nothing would have broken it but for the voice they heard from behind Rose.

It was deep, husky but confident, and this time Rose knew it was Knox before she saw him when he said, presumably to Astoria, "She's right, you know."

Astoria was the first to look past Rose and onto her intruder, and it was the sight of her surprised expression that made Rose slowly turn around. She was half-way there when Astoria asked Knox, "What is _he_ doing here?"

When Rose finally saw the still shirtless Knox standing by the disappearing doorway, she had to turn a little more to see a patch of snow-filled hair suddenly go from blue to red. "Teddy?" she asked, her voice stronger than it had been since the wedding because just seeing someone familiar gave her a stronger sense of hope.

"Rose!" breathed Teddy as he raced from Knox's grasp in an attempt to leap toward the girl who probably looked like she was on the verge of death. He didn't get far, though, thanks to Astoria's reflexive stunning spell that blasted Teddy back until his body banged against the wall and made the blue of his hair seep into his cheeks.

Rose winced both externally and internally to see her cousin in such pain, but selfishly she was still grateful that he was here at all. When Teddy stood back up, Knox made sure that he didn't go for Rose again, making Rose realize that he was Knox's captive and that surely he had already handed over his wand.

Both Rose and Teddy kept still but curious as Astoria and Knox engaged in a rather tense conversation, Knox beginning his explanation with, "Rose is right, Astoria. She's right that Tonks won't come back for you; I've _seen_ it. I've seen it as clearly as I saw the Resurrection Stone during the marking ceremony and as clearly as I can see it now."

"You see _objects_," argued Astoria, but Rose could tell that she was lying to herself out of fear rather than denial. "You don't see emotions or feelings and you rarely see the future. You see what's _hidden_, not what may be revealed."

Knox was smiling, chuckling ever so slightly to himself as Rose and Teddy tried to contemplate the true extent of his capabilities, as he said, "Oh, I see more than just _objects_. You know that. You know that because you knew that I would see myself in you, the same way I see myself in Black Hawk. The only reason I noticed Rose and that ring amongst _hundreds_ of other students in the Great Hall was because I saw so much of Scorpius in her. I have _never_ seen Tonks in you, but she is _all_ I see in Teddy."

Astoria wasn't arguing anymore. She knew that, despite whatever intentions Knox may have now and whether those intentions had always been on his mind, he was being honest. That was why she nodded in permission when he told her, "The Resurrection Stone is real, but you _need_ him in order for it to work."

Teddy looked like he was in some sort of trance as he forgot all about Knox being his arch enemy and Astoria as some wicked villain. All he could see was this idea, this possibility that he'd never before let himself believe. He'd wanted vengeance all his life, but now he just wanted a moment, and as he walked steadily toward Rose and wasn't blasted away, she knew that she would do anything to give him that moment, even if it meant giving it to Astoria at the same time.

As Teddy knelt to the floor, Rose tried to re-position herself so that she could reach her hand down to her calf, but Teddy stopped her from moving too much. He put a hand on her arm and she froze before gesturing toward her leg and allowing Teddy to gently pull the silky dress up over her amethyst skin, reach into the pocket of the strap, and grab hold of the cracked, black stone attached to its golden band.

Teddy stood back up with the ring lying flat in his palm, never taking his eyes off the stone and never blinking. He didn't look at anything else and barely moved, making Rose wonder if he even knew what to do, but then his hair turned pink and then somehow his instincts told him to turn the ring over three times and then grip it in his fist. Once it was covered in skin, he looked away from the ring and up at the empty space that faced him in the room.

Rose, Knox, and Astoria were all staring intently at Teddy, but Rose didn't see anyone else appear in the room. As she glanced at Knox, who seemed anxious, and Astoria, who seemed terrified but also crazed, Rose knew that they couldn't see Tonks either. The wave of disappointment was palpable as it swam across the Room of Requirement, but a tsunami hit when they all saw Teddy smile, walk forward, reach his hand out into the empty air, and say, "Mum? Dad? Is it really you?"

Astoria was fuming, Knox was watching her with the same anxiety he'd had before, and Rose was crying bittersweet tears as Teddy looked down at his hand and seemed to have felt nothing touch it. "Why can't I feel you?" he asked the empty space in front of him, but Rose didn't hear any answer.

"Why can't we _see_ them?" asked Astoria, but Teddy didn't even hear her and both Knox and Rose ignored her.

Teddy was nodding, so Rose assumed that the ghost-like figures of Tonks and Remus were explaining to him what Ron had once tried to explain to her – that nothing could bring people back from the dead, not even this stone, at least not fully. Some partial version of Fred would never have been good enough for George, just like this version of Tonks was most definitely not good enough for Astoria, but Rose understood that it _would_ be for Teddy. Looking at the almost imperceptible smile spreading across Knox's darkened cheeks, Rose thought for a moment that he knew it too, and that he quite possibly always had.

He and Astoria were still focused on Teddy, Astoria's desperation growing with every second that passed, and Teddy was still lost in his reunion, when Rose heard a faint tapping that no one else seemed to notice. Upon deciding that Astoria wasn't about to lose her focus for anything, Rose stretched her neck as far as her broken skin would allow, turned back around so that she was looking toward the portrait in the middle of the mirrored walls, and saw James standing alone without a single one of his reflections.

Panicking in her confusion, Rose had her mouth open and was about to ask him why he was here, or at least say his name so that it might make the vision of him more real, but remained completely silent when he held up a finger to his curved lips. She knew then that, like Tonks and Remus had done for Teddy, James had only come back for her. He smiled and it made her smile, because that was what he wanted her to do, but seeing him in that suit he'd been wearing at the reception, looking more handsome in death than he ever had in life, was like looking into heaven and being told that she couldn't stay.

He was only there for a minute, maybe even less, before he vanished without a wave goodbye. Teddy had been in control of the ring, so James hadn't been able to know how much time his brother would give him, or, in this case, how much time it would take for Astoria to blow up. The exact moment James vanished, Astoria came back to life.

"You _LIAR!"_ she was yelling as she ran past Rose and toward Knox, knocking out Teddy and the ring on her way. Luckily, she didn't seem to think that the ring might work for her anymore, but now she had nothing left – no goal, no aspiration, no hope of ever being forgiven or of relinquishing this overbearing guilt she carried. Knox had been her closest ally during her quest, but now he was her closest adversary.

"I didn't lie!" screamed Knox, his outstretched wand pointed directly at Astoria's. "I told you that she would only come back for Teddy, and she _did_. How was I supposed to know only _he_ would be able to see her?"

"Because only _you_ see everything else!" she was heaving, crying, cracking all at once, and if Rose hadn't been out of options, she would have done just about anything to calm the woman down.

Astoria was inches away from Knox, her wand the only thing standing between her chest and his, and she was growling through clenched teeth, "Tell me why you did this. You paid your debt the moment I made you agree to your sentence in Azkaban. Why didn't you just let me try the stone on my own? At least _that_ would have been better than seeing _him_, of _all _people, do it for me!"

Knox was nodding now, having given up on denying his questionable motives. At this point, Teddy had stood back up and still had the ring in his hand even though it was no longer in use. It was Teddy Knox looked to when the latter answered, "You're right. I didn't bring him here so that you could finally seek forgiveness for a crime that you _deserve_ to feel guilt over. I brought him here because I know how it feels to be told about your legacy and wonder if it's something you need to protect or if it's something you'd rather escape. I brought him here so that _he_ could forgive _me _over a crime that I had no choice but to commit."

Fascinated to know that Knox had been on Teddy and Dominique's side all along, Rose looked back and forth between him and her cousin for a long while, not pausing long enough to notice that Astoria was anything but pleased. Teddy was in shock in more ways than one, Knox was ready to receive punishment in the most extreme of forms, and Astoria was bubbling over until all her fury completely spilled out of her.

The ceiling was the first part of the room that started shaking, but the walls came soon after with their cracking mirrors, and then the marble was cracking too. The pensieve crumbled into ashes and memories were released in puddles of silver, Rose's wand and deluminator started rolling toward her but didn't come close enough for her to grab them, and Astoria's screams echoed through the room until there wasn't a room anymore. Then there was a cascade of brick and stone, with everyone but Astoria running for a corner or ducking toward the floor, and the night sky was above them with its twinkling stars and flaming phoenixes.

At first, Rose thought that she was hallucinating the birds in the midst of her pitiful attempts to avoid being hit by the collapsed ceiling, but once everything had fallen she continued to catch glimpses of the remarkable creatures floating like embers amidst the black. Upon convincing herself that they were real after all, she let her eyes search for other surprises and found yet another bird that was even more remarkable than a phoenix.

The white falcon had his talons curved around something that looked rather like a blanket, and Astoria spotted him quite soon after Rose did. Teddy and Knox were brushing themselves off after they popped their heads out from the debris, and as Astoria shifted her focus to Scorpius and began to transform as well, Rose found herself yelling at Teddy from across the floor, "_Where's the ring?"_

Teddy was about to answer in a shrug when Rose was distracted by the sound of a spell that hit the golden hawk off guard. Scorpius had sent a jinx Astoria's way, surprising her with his ability to perform magic while in Animagus form, and Rose was gazing up at the bird proudly when she shot her eyes back to the bundle he was holding. Thinking back on James, Rose suddenly wondered if perhaps Scorpius had been given the Invisibility Cloak, and as the falcon turned around to swoop under the recovered hawk, Rose just caught sight of the sparkling stone with its band wrapped around one of Scorpius's claws.

Astoria must have also known that Scorpius had caught the ring in the midst of the explosion. After hearing all the things Knox had said, Astoria would know that the ring wouldn't do anything for her even if she tried to use it without Teddy there, but of course that would make her want it even more. Surely, she would do anything to hold it in her hands, if only so that she could crush it into a thousand pieces.

The two birds were now circling around each other, flying at the exact same pace, and Rose could tell without communicating with Scorpius that he was waiting for Astoria to throw a curse his way. Astoria probably hadn't ever used magic as a hawk, but there was no doubt in Rose's mind that she'd be able to.

What she hadn't expected was the particular spell that Astoria decided to use. A jet of green protruded from her feathery chest with uncontested speed and strength, and Rose held her breath as she waited for it to hit. It collided with a spell just as strong that was the color of Rose's eyes and that she immediately knew Scorpius would never let go of. It took a minute for Astoria to understand this as well, but once she did, she relinquished the Killing Curse and gave Scorpius the perfect opportunity to vanish himself.

Rose still couldn't breathe once Scorpius disappeared, and likewise, Astoria still didn't stop. The hawk sent Killing Curses in every direction, even downward where they were so close to hitting Knox that he too had decided to transfigure, since being a rook made it far easier for him to avoid Astoria's blasts when he could simply dart in and out of the way. But as Astoria noticed Knox's darting, she also saw some of the wind that could only be coming from flapping wings in the blowing of Teddy's white hair.

A breeze had just passed him by when Astoria shot her strongest spell yet into the empty space, just like Teddy had reached out his hand in hopes that it would be held. This time, Astoria got exactly what she wanted, because there was a pounding sound followed by a gushing exhale and suddenly Scorpius could be seen again, only now he was human. Now, he was frozen. Now, he was falling.

His body pounded atop a pile of broken ceiling only a yard or so away from Rose, and as he hit the ground her pain was lifted into the air. She felt absolutely nothing as she threw the rocks and glass everywhere to make a path for herself, felt absolutely nothing as she made it to Scorpius and wrapped her hand around his, felt absolutely nothing as he leaned over and met his lips with hers in the hope that Muggle fairy tales might be true too.

She could feel the ring buried in his stony hand, could see the Invisibility Cloak sitting by his feet, could make out the shape of the Elder Wand through his white jacket pocket. She could have sworn that she saw all three of the Deathly Hallows united around one wizard, but after she kissed him she looked around once more and they were gone. They disappeared just as easily as Scorpius had vanished before, and Rose found herself wondering if this time, unlike all the others, his disappearance would be permanent. This time, she was looking into a heaven that was pulling him away.

But it couldn't be true. He couldn't be gone, because the birds were still crying for him. _She_ was still crying for him. It couldn't be this simple. It _had_ to be more complicated. Life was complicated, with family and friendship and love, and he was all of those things to her. He was her forever, she _knew_ he was. He'd promised her. Check, check mate. He was her fate.

But was it possible that this was his fate too? Was it possible that their forever had already ended? Was it possible that death was simple, without family or friendship or love? Was it possible that she might stop crying long enough to hear the silence of the birds? Was it possible that this _was_ true, and that it wasn't his promise to her that he'd broken, but rather her promise to him?

"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I broke my promise," she whimpered into his ear with her forehead sitting against his and her fingers running through his hair. She said before that she'd never let him go, yet here he was. Here he was, like the silence of something lost. Here he was, dead, done, and gone. Here he was, the ghost inside her head. Here he was. Nothing. The end. Before he'd left, before she'd stayed, he had been her best friend. They had been betrayed.

It was a wonder that Rose was the one still alive, the one who had survived the war between her heart and his. It was a wonder that she was still here, her broken body curved over Scorpius's whole one and feeling the blood rush through her veins even when it had stilled in his. It was a wonder what an unwanted emphasis death could put on how she should have lived. But it wasn't a wonder that Rose knew how to stand up; James had taught her that. It wasn't a wonder that she knew how to keep going; Scorpius had taught her that.

She refused to surrender. She was pulling a wand out from Scorpius's jacket pocket, this one white and heavy with rain. She was on her feet again, crooked and shaking as they were, and the human Astoria was facing her in all her stoicism and all her numbness. Behind them, Teddy and Knox were wary of what to do, but Rose was adamant in her orders for them. "Go. _NOW."_

Knox had to pull Teddy away, but eventually they ran off, and then it was just Astoria. "What are you going to do, _poor_ little Weasley girl? You can't bring him back from the dead, you know," she said with eyes void of any emotion. Finally, her eyes didn't match those of Scorpius. Now, they matched those of Rose.

"I know I can't," said Rose as she clutched the wand at her side. "But gaining power is always done at the expense of the powerless. You have dared to get in my way, so I'll treat you as _you_ would anyone else. I'll _kill _you."

Rose was telling the truth. She would grieve, she would wallow. She would seek revenge and retribution. She would both accept Scorpius's death and bargain for his life. She would cry until her skin turned permanently red, stay still until her bones grew brittle, search for signs until she had nothing left. She would learn to forgive herself over time, but she would never forget. Never.

* * *

_**Note: **I'd be really surprised if you all didn't have some comments/questions/concerns after reading this chapter, especially since I did warn you of its intensity, so please send me a review filled with any thoughts you may have. I will be giving very few spoilers away for the last five chapters, but you might be able to convince me to tell you something. ;)_

_Anyway, **I want to hear from you more than I ever have before**, because these were probably the absolute most difficult thirty pages I've ever had to write. I will respond to all reviews that I can as usual, and I will try to update soon. Please bear in mind that I have finals coming up, so time will be an issue for me, but I will do my best not to leave you hanging here._

_Thanks so much!_

_-Hailey_


	41. The Falcon Lament

_**Note:** I have officially finished the school year and am back to writing for good! I do have a full-time job starting in June, but I am going to try to write as much as possible before then and will hopefully finish this story without too many more update delays._

_Anyway, thanks for all the kind reviews on the last chapter (which I know was kind of painful), and hopefully this one will meet all your expectations._

_-Hailey_

* * *

**41 – The Falcon Lament**

He was weightless. His senses were stronger than ever and his mind was at peace as the cries of phoenixes echoed out of his ears and into those of the living. The birds were replaced by a swishing breeze and creaking doors and heels tapping on brick, and he listened to the noise as his ears twitched under the permanently risen sun. The sweaty palms and broken wings and sinking heart were replaced with the kind of nothing that was more comforting than frightening, and he felt the numbness beneath his colder than usual skin. Those he'd been fighting for were replaced with those who'd died fighting for him, and he saw the loss as he opened his mother's eyes. The heaving lungs inside his chest were replaced with feathers freed from gravity, and he breathed companionship as his need for oxygen disappeared. The burning fires and healing snows were replaced with a lightly spitting rain, and he tasted clarity as the crevices in his lips became glaciers of the purest ice. He was dead.

But in that death was, someway, somehow, some form of existence. Through the ice Scorpius could see something – not the bright, yellow light that was always referred to by those who had heard stories of the other realm, the dropping of the veil, the crossover and the in-between; rather a sunset of eyes that had long since closed. That sunset stretched all the way around Scorpius's body as he lay flat against the ground, with its brown and green and blue. Beyond the air, everything was red. The rough bricks under his face that felt neither warm nor cold. The thresholds of familiar shop entrances in the distance. The sun.

The more aware Scorpius became of the brick surface beneath him, the more he realized that this was real, even if it was happening inside his head, and that if it was real then surely it must matter. This mattered just as much as everything in his life had, from being born only a few rooms down from his best friend to falling limply into the arms of the girl he spent his live falling madly in love with. He didn't quite understand a lot of it yet, and so perhaps that meant that he never would, but Scorpius knew in his gut that it still mattered. It was his gut that had given him the most invigorating magic he'd ever experienced, from vanishing himself to becoming an Animagus to doing both at once. He couldn't feel that same magic in his gut anymore, but he also didn't miss it. He didn't miss a lot of things.

As he slowly pulled his elbows back and pushed himself up to a sitting position, Scorpius practically smiled at the sight he was presented with. The brick continued from the ground to the walls and even the ceilings, for he was positioned in the middle of an alley, diagonally centered between a closed junk shop and an open door that, though now red, Scorpius remembered as being hauntingly black. The door stood ajar between two concave windows and below a hanging sign that read _Ollivander's: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 BC._

Scorpius had been exactly eleven years and five months old when he had first stepped into the wand shop that looked so different now. He hadn't been accompanied by anyone, since Astoria had been distracted by the sight of Teddy Lupin trying on robes through the window of Madam Malkin's and Draco had had to work. The ancient wandmaker, Garrick Ollivander, had just come in from a fight with his son, but he was careful not to let his personal life infiltrate his working environment. As soon as Scorpius introduced himself by voicing his full name, Ollivander had three potential wands sitting in their boxes on the glass countertop. The first had been short and black, and while it was successful in heightening Scorpius's emotions, its over-exaggerated effects wore off quickly until he willingly let it go. The second drained all his power with a single flick of his wrist, and it was Ollivander who suggested they try again. Scorpius wound up keeping the third – wind-chafed willow with a dull edge – but it never truly chose him, much like Ollivander's son who simply refused to choose his father's same profession. Little did he know at the time, the wand that _would_ choose Scorpius hadn't yet been made.

Now, Scorpius found himself physically searching for that wand as he stepped inside the shop for the second time. His hands were fumbling for pockets, and as soon as he realized that he was completely naked and wished that he wasn't, a pair a of light pants appeared around his legs with a matching T-shirt to cover his miraculously unscarred chest. Nigel's wand never appeared, however, making Scorpius wonder if he would ever see the white maple again.

"You will, even if not in the way you want to. We all will." The voice belonged to a man around Draco's age, with mousy brown hair and painfully ordinary features. He was standing behind the register, in front of a mirror that Scorpius couldn't see, alongside his similar-looking wife. They were the Creeveys, and they appeared in death as they always had in life: together.

Because he wasn't sure how Dennis could have possibly known what he'd been thinking, Scorpius assumed that the Creeveys were answering a slightly different question and egged them to elaborate by asking, "Do you have to wait to see the people you left behind, or can you see them whenever you want to?" He was thinking about Rose, of course, and Nigel and Colin, and his dad, and Harry, and everyone. He hadn't once considered that he might return to them since he'd awoken on that brick surface outside, but he did hope that he could still have glimpses, moments, _almosts_ with the ones he loved, even if they would never be enough.

It was Natalie, Nigel's sweet and unafraid mother, who answered, "Oh, you can see them all the time, like we see our boys. You can feel them, too. Always." She was smiling from cheek to cheek as she took a step away from her husband to reveal the mirror they'd been blocking before. She didn't need to gesture toward it to make Scorpius look.

"Colin's still in the forest, but Hagrid's protecting him," said Dennis, but Scorpius couldn't see anything. "Nigel's at the pitch; he's still upset, but he'll make it through." The more he spoke, the less Scorpius wanted to listen, because everything he said sounded more like denial than hope.

Scorpius was still staring at his own reflection when Natalie added, "And Hugo – he's almost there. It isn't far now." There was an unexpected part of Scorpius that desperately wanted to see Hugo again, to see if he was okay and to tell him that even if he and Hermione didn't make it to Rose in time, everything would still work out. Scorpius was waiting for her here, and he had forever to wait.

Yet again like he could read Scorpius's mind, Dennis said suddenly, "You can see the ones who are already here, too, just like you're seeing us right now. I've seen my father, the milkman, and my older brother, the boy who died too young. Everyone you love is here somewhere; you just have to know where to look for them."

_I must not be looking in the right place_, thought Scorpius, his eyes still set on the mirror that showed him nothing but the usual icy eyes and snowy hair and cold skin. He was beginning to grow frustrated as he continued to search the mirror to no avail, but like every other negative emotion that had threatened to unhinge him, this one vanished before it could cop hold of him. That was when his focus returned and he saw it.

The reflection wasn't actually_ him_, no matter how similar it seemed. This boy was younger, a child at most, perhaps even an infant. He had all of Scorpius's born features, but none of his earned marks – no crooked nose from years' worth of bludger bangs and brawls with his best mate, no bags under his eyes from chronic insomnia. He was still completely innocent with his pink-colored ears, untouched and far too ignorant to feel unwanted. Scorpius had never liked kids for that exact reason: for all the things they had yet to know. This one was no exception.

The sight of the boy made Scorpius turn around, blocking himself from the mirror and wishing in the back of his mind that the glass would magically crack and that the boy would suffer the same fate as any other mistaken idea, lost in the wasteland of time. But now, after it had been taken from him, there was no magic. And here, in this forever, there was no time.

It was the absence of time that made Scorpius return his attention to the Creeveys, being careful to avoid the sight of the mirror as he looked between the pair. "I'm sorry," he told them as sincerely as he could, though nothing in this world seemed as sincere as he remembered things could be. "I'm sorry I couldn't give you more time – time with your sons, or even just time to say goodbye."

"No amount of time would have ever been long enough," replied Natalie, Dennis's nose resting against her temple, just below the roots of all her curls. "And you had other lives to manage."

"Aye," Dennis continued for her, "Just as you have other deaths waiting for you now."

Scorpius didn't understand what he was insinuating right away. It wasn't until the Creeveys stared mindlessly into the distance and through the windows of the wand shop that Scorpius followed their mutual gaze and saw the lit street awaiting his return. This was Diagon Alley, not just Ollivander's, which meant that there were other shops on the street with their own doors open.

Figuring he would see them again soon, Scorpius didn't say goodbye to Dennis or Natalie before marching back onto the brick and directing himself down the road. He passed the second-hand robe shop that he suspected the Creeveys had probably used once or twice, then the Magical Menagerie where he had bought his pet ferret before his second year at Hogwarts. He considered going into the store now, wondering where Ally might be after leaving her in his Slytherin dormitory yesterday morning. Or, was that even yesterday anymore? Deciding he didn't want to know, Scorpius made himself keep moving until he came to Gringotts Wizarding Bank, its columns standing tall across from the narrow entrance to Knockturn Alley.

There was a wind blowing, from where Scorpius didn't know, as he watched the double doors of Gringotts closing from the inside by an aged goblin with silver hair and yellow eyes. Curious as to why he was being shut out, Scorpius ran toward the door and stuck his hand through the inch-wide opening just in time to ask the rather grotesque creature, "Who are you? How did you get here?"

The goblin stared up at Scorpius's tall figure with a disdainful smirk that made him look as if he was about to spit at Scorpius's feet. "That's none of your business, _boy,_" he said in a husky growl.

Scorpius backed up a bit, his hand still holding the door open, to give the goblin more room before he argued, "Of course it's my business! I – I just need to know where, or _when_, you came from." Most goblins were employed by Gringotts through the Ministry of Magic, so if this one had died on the battlefield like Scorpius and the Creeveys had, then that meant that the Ministry had awoken from its mysterious sleep. Maybe Shacklebolt had ordered all his men to war, maybe he had come in to save the day, maybe it was all over by now.

Something between a chuckle and a grunt came out of the goblin's mouth then, for he too was able to read Scorpius's mind. "We're all waiting for something here, but you'll learn soon enough that having hope in this world is immaterial. Some of us have been here longer than you were alive, and we're _still_ waiting."

"Waiting for what? More gold?" Goblins were said to only care about money and finances, hence why they were such perfect employees for the largest wizarding bank.

"Not gold, boy," answered the goblin. "Silver. Silver and rubies." Then he pushed hard on the door once more, but Scorpius was twice as strong as him even in his weightless state.

Wondering why the goblin was so adamant on keeping him out, Scorpius asked with more than a hint of desperation, "Why are you so scared of me? I'm good. I'm not like the other Malfoys or Slytherins. I'm good, I promise you. I'm different." He had no idea where any of these statements or pleas were coming from. Al had always been the bitter one – the one to tell people he wasn't in fact a black sheep, that he could have been sorted into Gryffindor even when he hadn't actually been given the choice at all. Scorpius _had_ been given the choice, and until now, he'd never really considered that he might have chosen wrong.

"Do I look like I care which Hogwarts house you were sorted into?" sneered the goblin. That comment was enough to make Scorpius back away completely, the goblin peeking past him and toward Knockturn Alley to say before he closed the door, "And don't lie to yourself by believing you're different. What makes you any different from the two of them?"

Searching for the subjects of his accusation, Scorpius craned his neck around until he spotted two winged shadows hovering below the sign shaped as a pointed finger that led into the street to which his mother used to disappear. Scorpius recognized Wynn instantly, even though he looked years younger than he had when Scorpius had helped James and Ilana kill him. A woman was standing by his side, but Scorpius was more focused on her shadow than he was on her. Wynn's was small and lighter than all the red, but the woman's was massive, maybe even bigger than she was. Its wings were wide, its talons sharp, and its beak pointed. It was an eagle, but to Scorpius it looked a whole lot like the falcon that sat in his own wake.

Was it possible that the goblin was right? Was a falcon just as ferocious as that eagle? Was Scorpius just as murderous as Wynn had been? It had taken three young wizards to take the albino down, and even then it hadn't been easy, but a single hit made by a single woman had sealed Scorpius's fate. He had killed and he had been killed, just as Wynn had, and yet here he was, standing on the good side in this city of blood while Wynn and his eagle hid in the darkness. Perhaps he should join them there.

These thoughts were interrupted by the wind that blew at him again. It was hitting him straight on, making his Malfoy necklace rattle against his collarbone as if it had weight even when he didn't. Wrapping his fingers around the family crest, filled with black and green and silver serpents, Scorpius thought about the many people in this family who might have joined Wynn in Knockturn Alley without any protest or regret, and he thought that while he may not be different from them in reality, he could still wish to be in his dreams... in his actions.

He continued on without looking back, passing another couple shops until he came to Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions on his left and Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor on his right. Scorpius probably would have headed inside Madam Malkin's if it weren't for the gorgeous young girl he saw ordering a scoop of ice cream on the other side of the street.

"Peppermint toad please," Arnia Samuels requested from a counter that had no scooper employed behind it. Even so, a generous cone-full of the treat presented itself to Arnia without further ado, Scorpius standing right beside her in shock as she reached out for the floating flavor that had always been Rose's favorite. But the arm that the petite girl had stretched out seemed to shrink before Scorpius's eyes until it was a baby's hand, a drop of sweat pouring down its palm like Scorpius's would always do, before he'd come here and stopped sweating altogether.

Scorpius had to shake his head and shut his eyes tight to stop picturing this second child, but eventually Arnia's arm returned to her and Scorpius found her smiling as she swallowed a large gulp of her ice cream. Following her to a bench outside, Scorpius never broke eye contact with her chestnut orbs as he sat down and asked, "What are you so happy about? You're not supposed to be here!" He had spent weeks last year training her to be the Beater he believed she could be and she had proven her hidden ferocity. She was supposed to have been fierce in battle too. She wasn't supposed to have been killed.

"Neither are you," she said with another bite. "I was really rooting for you, Captain."

"Really? That's funny, because, you don't seem all that upset to me." She wasn't even looking at him at this point. Her eyes were set on the red sun that was in the exact same spot it had been in when Scorpius had woken up here, her lashes blinking peacefully and her dark brows curved upward at their ends.

She was still staring at that sun as she laughed before she even started telling her story, almost as if it didn't matter if the story was funny to anybody else so long as it was to her. "It is funny, isn't it? Life.

"You know, when I was little – blimey, I must have been five or six years old – I used to have these dreams, these, these nightmares. As soon as I'd fall asleep, I'd be in this other world all of the sudden. It was a world completely black, void of any colors but the stars that were so far away they were probably already dead. And then there was the earth, and it was a beautiful planet, with its brown and green and blue. My favorite part was the white from the snow and the clouds, because it was so incredibly different from the blackness surrounding it. It was light. It was pure. It was good.

"It wasn't always there, though. The white would disappear and then reappear as the earth spun around in space, spinning and spinning and spinning. It never stopped, and neither did I. I was just there, locked in space, watching as the earth spun and knowing that it would never end. I'd just have to keep watching it spin around while I waited all alone, knowing the entire time that what I was waiting for would never come. In my mind, that was what death was: dark, alone, and infinite.

"I spent a lot of my life running from that nightmare, which didn't seem to end even after I woke up. I mean, that must be why I was so good at hitting those bludgers even when I had terrible aim; all I wanted was to send any stupid spinning ball as far away from me as possible. But being killed had nothing to do with all the strength I'd built; I was killed in seconds. And then I came here, and look at this place! It isn't dark or alone or infinite. It's light. It's pure. It's good."

Scorpius didn't know what to say. He was happy that she was happy, to be certain, but for whatever reason he couldn't bring himself to feel the same way. Careful not to take the peace away from her, he stood from the bench and placed an admiring kiss on the top of her head before leaving her behind. Her story had terrified him, and though he supposed he too was grateful that he wasn't lodged somewhere in space for all eternity, he was slowly beginning to realize that he didn't particularly like it _here_ either.

Desperate for something constant, some moment, some memory regarding the woman he felt more tethered to with every step he took down this road, Scorpius soon found himself in Flourish and Blotts, Diagon Alley's one and only book store. He closed the door himself once he was inside, leaning back against it to catch his breath as he escaped from the persistent wind. But as his breathing grew slower and deeper, he realized that he wasn't smelling that familiar parchment smell that Rose so loved. In fact, he couldn't smell much of anything.

Books were piled every which way he looked, but Scorpius wanted more. If not more physical books, he at least wanted to be closer to them, to feel them in his hands the way he used to see Rose with her own books walking down the Hogwarts hallways and would wish that she was holding him. As soon as this desire became clear in his mind, a whole stack of books was thrust into his open arms by an old man with a specific shade of hair Scorpius would know anywhere.

"Ah, Scorpius, good of you to stop by!" shouted Arthur Weasley as he rushed behind a crowded shelf and left Scorpius to try to balance his new load, which turned out to be far easier than it should have been.

Once he had them in order, Scorpius followed the sound of Arthur's voice and asked, "_Stop by?_" Was this merely a stop along a planned journey, and if so, where was he meant to be headed?

"Well yes, you won't be staying long, of course," Arthur said in a mumble, his attention focused on perusing the book shelf that Scorpius was now standing beside as well.

As Arthur continued to essentially ignore him, Scorpius took in the sight of this energetic, active senior and tried to remember the last time he'd spoken to him. Scorpius remembered the day Arthur had died quite well, for he had been staying at the Bird's Nest and none of its inhabitants had taken the news lightly. Ron had quickly jumped into denial by working on hundreds of unnecessary "household chores," while Hugo had broken down and locked himself inside a bathroom. Hermione had banged on that bathroom door for hours on end, begging for Hugo to come out if only so that she could hug him, and Rose had tried to be the rock holding her family together even though they'd already fallen apart. Before that, though, Scorpius had never actually spoken directly to Arthur, since last Christmas had been too hectic for a visit to the Burrow and he had never taken a Muggle Studies class at Hogwarts. All he knew of Arthur was the love he'd seen through others' eyes, just like all the love he had now was stored in memory.

Scorpius was about to ask again where Arthur thought he might be off to next, but then grew too distracted when Arthur stood back up with a fresh hardcover in his hands. After blowing off some of its dust, the man inspected it with the same blue eyes he'd passed down to Rose and smiled before exclaiming, "Finally! Merlin's beard, I can hardly believe it!"

Walking closer so that he could gain a better view, Scorpius had to read the book's title from the top of a page as Arthur moved on from the cover to flipping through pages in the middle. _Squibs, Floes, and other Almost-Muggles_, it was called, and as Scorpius read it for a third time he was quite certain that he did not in fact know what it was referring to. Squibs were non-magical folk born to magical parents, the opposite of Muggle-borns, but what were _floes_?

"Sea ice that has broken from its sheet," Arthur answered before Scorpius had the chance to voice his question, his head still buried in the text. "Or, in this case, magical folk who lose their magic."

Scorpius had never heard of such a thing. Blood purists would argue that Muggle-born witches and wizards were in fact born as Muggles and only gained their magical ability upon stealing a wand for themselves. This point could easily be proven invalid with the likes of witches and wizards who could perform magic _without_ wands, including Half-bloods like Tom Riddle or Muggle-borns like Lily Evans Potter who had been known to perform magic before even realizing that they were magical. What Scorpius couldn't think of any example for were witches and wizards who had somehow _lost_ their magic. He didn't understand how such a thing could possibly occur, let alone why or when.

But because there was half a book written about them, Scorpius questioned himself and soon asked Arthur, "Has there ever been one – a floe, I mean?"

"I don't know," replied Arthur as he was coming up on the final few pages. Then he paused on one that was completely blank and added, "Perhaps just not _yet_."

Anxiously, Scorpius extended his hand in the silence and Arthur placed the book into his open palm with the utmost care. Finally, Scorpius gained a glance at the cover, where a magically moving photograph was centered in a frame of encrusted gold. The picture showed a young boy with a head full of bushy red hair and crooked glasses covering, yet again, icy eyes. Scorpius stood transfixed as he watched the boy run a tiny hand through his hair, but dropped the book until it thumped on the floor when he saw the author's name signed across its border that read: _Hugo Weasley._

Scorpius raced from the bookstore like he used to run through the Potters' woods, stopping in the middle of the street to let himself keel over and catch his breath, if only because he _believed_ he was exhausted even though no such feeling existed here. His throat was choking on the brown air and blocking his mouth from taking in any of it, but once he realized that his nose was open his breath returned to him, and so too did the wind. It felt odd to consider just how much Scorpius wanted to walk _against_ that wind when he had never wanted to before. In life, he'd always done as he was told, done what he was supposed to do, been who everyone wanted him to be. But in death, everything was different. He had no one to please, not even himself.

Knowing this, he stood up straight once more and started walking until he could see the final turn of the street – the one that led into the Leaky Cauldron – and stopped upon hearing the caw of an owl. Almost instantaneously, Scorpius was sheltered from the strengthening wind, straddling the threshold of Eeylops Owl Emporium and wondering if he should have come in at all when he saw the back of a girl's head with beautiful blonde hair. Next to her was a snowy owl with a black beak and amber eyes, and Scorpius wanted to run away up until the moment the girl turned around and turned into a woman.

Without hesitation, Scorpius collapsed into his grandmother's arms. They were much less frail than he remembered them to be; she was able to support him without a single sign of protest. She looked and felt younger than she had the last time Scorpius had seen her, which had been the night he'd left Malfoy Manor at the beginning of the summer before his sixth year at Hogwarts. He hadn't known then that he would never see her again, but in retrospect he was quite pleased with the conversation they'd had. He'd walked into her bedroom feeling more confused than ever after being picked up at King's Cross Station by _both_ Draco and Astoria, only to Apparate home and find them fighting again. Narcissa was always the person Scorpius went to when his parents fought, ever since he was little and would wake up to the sound of their yells in the middle of the night. She would comfort him and help him fall back asleep even when no one else could, and that day she had listened when no one else had.

That was why, now, Scorpius used his time with his grandmother to express a whole new sense of confusion. They broke apart slowly and Scorpius was staring at the deep dimples formed by her smiling red lips as he asked in the same voice he'd used at six years old, "What's happening to me?"

"You're fighting back," she answered, still smiling, her hand still holding Scorpius's. "Every time you leave another lost love one, you grow closer to the ground, to time, to truth."

This explanation brought Scorpius no clarity. He was just as confused as he rubbed the eyes that should be tired but weren't, looked on at Narcissa's necklace from which hanged a crest that should have been the same as his but wasn't, and asked, "But – but what does that even mean? What does _any_ of this mean? What does this bloody crest mean?!"

Now that she had a more reasonable, more _answerable_, question to address, Narcissa pet the white owl once more before heading past all the lone tree branches and empty bird cages as she walked Scorpius out of the shop, all the while telling him, "Mine comes from the Black family: _Toujours Pur, _meaning 'Always Pure.' And yours is the Latin Malfoy sigil: _Sanctimonia Vincent Semper_, 'Purity Will Always Conquer.'"

"And do you believe what they say? About pureness?" asked Scorpius. He had never thought to ask his grandmother if she personally believed all that his parents did, mostly because she'd never thought to ask him. Now, though, as Scorpius felt the touch of her arm around his shoulders but failed to feel her warmth, nothing seemed more important than knowing where he came from.

"I used to." Narcissa had steered Scorpius onto the street by now, but even with the wind and even with her admission, he didn't attempt to shrug her off. He wanted her there with him; he always would and she knew it. That was what made her feel comfortable enough to continue with, "I used to believe that Muggle blood was scum, and that belief was strong enough for me to disown my blood traitor cousin and even my sister, Dromeda, when she married that Mud-blood of hers."

They were coming up on the Quality Quidditch Supplies shop as a middle-aged couple walked past them. The man was very handsome behind his unkempt hair, with skin so pristinely new that Scorpius suspected he may have been highly scarred in life, and he was staring at Scorpius with furrowed brows and squinted eyes as if he could see all the boy's secrets. His hand was clasped tightly around his wife's, whose pink hair blended in with the sky and whose smile was contagious as it met Narcissa's with a curt nod. They looked happy as they disappeared in the direction from which Scorpius had come, and as he watched them he felt the odd sensation that he knew exactly where they were going.

As if Narcissa felt the same, she said then, "But after everything that happened, all of the family members I was never able to meet and then lost before I wanted to, I realized that blood purity was a silly thing to start a war over. Although, I suppose too that the things wars are started over aren't really the things responsible for all the casualties. One person can convince just about anyone to follow them if they have a strong enough excuse for their anger, and it's _that_ one person who is responsible for everything that happens because of their so-called _cause_."

Just from listening to her for that single minute, Scorpius knew that his grandmother was right. The Second Wizarding War wasn't about blood status so much as Voldemort's rise to power, and the same could be said now about Astoria. She bore a single mind, but once corrupted, it had earned the power of thousands. And Al had proven himself just how hard it was to reverse that kind of corruption.

"And anyway," Narcissa voiced Scorpius's thoughts for him, expressing them more eloquently than he would ever have managed to, "Purity doesn't have to describe blood status. Personally, I'd like to think that it doesn't have to have anything to do with magic at all. Rather, purity should be about the soul. The purest type of person is one who would wake up from death only to be willing to share the little hope he had left with the first person he saw. It is one who would give up all that makes him _him_ – his family, his magic, his life – to protect the one he loves most. It is one who would sacrifice his life not for _pure_ blood, but for _shared_ blood, for brothers' blood."

They had made it to the entrance of the Quidditch shop, and at the other end of the long room full of brooms and balls stood James Sirius Potter, his neck turned over tensely and his jaw clenched as he ferociously polished the handle of his Firebolt. Transfixed by the sight that suited James so perfectly, Scorpius felt himself floating away from Narcissa and toward the young man who'd died by his side.

Scorpius was standing inches away from James by the time the latter noticed his presence. He must have seen the blond out of the corner of his eye and, once he did, he put down his brush and varnish and looked straight at Scorpius with a sinister glare. "You shouldn't be here," he said without breaking eye contact, and for the first time since Scorpius had woken, someone seemed surprised to see him.

"Well, 'should' is quite the loose term around here," Scorpius joked, but James refused to hear it.

"What are you _doing?"_ he asked upon ignoring Scorpius's statement, this time walking around the table holding his broom so that he could be closer to Scorpius, which only made Scorpius all the more terrified.

Scorpius was about to respond by saying that he was just doing whatever his gut told him to do, following the only road that stretched in front of him, when James spoke for him. "You're giving up!" he yelled. "You flew through one dense cloud and you've let it swallow you whole. You've let her _win."_

With that, Scorpius was less terrified. Now, he was angry. "No, I didn't!" he argued, taking his turn to puff up his chest and point fingers. "I didn't _let_ her win; Astoria _killed_ me!"

"Oh, really? And it was a fair fight, with you struggling to hold on until the last second, _writhing_ in pain, _screaming_ in agony, _covered_ in blood but still alive, still being the leader you were made to be, still searching for those blue eyes that were worth doing _absolutely everything_ for? Did you really fight hard enough for her?"

"OF _COURSE_ I DID! I flew to her, and when I made it inside I fired every spell I knew at Astoria to get her away. I tried to disarm her and stun her and petrify her, but she was always one step ahead of me. She saw me even when I was invisible, and I had nowhere left to hide. I flew to Rose, and I fought for Rose, but I died. _End of story."_

At that, all of the memories came flooding back to Scorpius – not memories from his haunted childhood, or from his first trip to Diagon Alley, or from his grandmother's hugs. These memories were from the seconds before he woke up amidst the red. He remembered the green racing from Astoria's wand until it smacked him straight in the chest. He remembered falling, transforming mid-air just like he had two summers ago, falling until he hit solid ground on his human back and had nowhere left to fall. Mostly, though, he remembered Rose – her weak body crouched around the pensieve when he flew above her head, her penetrating scream echoing across the broken marble when he fell to the floor, her voice strong even through its cracking when she stood up after he couldn't. He didn't see any more after that, and worst of all, he never saw her eyes.

All those people – Dennis and Natalie, Arnia, Arthur, Narcissa – had all been here for him, like angels on his shoulder, but James – James had been the devil on his back. And as Scorpius rushed out of the store, he cursed James for challenging him, just like he always used to do on the Quidditch pitch, because it had taken three years for Scorpius to catch the snitch before James and even then his team had never managed to beat Gryffindor. Off the pitch, James was arguably just as competitive and just as infuriating. He pushed Scorpius to the brink by setting Lysander's sights on Rose, tortured him in his sixth year by refusing to let him anywhere near the fragile Lily, and watched him falter as James encouraged Mercy to work as a spy and convinced Nigel to give into his buried rage. But every time James pushed, Scorpius would push right back – he would earn Rose's love while Lysander begged for it, he would be a friend to Lily when she was convinced she'd lost everyone else, he would learn to work with Mercy and would teach Nigel how to stand up for himself – and usually he'd come on top. Usually, he'd win.

He was beginning to think that James knew all this, that the only reason James was so forceful with him in the first place was because he knew Scorpius was capable of goodness, of something better than he started with, of loving and being loved in return. Scorpius was born out of ambition, raised by determination, grown through hardship and pain. He knew better than anyone how to keep going, how to fight, how to stand up, and he _never _gave in, not _ever_. It didn't have anything to do with his pure blood or tailored wand; _he_ as a mere human being was capable of magic.

Scorpius was deep in this thought by the time he made it to the door of the shop, and was about to cross the threshold and move on to the final person he knew must be waiting for him, when he saw another child. This one was a boy, with light hair and even lighter skin, and he came zooming past Scorpius on a miniature broom, his round hands flopping through the air in ecstasy and his tiny shoes about to drop to the floor thanks to their untied laces. Scorpius didn't like this one any more than the others he'd seen so far, but for the first time he thought he understood why. It wasn't the tiny shoes or the jumpy walk or the whining cries. It wasn't how happy they always looked; it was that one smile was all it took. It wasn't that there was no bottom line; it was that they had so much time. It wasn't that they thought they could fly; it was how much they tried. It wasn't how different they were from him; it was how alike they were, because Scorpius never gave up either. At least, not until now.

There were only a few shops left on Diagon Alley before the Leaky Cauldron, and it was the last one Scorpius rushed into... the apothecary. Sure enough, he found McGonagall sitting peacefully in an armchair on the inner side of the window with her feline alter ego curled up in her lap. The old woman was still thin, still wrinkled, still pasty white, and Scorpius looked at her and then down at himself, in these pristine clothes he didn't recognize and this fake skin that held no stories, no memories, no proof of life, and ranted aloud, "I am just _dust! _I'm just dust and dirt and NOTHING! I know you want me to go back there, but I can't do it! I can't handle anyone else dying and I don't deserve a second chance because I already wasn't good enough. I can't find her or save her or rescue her; I – I already tried and I failed and I have nothing left! I have NOTHING. I _am_ NOTHING. She deserves more than nothing; she should have something, she should have everything!" Rose was the ocean and he was just a stone. She was the sky and he was just a raincloud. She was his sun and he was the redness that surrounded it when it set.

Before he was aware that she'd moved, McGonagall had an arm on each of his shoulders, her glasses had been replaced with the clearest vision, and she wasn't speaking so much as preaching, "What is the earth made of if not dust and dirt? What is the earth if not something to set the sun – _her_ sun – against? Who are you to say that you are nothing when to her you are everything? When you are everything to the people you have just now walked away from without looking back? When you are everything to the people who will surely die if you fail to live?"

He had to go back. This couldn't be it; this couldn't be the end; there had to be more. It had taken seconds for him to fall when it should have taken years, and even years wouldn't be enough. He had a lifetime left in him – a lifetime of fighting, a lifetime of choices, a lifetime of love for that girl he left behind. He would never give up on her, not ever. And there was something else he needed to do, too. There was someone whose story needed to end far more than his did, and he needed to be there to make it happen. He needed to rid of that corrupt blood so that the purity could return, just as James had done for Albus. He needed to finish Astoria, because there was no way she'd already finished him.

But how? He was dead, he even remembered dying, so how could he possibly go back now? Dead was dead, and nobody could bring people back from that, or so Rose had always said. But Rose learned from Ron the way Scorpius learned from Harry, and Harry was proof positive that people _could_ come back from the dead. He was the boy who lived, and if one's love for him could bring him back then maybe Scorpius's love for another could do the same.

His eyes went from vacant to fully aware as they searched for McGonagall and as Scorpius asked her, "How do I do it? How do I fall asleep? How do I wake up?"

"Simple, really," answered McGonagall. "You keep walking against that battling wind, like a lone piece of sea ice breaking from its sheet."

Immediately reminded of the book Arthur had shown him and that he'd then run from in all haste, Scorpius asked in realization, "A floe? I have to lose my magic?"

Sitting back down, McGonagall nodded solemnly and said into the distance as if she was thinking through the puzzle of a long con, "You united the three Deathly Hallows: the Potter cloak was given to you, you defeated Albus and in so doing won the Elder Wand, and the ring has belonged to you since your heart has belonged to Rose."

Scorpius was staring at McGonagall intently because she was his sage, and because he had never even considered all the things she told him now. He never suspected the ring might be more than it seemed, but it made all the sense in the world to him now, because it had been the defining object of his life for the past three years. He knew of the wand's unique power, of course, but he had never wanted that power for himself after seeing what it had done to Al. He had always admired James's Invisibility Cloak, but after perfecting the Vanishing Spell had never needed it for himself. And somewhere deep inside him, he had known about the infamous Deathly Hallows from the stories his father had read him and the biography of Harry he'd read himself, but he had been far too preoccupied with leading the entire Order of the Phoenix to realize that the Hallows were real and were right in front of him.

He finally looked away from McGonagall to inspect some of the objects he was surrounded by now, from the barrels of slimy stuff on the floor to the roots and powders lining the walls and bundles of fangs hanging from the ceiling. Meanwhile, his ears never left the sound of McGonagall's voice, which droned on in understanding. "Wizards have of course united the Hallows before. There was Dumbledore, who had each of them at various stages of his life and the wand for the majority of it, but he never did carry them _together_. Harry was the same, even though unlike Dumbledore, he at least mastered them each selflessly, which Dumbledore failed to do for any but the wand. You have done what the two of them could not: united the Deathly Hallows all at once without any selfish intent whatsoever. At the time, you did not even know they existed."

"So then, what exactly does that make me?" asked Scorpius as he brushed his fingers over a bucket of rose thorns and was more disappointed than amazed when not even a harsh prick made him bleed.

"That makes you immortal, only..."

Scorpius cut her off. "Only I already died."

"Yes," replied the advisor, "which is why you cannot be offered immortality in any world but this one, where you would remain only to shuffle the dead onto their next journey. But perhaps – perhaps if there is no way to return to a life in the magical world, you might return to a life in the Muggle one."

Scorpius was holding up a vile of Amortentia, the love potion, when McGonagall finished speaking. He couldn't smell the potion anymore, not the raspberries or the burning driftwood or the seawater. He could only see its translucent liquid, which was fogged by his reflection that wasn't really a reflection at all. It was another child's face with more of his same eyes and same features. McGonagall was by his side as soon as he wanted her to be, and so he asked her, "Who do you think they are?"

"I cannot know for certain," she answered, "But I have a theory that they may be your future. They may be glimpses of what is to come, reminders or evidence that there is more to a wizard's life than potions and spells. Children are made by the love of two people; they are manifestations of life's magic. We all are."

There were feathers next to the potion, long and white and ethereal, and as Scorpius refrained from touching them too, he thought about McGonagall's explanation. He could live without the potions and the spells, but there was a part of the magical world that he dreaded having to give up, and McGonagall was quite possibly the only person who might understand why. So, he asked then, "More to life than transfiguration?"

McGonagall let a hissing cat drop from within her grasp before answering, "Sometimes we have to sacrifice our talent to go on loving, and believe me, doing so is far more rewarding than sacrificing a love simply to maintain one's talent." She sounded like she was speaking from experience, making Scorpius wonder why he'd never asked more about her life in all of their private lessons together last year. Maybe it was selfish that he hadn't shown any curiosity, or maybe it was a sign of respect that he trusted her enough not to ask too much of her. Now, though, as he was about to embark on a road no one had ever wandered down, he felt he had to be sure that he was doing something right.

As it turned out, he didn't need to ask. She answered in due time, "My mother suppressed her magic after she married my Muggle father, believing that it was better for him to be left in the dark about such matters. Having grown up an observer of her heartbreak and subsequent envy when I and my brothers received our letters of acceptance to Hogwarts, I chose differently than she did when I too fell in love with a Muggle. I was eighteen and he was handsome and I was proud enough to believe that my life could be more than just him, but I would learn in later years that I was wrong. Nothing, not even magic, is stronger than love."

And that was enough. With that, Scorpius was sure. So, yet again without looking back, he gave McGonagall a kiss on the cheek and then exited the store. He wasn't sure just how he knew what to do next, but know he did. He was only on the street of Diagon Alley for a few steps before he was inside once more, this time standing in the middle of the Leaky Cauldron, at the center of a table that was wiped clean but for the three powerful objects that were laid before him: a long, bumpy wand, a cracked black ring, and a perfectly folded cloak. Scorpius took them all in as he waited for something to happen, but his focus was caught on the ring as a deep voice sounded out of nowhere:

"_Centuries have passed since I laid eyes on these three,_

_Them and those brothers and their keen eyes that found me._

_Two went rather insane, but one I treated as an old friend,_

_And together we waited for the day my turn would end._

_I had high hopes for the man with the silver beard;_

_He was old and wise and never completely disappeared._

_But he failed to unite all three at once and took only the wand for good,_

_So even in death he could not stand where you now have stood._

_Then there was the young boy with his tendency for trouble,_

_And though he conquered them all, the stone was left in rubble._

_None of that matters now, though, not now that I have you-_

_You and your snowy heart, so unique and pure and true._

_I've watched the Hallows be handed to you, for you never do ask;_

_You simply broaden your shoulders and complete the given task._

_Well, now it is my turn to pass you down an order:_

_Take the realm I've guarded, oversee this brick-based border._

_This is the difference between a blink and goodbye;_

_Death is at your doorstep, as true as any lie._

_Take the friends you've found here down that familiar road,_

_Then return and wait for others to lead to their new abode._

_Their songs will be good for you, with all those lyrics of depravity._

_You seem awfully grave for a boy with no gravity._

_Just stay focused and you'll find your way,_

_Keep on the right path and you won't go astray._

_Stop thinking about the ones you love on the other side_

_When there are so many here who have already died._

_The magical world you left is just a grave of dreams,_

_While the Muggle world is not as simple as it seems._

_You are safe here in the in-between, where you have earned immortality._

_Do not let your memories deny the loss you know of fatality._

_This is what you have been meant to do since your first and final breath._

_You, Scorpius Malfoy, are the one true Master of Death."_

When the voice subsided, the wind picked up. It didn't seem to matter that Scorpius was inside or that none of the windows were open in this bleakly lit drawing room, because this piece of gravity was stronger than ever and it was adamant to push Scorpius back down the magical, red brick road. But Scorpius's decision had been made before the old master had spoken, long before he'd been warned of Muggle simplicity or the unbearable grief attributed to the loss of a loved one. Scorpius needed no reminding of the loss that he knew he was sure to feel again soon, but he also knew that that loss was worth something. It was worth the love, and Scorpius knew that Rose wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon. She was too strong to give up even after he had, and he refused to wait here for her for all of eternity like Arnia had waited in her dreams, so he had no choice but to return to her.

As the wind continued to push and as his decision continued to solidify, Scorpius turned his head in every direction to search for some way out, or some way forward. And forward was the direction he chose, because McGonagall had told him to walk against the wind rather than with it, and because that was the direction in which he saw a little girl turn the handle of the inn's front door and run out into the raining day and onto the colorful Charing Cross Road, the Muggle side of this in-between.

Scorpius followed her because he knew that he was supposed to. These children were a part of him, were quite possibly even _his_, and this one in particular was different from the rest. She had sandy freckles crossing her nose and strawberry blonde hair that fell in gentle waves down her back. Her arms flailed about beneath the rain like wings breaking through the air and next to her left dimple was a birthmark in the shape of a flying bird. Scorpius didn't even notice the wind disappear as it was replaced with the rain, and he left the powerful Deathly Hallows for the freckles on that child's face because they were just as powerful. Kneeling beside her as she danced with more innocence than he could imagine, he found himself un-clasping his necklace and carefully transferring it to a much smaller neck, because she was the purest thing he had ever seen. Best of all, she had her mother's eyes.

* * *

"_Avis_," spoke that beautiful, sing-song voice in a sure whisper. Then, only a second after but harsher this time, "_Oppugno!"_

Scorpius heard the flapping of small wings in the air as Rose's magically-made bird flew for its target with fury. He tried not to let his eyes open regardless of how much they were already fluttering, so as not to blow his cover. He didn't feel much different than he had when he'd been killed and had still had magic in his blood – he was still tired but was fueled by a pounding adrenaline, was still sore in his joints and arms and now also his cracked back, was still scarred and hurt and in love with all of it. He knew in his gut that he _was_ different, though, that he wouldn't be able to perform magic even if he had his wand, which was now being used by Rose as she duelled with Astoria.

A spell fired at Rose then, but sounded like it smashed into an existing half of a wall or a stump of rubble, for Rose was panting as she ran out of the way. Around Scorpius was a whole batch of broken glass and marble and stone, rough and cold against his aching but finally warm skin. Above him was the night sky, and its own cold air was soothing. He could no longer hear the phoenixes, though, and assumed that they had flown off once they saw all the spells spewing into the darkness.

"CONFRINGO!" Rose yelled, her bare feet scraping against the rocks. A moment later, Scorpius heard a giant explosion from what must have been the far side of the room, for it echoed against the few walls that still existed and that closed the Room of Requirement off from the rest of the castle.

Unfortunately, the blast must have missed Astoria, for she was laughing after the sound dissipated. "Nice try!" she called out to Rose while spewing yet another deadly curse. Rose avoided once more, but Astoria wasn't finished yet. The next spell she sent Rose's way was a hit, and it produced one of the most torturous screams of pain that Scorpius had ever heard.

She was still screaming and he was beginning to shuffle amongst the rubble, prepared to jump up and run to Rose if need be even though he was completely defenseless, when Rose was hit a second time and was sent soaring backward until she landed only a few feet from where Scorpius lay. She was so close now that he could hear her heavy breathing, and he tried to put weight into his own so that she could hear him too while they waited for Astoria to approach the two bodies she'd broken.

When Rose made no sign that she'd heard him and also wasn't sounding as if she was trying to stand, Scorpius decided that it was time to open his eyes. Turning to where he knew she'd be, he opened his ice to her sky. She'd already been staring right at him, but now her watery eyes opened wide with shock as her mouth upturned into a smile. Silently, Scorpius tried to tell her that she should get up and keep fighting no matter how weak she was, because he couldn't fight for them anymore, but then he glanced down at her hands and saw that her wand – _his _wand – was gone.

They gulped together as they understood what was coming for them, but they also smiled together because at least this time they had each other when it happened. Astoria was there before long, kicking at Rose's side and making Scorpius bite his cheek in order to keep from pouncing at her, and searing her eyes into Rose's already crushed chest.

"You are a mess," Astoria stated as if she hadn't been the one to make her so. She was right, though; Rose _was_ a mess. The more Scorpius noticed the blood trailing down from her left ear, the massive cuts spread across all four of her fingers, the purple bruise around her knee below the place where her perfect dress had been torn, the more he wanted to show his face to Astoria and spit in hers.

"Well, there's only one way to fix that, isn't there?" mused Astoria, and at that Scorpius had had it.

Astoria's wand was pointed at Rose, who was still lying flat on the ground, when Scorpius hopped into a standing position and yelled her way, "Like _hell!"_

During the time that Astoria was distracted by the sight of the boy she'd killed, Scorpius was able to maintain her eye contact as he rushed to Rose and helped her up. She clung onto him, tearing the collar of his shirt slightly and heaving into his shoulder as she bit her lip from all the pain that was coming back to her.

"Another boy who lived." Astoria was gaping at him, but not because he was her son and he was alive. She was surprised because his existence proved that she wasn't as powerful as she thought she was. Trying to suppress her own questioning, she shook her head and blinked a few times before saying, "Well, that doesn't change anything, does it? Now, I'll just have to kill you a second time, and then a third if need be."

Rose was about to scream at Astoria, maybe even leap for her eyes so that she could scratch them out herself, when the sound of a door opening came from the remaining wall and the voice of Scorpius's father shouted, "You're not going to kill him!"

Two pairs of eyes whizzed around to see Draco, with only Rose keeping her gaze on Scorpius because she was too scared of losing him again, and Scorpius realized that he was crying as he saw the glossy tears running down Draco's cheeks from afar. He looked weary and was also relatively battered, with more torn clothes and unwanted scrapes. His breaths were nearly as heavy as Rose's, making Scorpius wonder just how Draco had actually made it through the castle and inside this highly locked room. He could only imagine that Draco had fought all on his own, cunningly as usual of course, and had kept guessing at potential rooms until that door appeared.

"Really?" Astoria asked Draco, bringing Scorpius back to the present. "I killed him once already; what makes you think I won't do it again?"

Draco, of course, had no idea that Scorpius had already been killed, but he shrugged aside the insinuation as he answered, "Because he is your _son_, Story! It's impossible not to see that... not when he has his mother's eyes."

Scorpius was holding Rose's hand while his shoulder supported most of her weight, and his grasp on her tightened when Astoria asked vacantly, "Whose eyes?" then turned back to face the man who had once been her son and ignored her ex-husband's shouts of protest.

Running toward the trio and screaming all the while, Draco's noise made it nearly impossible for Rose to hear Scorpius's pleading, but he plead with her all the same. "Go," he said as he tried to look her in the eye, Astoria's wand currently pointed at their conjoined fronts. "You have to run or she'll kill us both. Please, please go."

Rose merely shook her head, both refusing to leave him while also being unable to move from all the torture she'd undergone, so they just held each other as they awaited their fate. It came as a shock to both of them when Scorpius saw, through the corner of his eye, Astoria turn around and point the wand at Draco before he was close enough to save his son and stated as simply as she'd spoken all night, "_Avada kedavra."_

Draco fell to the floor without another word, and Scorpius was fixed on his father even while a portrait that was barely hanging on the closest wall swung open to reveal Hermione and Hugo. Rose gasped in relief to see them but didn't race to their sides, partially because Astoria was blocking her way but mostly because Scorpius was still and needed her to be too.

It took less than a minute for Astoria to take in the sight of the Weasleys and understand that she was in danger. They couldn't be touched by any Flock member, including her, and together they were strong enough to kill her if they wanted to. Before they could try, she transformed back into a golden hawk and was flying into the night, off to continue doing her own damage rather than become a victim to it.

Hermione embraced Rose wholeheartedly, careful as only a mother could be not to hug too tight, giving Scorpius the perfect opportunity to crouch down next to Draco's body and say goodbye. Tears were still flowing from his eyes, but he needed to look at that premature white hair and hold onto those tense hands just one more time. He had never truly been able to let Draco be his father, and he knew now that that was all Draco had ever wanted to be. He wanted to be Scorpius's father and Astoria's husband, and even though a combination of those desires – his love and willingness to sacrifice himself for Scorpius, as well as his faith that Astoria would still do the right thing – had ended up killing him, Scorpius was fairly certain that Draco wouldn't have wanted it any other way. This way, he died a hero.

"I'm sorry," Scorpius whispered to him as he folded Draco's hands across his chest. He hadn't wanted to witness any more losses when he returned to this cruel earth, especially this one. Still, he wasn't going to let death halt him in his destiny; he would leave Draco here where so many of his worst decisions had been made, knowing all the while that his father would see Narcissa soon and that together they would move on to a better place. "I love you."

Scorpius wasn't sure how much time had passed when Rose was holding out her hand and he was pulling himself back up, allowing her to lean on him once more. She had his wand back by now and was trying to give it to him, but he shook his head no. "It won't work for me anymore," he told her, and though she didn't understand what he meant, she also didn't question it.

Instead, she wiped the tears from his cheeks in the quietness, Hermione and Hugo busy searching for her old wand and lost deluminator as they gave the two some space. "I – I'm sorry. I shouldn't be crying," Scorpius told her sincerely. He shouldn't let himself be so weak in front of her, not after she'd been so strong and had held back her own tears for so long.

Shaking her head, Rose leaned deeper into him so that she could kiss the tears as they fell and then craned her neck to meet her eyes with his so that she could say, "You're alive." Tears were no sign of weakness. Since birth, when parents wait to hear the cries of their newborn child, tears were a sign of health, of strength, of life.

Scorpius gave into them upon knowing this, allowing another tragedy to flood his mind if only because he needed to be the one to inform her of it. So, with her eyes still on his, he said, "Rose, there's something I need to tell you. It's about James."

"He's dead, isn't he?" Rose asked before Scorpius had taken the deep breath he'd needed to say such.

He nodded in wonderment, amazed that Rose had somehow known this even when it had happened miles away from her. His amazement never had the chance to change into worry, either, for it was Rose who said, "It's okay, I think. I think it's okay."

Scorpius was nodding and Rose was crying as Hermione and Hugo reappeared, Hugo handing the deluminator to his sister and Hermione apologizing for not having found Rose's old wand. Then they all looked to Scorpius as if he might know exactly what to do next, and though he knew that they should escape and somehow get back onto the grounds, he wasn't sure which way to go. Rose could collapse at any moment and he was completely defenseless, so perhaps they should go through the safe tunnel behind the portrait, the same way from which Hermione and Hugo had come?

But this idea was moot when Rose announced, "We should go through the castle." Everyone looked at her hesitantly, Hugo arguing that Rose would never make it down all the staircases and Hermione reminding everyone that there might be hundreds to thousands of Flock members scattered inside. It was Scorpius Rose looked to when she responded, "I know, but that's exactly why we need to fight through them. We can't let them take our school while we watch it burn from outside, and we can't let them torture anyone else the same way they tortured me."

Scorpius didn't nod because he didn't want her to think that she needed his permission. She was brilliant all on her own, and he was the first to acknowledge that. Hermione came second, for she wore a smile with more pride than she'd ever felt toward her daughter. Hugo was the only one still hesitant, but he stood outnumbered on the matter, and so he listened when Scorpius finally took command and said, "Hermione, you go first, and Hugo, you take up the rear. I'll help Rose in the middle, but I'll be pretty defenseless."

They all nodded in acceptance and then Hermione and Hugo made way for the door. Scorpius was just about to help Rose hobble after them when she stopped him for a moment, kissed him lightly on the lips, locked her hand with his, and said, "Don't you dare let go."

"I won't," he promised her. "You know I won't."

Then the doors opened and Hugo ushered them into the seventh floor hallway, where Hermione was already being bombarded with bandits who were astonished to see their curses all rebound. They would be able to hit Rose and Scorpius, though, so Scorpius held on as tightly as he possibly could as Rose wielded his wand for the both of them. Together, they battled down every moving staircase and every ghost-filled hallway until they reached the ground floor where Ilana was leading an army of Muggle-borns against their attackers. Together, they blew life into the plants in Neville's greenhouses until the cries of mandrakes deafened all adversaries. Together, they fought. Together, they ran. Together, they breathed. She was his gravity, and with her he was heavy. She was his sun, and with her he was everything. With her he was pure. With her he was alive.

* * *

_**Note: **First of all, I apologize if any of that was confusing (I realize there was a lot going on and also a lot of weird foreshadowing) and please ask if you have any questions. I'm still trying not to give away too many spoilers, but I'd be happy to provide explanations. I do hope that you're as happy as I am that Scorpius is alive and that Draco's death didn't hit you too hard. Also, just so you know, McGonagall's whole backstory is actually canon; it was written by Rowling via Pottermore. :)  
_

_I will be **updating within the week**, and as per the rotation, next chapter will follow Al. While you wait, be sure to check out my profile page for a **series of polls** that I'll be putting up!_

_Thank you so much for reading and please, please leave a review if you have the time!_

_-Hailey_


	42. Slim Defeat

_**Note:** I don't want to give anything away about this one, so please just read and enjoy, and don't miss my note at the end because it is fairly important. Thanks!_

_-Hailey_

* * *

**42 – Slim Defeat**

Something was different. The dark green of the forest was still absconded with the light of fire, but now that fire was brighter, hotter, stronger. Al could feel the blistering sparks whipping his arms and illuminating the binding tattoo he'd shared with the largest dragon from Fingal's Cave. Keeling over and screaming as the burn spread, Al tried to focus enough energy on his ears so that he could hear the thumping footsteps of centaurs and Order members retreating in fear. He looked up from his spot in a nestle of pines to see the thestrals, whose home paddock was being scorched right in front of them, galloping for the Order's protection, but they were too late. The giant dragon, who Al had never had the chance to name before letting it loose to ravage across the Hogwarts grounds, only had to take a few wide steps to catch up with the runt of the thestral litter. Before any of the colt's herd could even attempt to protect him, the red-eyed beast had scooped him up by the talons, then threw him in the air tauntingly before catching him in a pit bordered by three-inch teeth and swallowing him whole.

"Well, that's unfortunate," Al gulped, trying to ignore the crunching sound of the colt's bony skin against those ferocious daggers. For a moment, he wondered how it was possible that the dragon could even see the thestral, for not all wizards could, but then he remembered that this dragon had seen plenty of death in the last twenty-four hours. In fact, he'd been responsible for a great deal of it.

And if the dragon was responsible, so too was Al. He had brought all the dragons here, and though he should have had complete control over them, they had clearly rebelled since his switching sides. Now all they listened to, especially the one Al currently faced, were the cries of a brighter, hotter, stronger golden hawk who circled overhead. Astoria had been out of the castle and in her Animagus form for the past half hour or so, and her presence was changing everything. While Al was glad to know that she'd stopped torturing Rose and was hopeful that Scorpius had been able to rescue her, he wasn't exactly thankful for the morale boost that the Flock was currently feeling upon seeing their leader fight amongst them. The Order of the Phoenix had no perk ever since Scorpius had left for the castle, and of course, Al was partially responsible for that as well.

Telling himself to look away from the bird that was sending Killing Curses down at Hagrid's Hut, Al shut his eyes momentarily, took a deep breath, and set his sights on the rogue dragon. Jumping out in front of the dragon and behind the trailing thestrals, Al stretched out his burning arms and yelled, "STOP this! These people and creatures are no longer my enemies."

Pools of crimson stared back at him with eyes that glistened in smoke, and for a moment, Al actually thought that the dragon was listening to him. That was until he heard a loud grunting noise coming from that deadly pit and had no time to run before a stream of fire was started thirty feet above his head and was headed straight for him. He was backing up as quickly as his legs would go, but the flames were faster than he was and soon they were only fifteen feet from him, then ten, then five, then one.

His eyes were shut again and the heat was pulsating against his lids and he was ready for it. He was ready to leave everyone here because they would survive without him. He was ready for the light, the sunrise, the new beginning. He was ready to see Arthur and McGonagall again, ready to apologize for what he'd done to them. He was ready to start over. He was ready to never say goodbye. He was ready to die.

So when he didn't, Al couldn't help but feel slightly disappointed. He could no longer keeps his eyes closed, however, for he was rolling down a long, spiny neck like tumbleweed, and until he looked around he had no idea what was going on. His eyes opened as his body tried to balance on the back of the one dragon he still trusted. Zephorien had been facing off against the sibling Blacks, but it seemed as though he had returned when he'd felt Al's fear. Interestingly, he hadn't let Al die even when Al had been ready to, but perhaps being ready was different than _wanting _it. And of course, Zephyr knew Al better than Al knew himself.

The smaller, younger dragon was baring its teeth to the larger in a fierce growl, setting aside the fact that they were relatives and instead listening closely to his master's commands. Realizing quickly that Zephyr wouldn't be able to attack with a nice smelly wizard on his back, Al silently urged him to use the arrow-shaped tip of his tail and, as soon as Zephyr started to swing it, Al leaped off of him and watched from behind as the arrow crashed into the opposing dragon's cheek, impaling him directly underneath one of those red eyes. He would have continued to watch the brawl so that he could help Zephyr capitalize on his opportunities in battle, but this became impossible when he felt himself being dragged out of the thestral paddock and into the centaurs' clearing by a pair of round, cushioned arms covered in as much hair as a werewolf.

"What do yeh think yeh're doin' Al? Plannin' ter get yerself killed?" The voice was wretchedly loud, husky from years of life and lifetimes of care, and it was one that Al would know blind.

The first thing he saw through the night was Hagrid's bushy grey beard, and around him things were a blurred mixture of orange and brown, the dragons were hissing and what must have been giants were grunting while Order members conversed in harsh whispers. Hagrid had pulled Al into the clearing that was now protected, a sort of refuge meant to give the Order, from wizards and witches to giants and centaurs and thestrals, some time to regroup and heal wounds. With Hagrid's help, Al was able to push himself into a sitting position as his burns subsided, and he took in his surroundings more thoroughly. He and Hagrid were on the edge of the clearing, the closest to the still battling dragons, while about fifty centaurs joined a herd of twenty thestrals to his right, fifty or so giants remained behind him, and only a dozen soldiers sat exhausted in their wake. Al was surveying the group of them, hoping he might find the familiar face of a family member, when all color and all noise were obscured by Zephorien's screeching howl.

Turning back to the place from whence he'd came, Al saw Zephorien helplessly twisting himself and craning his neck for Al upon being surrounded by not just one, but all five of the pirate dragons. The large one was spearheading the group that had all returned from their various positions within the forest. The siblings, one male Zephyr's same size and a female slightly smaller, were on one side while the mother and son were on the other. Each was stepping closer and closer to Al's friend with every second that passed, just waiting to simultaneously send fire his way.

"_NOOOOOOO!" _yelled Al without even thinking before he spoke. The sound of his voice triggered a whole slew of reactions from within the Order, but he didn't care about any of them at that moment. Luckily, the one whom he did care about also seemed to hear him.

Zephyr was backing up and plowing through the youngest dragon just to get to Al, while behind Al Lysander Scamander was coming closer and asking worriedly, "What is _he_ doing here? Hagrid, you better not have let him in here!"

Ignoring the naïve twin, Al scrambled to his feet and addressed Hagrid in one of the most desperate tones he'd ever used, "_DO_ something! Stretch the barrier; let him in!" He could feel the rage swimming up from his core, and the only person he thought might sympathize was Hagrid. Al would have stretched the barrier himself if he knew what spell the arrogant, on-looking centaurs had used to put it up.

They and Lysander were still staring at Al with contempt, and their mouths all gaped open when Hagrid pointed his pink umbrella toward the closest dragon and stretched the barrier just long enough for Zephorien to duck under it while bucking heads with the others to keep them out. As soon as he was safe, Al rushed to the dragon and pressed his forehead against a cut Zephyr had received on his nose. Without voicing the charm, Al gripped onto James's wand and wished for Zephyr to be healed, and then he was.

Meanwhile, the large dragon's continuous flames were turning the clearing into a sauna even though the fire couldn't actually enter the area, and everyone had backed away from Al and Zephyr except for Hagrid, Lysander, and Lorcan, the latter twin having momentarily left his fiancée to approach the creature he had always been fascinated by. Instinctively, Al hunched over to hide himself from the stares, for they made him feel the way Scorpius must have felt last fall, back when Astoria's crimes were only just beginning to spread. Nobody had listened to him or trusted him then, including Al, and Al had never had any notion of how much that isolation might hurt until now. The stares he could handle; every Potter and Weasley child had grown up being stared at by their peers. Even the fear didn't bother him, for that was one of the usual prices of power. What really tore him apart from the inside out was the judgment, the stubbornness, the unwillingness to see anything in Al that they didn't want to see. Al could be stubborn too, but he never judged a book by its cover. Never had, never would.

"Tiergan, tha' one," stated Hagrid, oblivious to everyone else as he looked up at the fire-breather. "Strong-willed."

"Yeah," Al nodded. He hadn't heard the Irish name before, but it suited the dragon perfectly. "Tiergan."

The friendly dialogue didn't last long before Lysander butt his head in once more. Unlike his brother, he was keeping a safe distance from Zephyr, but still couldn't keep his mouth shut when Al was so near. "We're already down in numbers, mate," he told Al. "There's no need to plant another dragon on us, not now that this war's already over."

Lorcan shared a tentative glance back at a battered Lucy as he cautiously came closer to Zephyr, and he went in for a detailed look when Al answered Lysander, "Look, he won't hurt you. _I _won't hurt you. I dunno' what's going on with these other dragons, but I finally know what's going on with me, and believe me when I say that I'm on _your_ side. This war isn't over until I decide that it is."

Lysander still looked questionable but kept quiet as Hagrid crossed his arms and chuckled with pride. The sound made Al's attention sway back to the half-giant, whom Al asked, "Have you seen my parents? I thought they'd be here." Al recognized a few of the other Order members in the clearing – Neville Longbottom was talking with the centaur leaders, new wife Luna was feeding the thestrals large hunks of raw meat, Holly was making bottles of water to pass around, and Colin Creevey was helping the giants get ready to move somewhere – but his family was nowhere to be found.

Sensing his concern, Hagrid answered Al quickly and to the best of his ability. "Harry an' Ginny went with that blonde cousin o' yers ter look fer the spiders after I told 'em they might be able to sniff out young Lily."

"Lily?" asked Lysander before Al could take in any of Hagrid's information. He seemed to have forgotten about his anger toward Al as he said, "But she's not missing! I saw her a couple of hours ago; she looked like she was running off toward the Black Lake."

Sighing, because running was never a good sign, Al broke the confusion by explaining, "She was running because she was being _chased_. There's a member of the Flock who wants her dead... her _specifically_. She won't stop at anything to make sure it happens." Al himself would have been off and running for the Black Lake by now if it weren't for the dragons waiting close by who wouldn't stop killing unless he figured out how to tame them.

Lysander, on the other hand, didn't feel any such responsibility, and after yelling to Lorcan to take care of himself, he sprinted from the barrier and Disapparated before any dragons could stop him. Al couldn't explain why, but something inside of him was certain that Lysander would in fact find Lily and would bring her back safely. After all, Al had seen Lysander in action back at his apartment in Montrose, when he'd taken care of Lily like a true soldier. Lysander loved every part of the Potter family because he loved every part of his best friend, and Al only hoped that he would still love said family once he found out that his best friend had been killed.

Al's smile was busy fading when Hagrid returned to their previous conversation and said, "I always knew yeh'd come 'round."

"You did?" asked Al, because Hagrid was the first to say so. "How'd you know that? Because I warned you about the giants last year?" he added, because he himself had never known, had never had that certainty, had never had that faith.

"Nah," Hagrid laughed. "Because yeh were the on'y one ter visit me on yer own, and because Saber always loved yeh, just like this here dragon loves yeh now."

Al was thinking back on the dog he'd recently rescued and was looking at Zephorien as the dragon basked in a gentle pat from Lorcan but gazed directly into Al's eyes, when Hagrid finished with, "Creatures, 'specially the magic ones, they don' pay much attention ter brawn or brains, but they always know how ter dig fer the buried hearts."

As if he understood every word that Hagrid had just said, Zephyr lowered his neck to nudge Al's shoulder lovingly, but as soon as he did so, Tiergan growled as if in pain from outside the barrier. It had been his tattoo on Al's shoulder that Zephyr had touched. For a moment, Al thought about the difference between these two dragons, both proud and fierce, but one loyal to death and the other rebellious as a goblin. It didn't take long for Al to understand which parts of himself they each represented, and while Hagrid was right in thinking that Al's heart had been deeply buried for a long while and that now it was finally coming to the surface, there was still an anger in him. There was still envy, still power, still guilt.

His head hanging low, Al clenched his fists then opened them once more so that he could say to Hagrid, "But I've still done terrible things. You wouldn't believe what, _who_ I-"

He was going to tell Hagrid everything. He was going to admit to killing McGonagall and even James, because Hagrid deserved to know the truth and he deserved to be the first one Al gave in to. But unfortunately, his admission was cut short by the interrupting yells of Colin Creevey from over where the giants were beginning to march along the river and out of the forest.

"HAGRID, I think they're ready!" Colin was trying to halt their progress by holding his hands up as high in the air as they would reach, but of course even that was only as high as the giants' knees.

Nodding and tightening his belt buckle along his widening waist, Hagrid yelled back, "All right, all right! I'm comin'!"

Before letting him leave, Al asked with more than a hint of concern, "Wait, where are you taking them? Aren't they supposed to be fighting the dragons?" They were the only magical beings big or strong enough to face the dragons with even the slightest chance of winning; the last thing Al wanted was for them to run away.

"Aye," Hagrid replied, "But they've bin fightin' all day and night already, and they're still not winnin'. I'm startin' ter think they're too big targets; one blast o' fire can bring 'em down. They'd be better suited fer the Quidditch pitch, where they can help guard the wounded an' maybe even fight in the center."

Al couldn't argue with this, because Hagrid was right. He was only afraid of what might happen here, with these dragons, once all their targets disappeared. But because that would and _should_ be up to Al, he allowed Hagrid to lead his giant clan out of the barrier alongside Colin, Holly, and the newlyweds. The only wizard and witch who stayed behind with Al and the centaurs were Lorcan and Lucy, the former of whom hugged his mother goodbye as he told Hagrid that he couldn't bear to leave these creatures this way. Hagrid understood.

After they were gone, Al found himself staring at the frozen ground where tiny black spiders were darting around his shoes, headed for the forest's edge. He was trying to decipher whether they were pointed more toward the Black Lake, the castle, or the Quidditch pitch, when Lucy approached to question her cousin. "What are you doing here, Al? Don't you think you've already done enough?" Her voice wasn't as accusatory as Lysander's had been; it was more pitiful.

"No," said Al as Lorcan finally left Zephorien so that he could stand beside Lucy and hold her hand. Al was at first transfixed by those intertwined fingers, seeing not just how perfectly they fit together put also how Lorcan and Lucy both sighed in relief once their hands were clasped, as if they literally needed to be connected in order to stay awake and keep fighting. Shaking his head so that he would stop seeing this and worse, stop seeing Ilana, he blinked multiple times and said, "No, I _haven't_ done enough. I don't think anything will ever be enough to make up for the wrongs I've caused, but I need to start somewhere, and I've decided on the dragons. I could really use your help in taming them."

Lorcan had plenty of experience with magical creatures, and perhaps Lucy, the budding herbologist, might know of some sort of sedation herb that could bring the dragons down. They, however, didn't see the same necessity or talent in Al, evident when Lorcan asked, "Why should we trust you?"

"I'm the only one who can stop these dragons before they burn the whole forest down," Al answered after looking behind to see that all five were still stationed right outside the barrier. By now, the centaurs had conjured enough bravery to step closer to Zephyr in order to provide back-up for new leaders Lorcan and Lucy.

"And why is that?" asked a centaur with astonishingly blue eyes that matched the girl he stood firmly behind, and whom Al recognized from recent history books as Firenze, an ex-professor of Divination at Hogwarts.

Al thought for a while about his next answer, because he didn't want to scare anyone off now, but he also didn't want to lie and say that he was an expert dragon trainer when he had no way of following through on such claims. So, for once, he opted for truth, and said, "Because I was the one who brought them here in the first place."

The news hit the party like a wave, the shock echoing from one mind until its owner turned to another and passed it on. While they were all taking it in, Al began to wonder what was happening in other parts of the grounds. He could still hear Astoria squawking and flapping from somewhere in the sky, and he was beginning to think he heard footsteps in the surrounding area. There hadn't been many Flock members fighting in the forest since the dragons had been able to take out most of the Order themselves, but now Al could have sworn that he heard their groans and smelled the clouds of rotting flesh that tended to hover around their peasant bodies like flies around a corpse.

Before he could turn around to inspect his suspicion, Lucy's shock wore off and she became the first one to speak again when she asked, "What about the Flock? You know, your _allies?"_

This time, Al didn't need to think about his answer. Remembering what Scorpius had first threatened Astoria with when she'd captured Rose, Al tried to perk up the spirit of the soldiers that were now his by repeating those same words. "Well, I figure we should keep our original promise to them. Let's burn them alive."

Everyone was smiling and the centaurs were even cheering, but it was the haggard, out-of breath voice coming from behind Al that earned their attention next. "Sounds like a plan," he said, and Al caught the mixture of confused astonishment and pure joy in Lorcan's bright green eyes as the better twin took in the sight of a man he hadn't seen for over eight years.

Rolf Scamander looked just as Al remembered him from Azkaban: so gangly that his flesh was snow white thanks to its proximity to bone, hair so long and so blond that it lit up the entire clearing, ears so uneven and pointed that he might have been mistaken for an elf had he not been uncannily tall. He was still wearing his prison rags and his shady sister was nowhere to be found, but the stench Al had noticed before was coming from five magically killed stags each being cooked and eaten by a distracted dragon. Al had no idea how long it had taken Rolf to sail all the way to Hogwarts or to catch those deer, but he was pleased to see that the naturalist dealt well with the dragons and that he was greeting his son with open arms.

Lorcan didn't even say hello before he yelled at the centaurs without looking back at them, "Stop wasting time and let him in!"

The half-breeds exchanged a few worried looks but eventually did as Lorcan commanded, and Rolf was crying as the dragons finished up their meals and he stumbled forward to place both his hands on Lorcan's face and say, "I've missed you, son."

"I missed you too, Dad," said Lorcan, and suddenly Lucy understood who this odd-looking man was and was grinning from cheek to cheek. From what Al knew of the twins and their father, all of which he'd learned from James, Lorcan had far fewer qualms with Rolf than did Lysander. It had been solely Lysander's idea to send his father to prison, and perhaps he and Lorcan hadn't been as close as twins could be over the years because Lysander had never asked for his brother's permission.

Breaking apart after a long hug, Rolf buried the wand he'd stolen from an Azkaban guard deep in his loose pockets as he teased Lorcan about his dirty suit and laid eyes on the lovely Lucy for the first time. "And who might this be?" he asked with his hand extended to the girl in a ruffled red dress.

"Lucy Weasley," she shook his hand, her brand new diamond ring not going unnoticed by Rolf. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Scamander."

Rolf was nodding but looked to Lorcan for further explanation, and without hesitating his son wrapped his arm around Lucy's back, which he'd already covered with his suit jacket to keep her warm, and said, "Lucy and I are engaged."

Laughing in the best possible way, Rolf wiped his thick hair away from his face and said, "Well, we certainly have a lot to catch up on, don't we?"

Lorcan nodded and then Rolf suggested that they walk around the barrier's perimeter to talk for a while. Lorcan agreed, but he dragged Lucy along with him for both himself and for her. That left Al alone with Zephyr, a group of angry dragons that were now ready for their real meal, and the centaurs that wouldn't have trusted him even if he hadn't fought with the Forbidden Flock half the battle.

He didn't trust them either, but he knew about as much about centaurs as they knew about him. He knew that they believed they could tell the future and were flattered by wizards who believed they could, and seeing Rolf again reminded Al that the future was ever-changing and highly unpredictable. Al had gone to the Hebrides looking for dragons and had found pirates and Azkaban along the way. Now, he was expecting to tame the dragons and then use them to end this war once and for all, but he of all people knew that plans could change in an instant.

For both strategy and his own curiosity, Al turned to Firenze and asked, "How will this all play out? You know, according the stars, or whatever."

Ignoring the insult, Firenze trotted forward, looked Al up and down, and stated, "There is no real prophecy attached to your name, Albus Potter, but I do see this: a decision that was once made _for_ you will soon be made _by _you, and it will change the world."

* * *

Once the father and son had made it through their lengthy discussion, they and Lucy joined Al and the centaurs with a newfound sense of enthusiasm. Rolf was about as ready to end this war as Al was, his brown eyes searing with fire, and Lorcan had never looked happier than he did upon having _both_ Lucy and his father all to himself. Now, he wanted nothing more than to protect them and his happiness, while Lucy was like Al: she hadn't seen her parents or sister since the wedding, and though she knew they were battling somewhere, she had no idea if they were still alive and would do anything to make sure they were.

So, they all had motive, but best of all, Al had gained some serious knowledge from each of them. They were just beginning to formulate a plan of action when Rolf brought up the dragon binding process, wondering to himself how these dragons could be so adamant to kill _certain_ people if they were still wild and unbound.

"They're not wild. They're bound to _me,_" Al stopped him before he could go any further. After explaining what that meant to the confused Lucy, he confessed, "But they're not listening anymore. They're still set on the orders I gave them before I switched sides, even though Zephyr is following me perfectly. I was beginning to think that perhaps they'd been _un_bound."

Charlie had told him, Astoria, and Knox that it was possible for dragons to separate themselves from their master if not taken proper care of, but this only occurred in the direst of situations. Knowing this, Lorcan shook his head and said, "No, if they were unbound we'd know it, believe me. They'd most likely have flown back home by now, especially with the giants around."

"Lorcan's right," Rolf piped in as he gazed between Zephyr and his five relatives. "But it may be worth looking at what happened to Zephorien here in comparison to the others. Clearly, there must be some difference, either in how they were first bound to you or how they have been treated since."

Al thought back on his 'adoption' of all the dragons, but what he saw was the same: he performed the exact same process on all six of them, and he rescued them all from unpleasant circumstances, Zephyr from his chains in Romania and the other five from the darkness of Fingal's Cave. No one seemed to have a reasonable rebuttal when Al told them all of this, at least until Lucy used her feminine perspective to ponder an alternative explanation.

"Maybe it isn't about _them_ so much as _you_," she said. "Maybe it's about how _you_ felt when you bound them to you, or where your mindset was at the time." She looked exhausted even in her crouched position on the ground, but as much as her body urged her to, she wasn't giving up. Tiergan had already proved that _will_ was more powerful than strength.

Taking himself back to both occasions, Al thought aloud, "With Zephyr, I had a plan. I was using him and Uncle Charlie to save myself while also stopping Astoria. I didn't want things getting out of hand again, so I was ready to finally do something right, something for the Order. When the plan backfired, I used Zephyr to take me certain places and to fight in battle, but every decision I made for him came directly from _me_. It was never an order from anyone else."

"And who gave the orders to take the others? Who gave the orders to make them fight for the Flock?" asked Lorcan, catching on to a possible pattern.

Al looked to Rolf when he answered, "Eleri. She wanted me to destroy the cave so that she could have a reason to blackmail me, so that I would help her break into Azkaban. And when I bound myself to the dragons, I was doing it for Astoria, because she needed a bigger army. I made them fight for the Flock because, at that point, _I_ was still fighting for the Flock."

It was Rolf who really solved the puzzle, saying through squinted eyes, "The dragons cannot fly in alternating directions. They are bound to your heart at a certain _point_, but when your heart changes course, they do not change with it."

"So, what do I do to fix it?" asked Al once everyone went silent, even the centaurs looking disappointed by the lack of optimism following Firenze's promising premonition.

Rolf and Lorcan looked at each other for a long while before the former shrugged and said, "I suppose you're going to have to re-bind them."

"No," argued one of the centaurs that Al hadn't met yet. He had dark skin and even darker eyes, making it easy for his words to be taken very seriously when he warned, "If you re-bind them, those dragons will still waiver, and worse, they will fight for their individual power. They will kill your other dragon for it."

Al panicked because he could see this future just as clearly as the centaur could. There was a part of Al that still wanted power, because that part stemmed from the core within him that wanted to be loved, to be recognized, to be _someone_. If he were to split himself into six pieces, they would all fight for the same thing, knowing that only one could have it. Zephorien would be killed, along with the others, and Tiergan would win through his wrath. Al knew it because it already happened to himself, and the only reason he had chosen to fight for the Order now was because enemy, his brother, his ally had beaten the bad out of him.

But if there was only one Al, one leader and one to call the shots, perhaps the other pieces of him would all fall into place. They would trail behind him willingly and would present themselves when needed rather than when threatened. If these angry dragons were bound to Al via a route filled with content, then they would have no reason to defy him. That was what made Al say confidently, "Then I won't rebind them to me. I'll bind them to Zephyr." Like a pack of wolves, Zephorien would be their alpha, and his control would be overseen, but not enforced, by Albus.

No one seemed to disagree, and Rolf even stifled a laugh upon being so impressed. Then they went to work detailing exactly _how_ they would accomplish such a heavy task, Rolf explaining a dragon taming tactic known as 'sweet spots' when Al was unsure how they would hold them off long enough to even go near them. Apparently, dragons had pressure points that, if aroused, could momentarily calm the beasts, much like the special knot at the base of the Whomping Willow.

"How do you know where that spot is for each individual dragon?" asked Lucy after hearing the willow simile.

"Ah!" said Rolf excitedly, having hoped that someone would ask that exact question. His pointer finger in the air, he leaned across the ground toward Al and poked his tattooed shoulder once lightly. In the background, Tiergan blew fire at the barrier, something he had long since given up on.

Realizing that the dragon's sweet spot must have been the same spot on them to which they were bound on Al, he figured that such pressure would cause opposing pain for the other. That was why Al's chest would always ache when Zephorien was in any pain or danger – because they were bound to each other at the chest.

With this information, Al frantically whipped off his black shirt to reveal the slew of branded tattoos all over his upper body, allowing Rolf and Lorcan to look over the markings as he told them which body parts were connected to which dragon. "The mother was bound first, right to my stomach. Then came her son, the little one, who took a side of my neck."

"What about Ponto and Pixie over there?" Lorcan asked, referring to the sibling dragons that were currently jumping toward the stars with open mouths as a flock of bats flew past.

Chuckling at their new names, Al turned around to give a better view of his last two sweet spots, together covering the whole of his back. "Pixie on the left, Ponto on the right."

"All right, then," Rolf clapped his hands together. He seemed to like having a goal again, and Al didn't blame him. It must have been hard to live in Azkaban, where every day was longer and less fulfilled than the last. "Albus, you'll ride Zephorien and help him with the bonding spells, while I'll go for their sweet spots."

Lucy was next to offer her services, saying, "I can look for some hellebore leaves; combine those with the dragons' next meal and they might calm down some." The centaurs were kind enough to volunteer to accompany her while hunting for more deer.

That only left Lorcan, and there was only one job left to be done. "I'll be the bait," he said, and though both Rolf and Lucy didn't seem pleased by the thought, they knew that Lorcan was old enough to make his own decisions now. Al wondered if the same could ever be said about him, because he was only a year younger than Lorcan but felt about twenty.

The centaurs led Lucy toward the unicorn cropping, leaving only Rolf, Lorcan, and Al to face the dragons by Zephyr's side. Before Al mounted him, he walked up to Zephyr's front and rubbed his chest consolingly as he told the dragon who had somehow become his friend, "Be careful, you hear? We've got work to do after this, and I can't have you going down now." The words were meant just as much for himself as they were for Zephyr. Al was going to tame these dragons like a knight bringing kingdoms to their knees, but to do so he'd need to find the queen.

"All right, Lorcan, you first," Rolf was commanding as Zephyr knelt down and allowed Al to hop onto his back. Rolf was a natural leader, and though Al didn't see any signs of insanity in him, every now and then Rolf's eyes would light up and his hands would shake and he'd have to shut himself down in order to remain grounded. Al wondered if this was a symptom of spending nearly a decade in Azkaban, or if this was what had put him in Azkaban in the first place.

Lorcan clutched his wand tightly, walking out from the barrier with two of the five awaiting dragons already staring at him. They knew just as well as Lorcan did the exact place in which the barrier ended, and as soon as he crossed it, fire and smoke was engulfing the area once more and Al could barely see where Lorcan had run to. At this point, Rolf had run off too, headed for the mother dragon where Al and Zephyr were supposed to meet him. The father and son were both quite spry, leaving Al with only a few instantaneous glimpses of their blinding hair as they hopped through the fire and beneath the dragons' bellies. They were one in the same amongst the beasts, working perfectly together to make a fire-free pathway for Al.

"Come on, Oreo," Al began to steer Zephyr toward the trapped mother. "Let's go dig for these buried hearts."

Lorcan was zipping around the others in hopes of providing enough time for Zephyr to march up to the mother, who Rolf was standing under in preparation of stroking her stomach. Once Zephyr was close enough, Rolf did just that, looking like he was petting a frightened dog as he repeatedly mumbled the Welsh word, _Madrona_, under his breath. The dragon responded much like a dog would, immediately relaxing her stance and curling her spiny neck in search for the source of such kindness. As soon as she looked away, Al urged Zephyr to breathe fire. He did so willingly, and Madrona sensed it instantly, meeting his flames with her own and letting Al perform the binding spell between the two. As it was cast, he could feel the tattoo on his stomach fading slightly, leaving little but a darkened scar in its place.

Madrona's young son had been looking on as his mother was bound. When it was over, she walked with Zephyr to meet the little warrior who seemed to want to do exactly as his mother had just done. Binding him was an easy task, but the siblings put up a harder fight. Rolf had to jump on their backs somehow to reach their sweet spots, and their swinging tails made doing so rather difficult, especially with the furious Tiergan raging and stomping from close by. But when Lucy returned, the centaurs were able to wrap Tiergan up in the roots of the forest's strongest trees so that Lorcan could rest for a moment and Lucy could throw up a dead ferret, recently infused with light sedative hellebore. That gave Zephyr, Madrona, and Hogan – the son Al had named for the sound he made when he sneezed – the chance to gang up on Ponto and Pixie, whom Zephyr was bound to simultaneously.

Now with a strong family of five dragons, Al was fairly certain that binding the final one would be a breeze. Like he'd been about so many things in his life, he was wrong. The hellebore wore off on Tiergan within five minutes, and then he was back to his terrifyingly stubborn self, only now he was fueled by betrayal along with his usual willpower. Zephyr, who was the second strongest after Tiergan, tried to come after him with sheer force, flapping his outstretched wings against Tiergan's shoulders himself, but it only made things worse. The flapping wings turned into flying ones as Tiergan pushed off from the forest floor and prepared to spread his wrath across the grounds. For a moment, Al considered what could possibly happen if he _didn't_ follow the rogue beast, but when he saw Lorcan hanging onto the soaring Tiergan by the tip of his balled tail, Al's own anger caused the other five dragons to follow Tiergan with roaring cries and flames aimed for every last survivor of the Forbidden Flock.

They were led all over Hogwarts, fleeing from the forest and over Hagrid's burnt down hut, gliding over the shores of the Black Lake that had melted in patches over the course of the night. Al searched for Lily by craning his neck over Zephyr's side, but neither she nor Lysander were anywhere in sight. The other twin was attempting to scale Tiergan's back mid-air, and his balance proved good enough to do so until Tiergan started to feel the extra weight and began changing direction every ten seconds. Madrona and Hogan were falling behind, but Ponto and Pixie each took a side of Zephorien and zig-zagged across the lake until they were flying over Hogsmeade, where most of the village was covered in smoke and dead bodies with browning blood lay stagnant in the snow. All Al could think about was James as they swerved back toward the lake and he spotted the piece of overturned ice that James, Scorpius, and Ilana had used to drown Wynn. They left soon enough, though, and were then approaching the brightly lit castle, with its hundreds of shattered windows and cheering ghosts. Outside in the center flank, giants were marching in time with the thumps of the Whomping Willow, below which a group of witches and wizards were fighting their way through the remaining Flock. In the middle of the group was a girl with flaming red hair who limped along as steadily as she could, her blond boyfriend supporting her weight and his clan of soldiers defending them from every angle. Al smiled at the sight and kept searching the crowd for a certain phoenix-healing witch, but he wasn't able to find Ilana before he was distracted by a different kind of bird call.

Astoria whizzed up and over Tiergan and was headed for Al before Zephyr swerved beneath her. She was closely followed by a smaller rook, who Zephyr had grown somewhat attached to and was more than happy to blow in the hawk's direction to help Knox speed up. They were hovering over the Quidditch pitch, on the outskirts of which stood Harry and Teddy waiting for Knox to bring Astoria back down, when Zephyr caught up with Tiergan once more and Al spotted the stilled body rolling off his back.

Lorcan was just about to fall to the floor when Ponto zoomed past Zephyr and caught him, steering his sister and the others back toward the forest and allowing Al's fury to rise up in Zephyr. Moments later, Zephyr was sinking his talons into Tiergan's tail and Tiergan was wailing in response. The two dragons were caught in a round robin and were beginning to lose altitude, but for once Al and Zephyr had the upper hand because they were _behind_ Tiergan. Like a dog trying to catch its own tail, Tiergan had nowhere to go but backward, only Zephyr was pushing him forward and was still clawing his way toward those reflecting red eyes. A few scratches at those orbs, along with multiple Killing Curses sent from Al, and Tiergan was falling to his death somewhere deep in the forest, where his decaying body would feed myriad other creatures for a lifetime to come. But even knowing this, even knowing that Tiergan would never have allowed himself to be bound again, Al still felt sorry for him. It was that sympathy that convinced Al of the reality of change. And if he was going to finally change, now was the time to do it.

Telling himself that he would be okay to face James again, to face _death_ again, Al had Zephyr land in the centaurs' clearing, where the other dragons were waiting and grieving over a body that laid on the ground beneath a veil of long, dark brown hair. Lucy was sobbing as she clutched Lorcan in all possible ways, from his skinny red tie to his spiky blond hair to his father's pointed ears. Rolf was there too, kneeling on the ground about a foot away with his hand covering his mouth as he wondered what he was supposed to do. He didn't know how to be a father anymore; he never really had. But as Al looked at Rolf's helpless stance, he couldn't help but think of Harry and the fact that the two fathers weren't all that different. Al suspected that no parent truly knew how to cope with the death of their child.

It was Al's decision to leave the dragons behind as he walked through the surrounding centaurs and bent down to inspect what little of Lorcan's body he could see amongst Lucy's locks and tears. When he tried to touch the boy's wrist to see if he had any pulse left in him, Lucy swatted his hand away and lifted her buried head just enough to look Al right in the eyes and scream at him, "It should have been _YOU!" _He'd never seen his cousin like this, not the gentle, caring Lucy. Then again, while animals might know how to dig for buried hearts, death had a way of unleashing buried truths. Lucy wasn't the only one who wished Al dead in another's place, as he was well aware of the accusations he would continue to receive when he finally told his family about James.

"I know," he said, because he really did. "It should have been me. You're right." She really was.

Lucy looked like she was about to slap him, but Rolf stopped her when he crawled forward and copped hold of both his son's hand as well as Lucy's, whose ring had cracked in the midst of her swelling. Once they were connected, Al held on to Lorcan's cold, exposed shoulder, realizing quickly that his stunned body was the result of a perfectly aimed Killing Curse that could only have been produced by one person, or rather one bird. Without a second glance, Al turned on the spot and brought the Scamanders with him.

They were dropped off on the cold grass of the Quidditch pitch, Lorcan placed right next to his friend James on the half of the field that was reserved for the dead rather than the wounded. It was too quiet here, with even the echoes of panting and screaming from nearer the castle soft as whispers. That made it a whole lot harder to listen to Lucy's blubbering, which Al figured he couldn't handle much longer and eventually stepped away from. As soon as he did, his seat on the ground was replaced by a sopping wet Lysander, half-frozen water dripping from every part of his face so that it was impossible to tell whether or not he was crying.

It took a few minutes for Al to look away from Lysander, the soldier who'd suddenly lost everything – his best friend and his twin brother – and wasn't even paying enough attention to notice what he'd gained – a sister in-law and a father. _Was I like him? _Al thought. Had he been oblivious to all the good in his life simply because all the bad had seemed worse? Had his family and friends not held onto him hard enough, or had he pushed them away? Had Ilana ever loved him, or had she stayed for so long because she just wanted to _feel_ loved? Had Astoria been the first one to care, or had she been the first one Al noticed? Had James been killed, or had he been murdered?

The sight of the Scamanders brought out a number of terrible thoughts in Al's mind, because there was very little good to be found in what had just happened to them. The one thing that Al tried to focus on instead was the one person he had never stopped looking out for, even on his worst days. He saw the trail of spiders first, and they led him straight to her. Lily was more beautiful than Al had ever seen her as she stood frozen – either from the icy water she too had been soaked in or from the shock of seeing James – with the heavy make-up washed from her face so that her scars, her fire, her _secret_, could finally be shown to the world.

"I'm sorry, Lil," said Al as he stepped forward and wrapped himself around his smaller sister in one smooth motion. "It's my fault. Everything – your bite, Ryder, James – is my-"

"_EXPELLIARMUS!"_ yelled a deep voice that made both Lily and Al turn their heads. Harry was pushing Astoria onto the far side of the pitch, running her human version straight into the wounded Order members with Teddy and Knox providing backup.

Astoria deflected the spell with a flick of her wrist, but she didn't laugh like Al expected her to. Instead, she was silent, empty, blank. Her face was a white canvas without a splotch of ink on it, and while she had nothing left to gain, she also had nothing to lose.

Sensing this, Knox looked over to Teddy and held up three fingers that soon became one. In perfect time, the two enemies became partners and each conjured a rope that wrapped itself around Astoria's wrists so that she was leashed on both sides by the two men who, in an odd sort of way, had been the most important pawns in her giant chess game. From behind the boys, Ginny and Dominique attempted to disarm Astoria once more, but Knox threw them back before they came too close. He didn't want them to get hurt by the still armed Astoria, but even more than that, he wanted to do this himself.

Al had a front view of Knox from across the pitch, only able to see Astoria from the back, and he reveled in the fierce expression on Rookie's face. Holding on tightly to his rope, Knox walked up to Astoria until he was only a few inches from her and snatched the wand out of her hand without any magic, seething at her between his perfectly straight teeth, "I've been waiting to do this for a _very_ long time."

By now, hundreds of Order members had gathered around to witness Astoria's imminent end, all of Al's many cousins having survived the battle and now breaking off from their parents to go in for a better view. Hagrid had brought the giants back, along with an unknowing Luna and Neville. Colin had joined up with his younger brother and Ron, who was now standing next to Harry and waiting patiently for Hermione to show up and complete the original trio. Hogwarts professors were there too, wands ready to assist Knox if anything went wrong, and Al had pulled a very hesitant Lily closer to the action so that they could join everyone.

Astoria looked around at them all with a miraculous glint of hope in her eye. She must have known that she was doomed, but as Al studied the face he knew so well, he saw a witch who had given up on life but wasn't about to let death roll over her like a gentle wave. She wanted more than that. She wanted a display. She wanted fireworks. She wanted unadulterated, undeserved, unending reason to be remembered.

So, when Knox stole a glance at Dominique and then turned to his old mentor and whispered two words that should have brought her to the floor, Astoria didn't need her wand to fight him off. She just needed her will. The rope was torn in seconds and soon after Astoria had her wand back in her hands as if all she'd needed to do to get it was snap her fingers. The first thing she did with it was blast Knox as far away as he would go, and then she proceeded to turn herself in circles so that her aim met just about everyone around her, waiting for them to test their power against hers.

When people started to do just that and when she blocked or rebounded all of them, Al slowly backed away before she saw him there. He didn't know what to do and he was beginning to think that no one did, because Harry was fighting, Ron was fighting, Ginny was fighting, Teddy was fighting, Mercy was fighting, Smethley was fighting, parents were fighting and their children were fighting, _everyone_ was fighting, and _nothing_ could stop her. That was where Al's thoughts were at, his body positioned a few meters from the crowd as he tried to avoid stepping over the wounded, when he heard the phoenixes.

Directly to his left, Ilana and Hermione were leading a group of fifty or so Muggle-borns across the grounds that were now Flock-free thanks to Al and his dragons, a flock of singing birds flying overhead and a pair of disabled teenagers in their wake. As the crowd made an opening for Hermione to walk through and join her husband and best friend, Al tried to tear his eyes from the green eyes that had yet to see him so that he could look upon the slow moving Rose and Scorpius.

Rose had one arm around Scorpius and the other around her brother, but Hugo let her go when he saw a head of thick ginger hair rising above the sea of people, Rose understanding that he needed to join their father. Now just the two of them, Rose and Scorpius had a silent conversation amongst themselves – Rose pulling out a plain, brown fabric from beneath her dress and Scorpius shaking his head as if he was repelled by the idea that Al still didn't understand. Caressing his cheek in her feeble hand, Al saw Rose mouth the words, _You can do this_, to Scorpius as he closed his eyes and gave in to her touch.

Not liking how weak Rose looked and not knowing why Scorpius wasn't holding the Elder Wand, Al waited for more clues to present themselves before approaching either of his old friends. Rose's convincing seemed to work, for soon Scorpius was nodding lightly and Rose was unfolding the fabric into what at first looked to Al like a decrepit sack, but upon second glance he realized was an upside-down hat. This wasn't just any hat, either. It was long and well-used, and looked as though it had a face within its creases. Al didn't know where it was kept during the year or how Rose had come to have it, but he did know that she was holding open the Sorting Hat.

Al watched very closely as Scorpius the boyfriend bent his head and looked into the hat, even more closely as Scorpius the leader reached his hand beneath the rim, even more closely as Scorpius the Slytherin pulled from it a ruby-inset silver sword bearing the name Godric Gryffindor. He held it up to be examined in the light of the sunrise, and Rose was smiling at him because she'd believed in him for seven years even when he had never believed in himself.

They noticed Al long before he was standing right next to them. They knew not to say anything long before Al put a finger to his lips. They knew not to fight back long before Al extended his hand toward the sword. They knew it wouldn't disappear long before Scorpius placed the sword in Al's open palm. They'd known he was the truest, bravest Gryffindor long before he'd been granted the second chance to prove it to himself.

They walked with him, Rose hobbling and Scorpius strong, until Al was once again facing Astoria's back. Few eyes were on him this time, all still too focused on Astoria, and so he was easily able to ignore them as he continued on without his friends. Only a foot away from that straightened back run down with raven hair, Al considered waiting for Astoria to turn around so that they could face each other, but then he remembered that he was the only member of the Forbidden Flock who didn't owe her a single thing, let alone his respect. So, after stashing James's phoenix-feather wand in his pocket, Al wielded the Sword of Gryffindor with both hands and met his father's green eyes when he plunged the pure silver into Astoria's corrupted blood.

Pools of crimson flooded from her back and chest as she gaped and coughed and fell into Al's awaiting arms. He had cracked her spine so that she'd been unable to stand, collapsed her lung so that she'd been unable to breathe, ripped open her heart so that she'd finally be able to feel something. That pain radiated throughout her shaking body until it relaxed and reddened her cheeks as if she was blushing. As Al looked closer at the face that suddenly looked quite beautiful, he realized that she _was_ actually blushing, her smile practically infectious as she gazed up at Al and asked him dreamily, "Why?"

He didn't look at anyone else before answering, "I made a last minute decision to change the world, and it starts with killing you."

"Thank you," she whispered beneath the surrounding cheers and claps. Then her icy eyes shut closed forever and Al dropped her to the ground so that Neville could take back his sword, Teddy could light the body on fire, and Knox could fly the ashes into the horizon. The whole time, Al just stood there, not because he felt guilty but because he felt sure. He finally understood that Astoria had wanted to die, and that she would be remembered for her death for generations to come. It was in that moment that Albus realized he didn't want to be remembered for how he died. He wanted to be remembered for how he chose to live.

* * *

Nothing was the same after it was over. The vast majority of the Order of the Phoenix Apparated home as soon as they could, and of course Astoria's death meant that the spell placed on the Ministry of Magic was broken and allowed for Shacklebolt and company to arrive just in time for the castle clean-up. The professors helped with this daunting task, though no one assumed that Hogwarts would be reopened for quite some time and while Professor Flitwick was made interim Headmaster, he clearly wasn't keen on keeping the position for long. The only others who stayed on the grounds were those who'd lost loved ones in battle or who could somehow help restore the severely wounded, who had no way of being transported to a hospital.

Fred, Roxanne, and their father had stayed to support the Jordan family after Lila had been wounded by a rabid grindylow. Roxanne was jealous that Lila had gotten so close to the water, and Al laughed when he walked past because he secretly loved how little concern his cousin had for anything other than mermaids. Fred, on the other hand, was worried sick for his girlfriend, but eventually Lila woke up from a short coma and was able to be taken home.

It was Ilana whose potions had restored Lila. The combination of Muggle medicines and magical phoenix tears had made most of Ilana's concoctions unbeatable, and she only lost a few patients who had already been too far gone. Al spent a great deal of his time watching her move from one victim to the next, ignoring all her own wounds and questions and confusions so that she could tend to those in need. A few times, she saw him staring at her, but she never approached him, and though it killed him, he never approached her either. Yes, he loved her, but he had bigger things to do, and so did she.

Unfortunately, there was nothing anyone could do for Lorcan. His death was irreversible, no matter how much Lucy begged for him to come back, refusing to leave his side even when Audrey and Molly went home for some rest. Percy opted to stay with his youngest daughter, and by then Luna and Neville had found Lorcan as well. Lysander and his father had disappeared somewhere, and Al was fairly certain as he looked at Luna all curled up on the grass in her wedding dress that she would never have been able to get through this without Neville rubbing her back, brushing away her tears, and holding her hand. There was no discussion from any of them about burying Lorcan anytime soon. Lucy wasn't the only one who refused to look away.

Lying beside Lorcan, James was, for once in his existence, far less popular. Harry and Ginny had spent a few hours crying over him and saying their goodbyes, but stone cold Lily had eventually told them that she'd killed Ryder Rookwood and that the blue jay's body was most likely still sprawled along the shore of the Black Lake. Understanding that Lily needed to take care of this, Harry and Ginny decided to escort and help her in this weighted task. Since Teddy and Dominique had been stationed close to James at the time, Knox hadn't been too far either and had therefore overheard Lily's confession about his sister. He'd since stalked off to sulk in one of the locker rooms, which was where Al was headed now.

He had just opened the door when he halted upon hearing voices coming from inside the room. At first, he thought Knox may just be talking to himself, but then he heard Dominique and realized that she'd gone after him before Al had. Deciding that this was a conversation he definitely needed to hear, Al closed the door carefully behind him and peeked his head around the corner so that he could see Knox sitting on a bench, Dominique standing in front of him with her back turned to Al.

"I'm sorry about Ryder," she was saying, though it didn't sound to Al like she meant it.

"Don't be," said Knox, and his half-smirk let Al know that he absolutely meant it.

Dominique had her arms crossed, almost as if she felt like she needed to protect herself against the man she'd once loved, and maybe a part of her _was_ still scared even as she admitted, "Teddy told me everything. He told me that Astoria blackmailed you into owing her after she saved your life that time. He told me what you did for him, letting him see his parents and finally finding their true killer at the same time. He told me that he thought you were still in love with me."

Knox had been nodding absentmindedly through most of Dom's explanation, but he looked up and into those turquoise eyes of hers upon hearing her last sentence. He was more vulnerable than Al had ever seen him as he asked her, "Do you love me?"

"I'm trying not to," Dom replied with as much honesty as she could. Knox's intentions had been good all along, but that didn't change the fact that he'd killed Dominique's own grandfather, along with dozens of Muggles across the continent.

Knowing all this just as well as she did, Knox shook his head and said, "I can't promise that you'll be safe with me, but I can promise that your love will be." He was standing up then, clasping her arms and uncrossing them before he placed them on his bare chest. Her hands spread out as far as they could reach, even her fingertips wanting to touch the skin that had for so long been missing from hers. She was about to lean forward to be even closer to him when he added, "Just like I can promise that I'm going to marry you."

Pulling away slightly because this idea scared her even more than he did, Dom asked, "When?"

"Whenever you'll say yes," he replied as he pulled something from the back pocket of his baggy pants and placed it in her hand. Al couldn't see what it was, but he could practically feel the hair on Dominique's arms stand up and her heart skip a beat, and so he knew that it was the piece of sea glass from Shell Cottage that Knox had shown him last summer, only now it was fashioned as a ring.

Dominique was still staring at the ring as Knox kissed her forehead and walked away. He was halfway to the door that Al had opened once more when Dom called after him, "Try me next Christmas!"

This smirk was completely full, and Al got a fairly good view of it when Knox found him standing right outside the locker room and laughed at his snooping. Then he messed up his hair playfully and said, "Good job today, Back Hawk. Take care of her while I'm gone, will you?"

"Of course," Al promised before Knox transformed into a rook and flew away. Al knew better than anyone that Knox knew how to vanish, but he also knew that Rookie would be back exactly a year from now because he always paid his debts. Teddy would make sure his criminal record was cleared after what he'd done for the young Lupin, but Knox didn't want to be free until he could be free with Dominique.

Al walked back onto the pitch before Dom exited the locker room and had reason to scold him, and after being attacked by a slobbering Saber and giving Hagrid a grateful hug, he made his way back to the death side of the field, where his favorite group of Weasleys had huddled around Dennis and Natalie Creevey. Colin and Nigel were holding hands and sitting between their parents, with Hugo and Ron on Nigel's side and Hermione on Colin's. Rose and Scorpius had sat with them after returning the Sorting Hat to Neville, but they were standing closer to Arnia now and Al knew that they were waiting for him to pay a visit to James.

Sure enough, the couple looked away from Arnia when Al came near, and before they could say anything Al was holding up his hands as if to surrender and broke the silence himself. "I-I need to tell you something, and I know it won't be enough to make up for all the terrible things that I've done, but I hope it can make some sort of difference. See, I've been thinking a lot lately about the last conversation the three of us really had, when I'd been accused of killing Arthur and was sitting outside my dad's office at the Ministry of Magic. Rose, you asked me that day if I remembered when we used to tell each other everything. Well, I do remember, Rose. I remember the everything now, because I've finally stopped feeling like nothing. The only reason I ever stopped telling you two everything was because I couldn't bear to tell myself, and I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for the nothing."

They didn't hug him, but he didn't want them to. Their nods and smiles were enough, because Rose was fragile and Scorpius was proud and Al still had a lot of work to do to earn their forgiveness. So, when they simultaneously said, "Thank you," he was more than pleased.

Together, the trio began walking over to James and the air quickly lightened around them. It wasn't easy to joke in the midst of grief, but neither of these three had ever been afraid of a challenge, and so as Al took Rose's left shoulder, Scorpius took her right and said, "You know, I think that sword must have been a fake. It felt quite light when I picked it up."

"It better not have been a fake!" exclaimed Al.

"It wasn't, I can assure you," Rose piped in. "I took the Sorting Hat from Professor Longbottom's office myself on the way out of the castle."

"Speaking of which," Al spoke again, "What happened in there? I notice you're no longer holding the Elder Wand, Scorp."

"It's a long story," Scorpius started. He then gave Al the short version, explaining that he had broken into the castle but not saying how, and that Astoria had apparently killed him when he'd tried to rescue Rose. Then he'd been able to come back to life thanks to his uniting of the three Deathly Hallows, but he'd suffered the repercussion of losing his magic. That was what had given Rose the brilliant idea to use the Sword of Gryffindor to kill Astoria: because Scorpius couldn't kill her with a wand.

Al was shocked by nearly every word that came out of Scorpius's mouth, but the magic loss stuck with him the most. He had always sought to gain power without even considering that every bit of it could be taken away from him. And then there was Scorpius, who had provided years' worth of competition for Al and who no longer had any way of competing. Scorpius had given up his talent just as James had when his shoulder had been injured, and it was all somehow because of Al. Al had made Scorpius into the Master of Death and he had crippled James's shoulder, just as he had made Rose forfeit her tolerance when he'd refused to let her save him, just as he had torn Ilana away from her family, just as he had made Harry think that he'd been a horrible father when really Al had been a horrible son. They had all given up so much for him, and what had he given up in return? His sanity? His loyalty? His brother? None of that seemed like enough to fill the debt that he now felt. He may not have owed Astoria anything, but he did owe his family. He owed them more than he would ever be able to pay.

Too lost in thought, Al wasn't able to come up with an eloquent response for Scorpius, giving Scorpius time to really wrap his head around the truth as he said, "It's odd, I never thought Rose and I would make it out of that castle alive, so I didn't really think that I'd need to accept the truth, let alone say it aloud. But there it is: I've lost my magic."

The simple statement, combined with the relevance to how Al was feeling about James, caused Al to say without thinking about it, "I wish I could give you mine."

No one had time to respond before they came to James's broken body, where Al and Scorpius knelt low to the ground so that Rose could see him fully, her hand reaching instinctively for the bowtie Scorpius had wrapped around James's wrist. After giving her some time to be with James in silence, Scorpius shuffled his feet some and suggested, "Maybe we should move him."

Al knew that Scorpius was referring to Godric's Hollow, where a plot next to the men he'd been named after was waiting for James in the graveyard. He appreciated the thought, too, but something about it just seemed... off.

"No," said Rose as she stood up slowly, taking Scorpius's hand on her way up. She must have sensed the mistake as well. "No, this is exactly where he'd want to be."

Tears fell from Al's eyes before he realized just how right Rose was. There was nowhere better for James to be buried than in the dirt of his home Quidditch pitch. But as Al envisioned himself burying his brother, he couldn't stop crying, because just as Scorpius had felt about his own secret, Al didn't ever want to admit to his.

"We'll stay with you," offered Rose as she tugged on Al's shirt from beside him.

He shook his head and she knew immediately that he needed to be alone right now. Without saying goodbye, she and Scorpius turned to leave, Scorpius patting Al on the back on his way out and saying, "You know where to find us," even though he and Al both knew that Al wouldn't go looking for them.

Once they were gone, Al made himself a shovel and started digging, and for a while he felt okay about it. In fact, he felt better and better as more people left the pitch for good, the Weasleys taking the Creeveys' bodies with them and the Scamanders taking Lorcan's and Lucy's (because, at least to Al, a body was about all she was now). He could handle the quiet and the loneliness, because he didn't really have a secret when no one but James was around. He'd never been able to keep much from his brother, even when he kept absolutely everything from their parents.

When those parents finally returned with Lily and Teddy in tow, Harry almost looked proud of his son and Ginny made Al drop the shovel as she pulled him into her arms. She wasn't crying anymore, but she was saying things that made Al feel just as uncomfortable as he would if she were. "It's so good to have you back, Al," she cooed at him. "I don't know what I'd do if I lost you both."

He couldn't take it anymore. Shrugging his mother off and looking for those green eyes again, Al said to Harry and let the rest of his family listen in, "STOP! Don't you get it? _I _did this! And not just indirectly, but _actually, literally, honestly._ It was my stupid spell that hit him and cut him and killed him. I may not have been aiming for him, but it doesn't change the fact that _I _murdered my own brother."

Ginny's hug suddenly became a slap, and like so many he'd earned before, Al knew he deserved it. He deserved far more punishment than that, but he knew that Ginny wouldn't be able to enforce any more. And as he looked at the now disappointed Harry and the sister he hadn't been able to tell this too before, Al dropped his head and tried to convince himself that the worst was over. Still, that didn't mean that the Potters could be a whole, happy family again, just like Rose and Scorpius hadn't suddenly become his best friends again. He couldn't go back to Godric's Hollow with them, and he knew that they weren't about to leave him behind to finish burying James himself, so Al felt that he had no choice but to leave them instead.

He ran as fast as he could in his exhausted state, headed directly for the Forbidden Forest where five hungry dragons were waiting for him. Zephyr was the only being Al wanted to be around right now, because his pet was the only one who seemed to love him unconditionally, and Al needed that. He would need that for a while. So, as Al hopped onto Zephorien's back and leaped into midday December sky, he knew that this escape wasn't like the one he'd made at the end of the summer. This time, something was different, and it wasn't the four extra dragons trailing close behind them, or the loss of a brother, or Astoria's death. It was him.

* * *

_**Note: **So, the Battle of the Blood has been won! YAY! Please leave a review, because I'm dying to know what you thought about Al's journey in this chapter, Lorcan's death, Astoria's death, and some of the aftermath. The last three chapters will focus heavily on the main characters' decisions and changes following everything they've gone through, which I'm very excited to explore. And don't worry, they will still be surprising, just perhaps not as intense as these past six have been. Spoilers will be back on my profile page and you are welcome to ask for some; I will update as soon as possible._

_In the meantime, I am writing the** final oneshot, which will parallel this chapter for Lysander and will reveal a lot more information about Rolf's return and Lily's rescue that will not be included in the main story.** This is the oneshot I have been most excited about since starting the story, so I'd really appreciate it if you guys gave it a go.  
_

_Thanks again,_

_-Hailey_


	43. The Mud-blood Liberation Front

_**Note:** If you haven't already noticed, I have written a oneshot following Lysander Scamander, which is meant to be concurrent with the last chapter, Chapter 42 - Slim Defeat. If you haven't read it, I hope that you take the time to now. Afterward (or if you choose not to), feel free to continue on to this chapter, #43._

_Sorry this took so long, guys. Obviously I'm busy, but I also just don't want this story to come to an end, so I think I'm procrastinating even more than usual. Anyway, this is the third to last chapter and it covers a large expanse of time, so I hope it isn't too confusing and that you enjoy reading._

_-Hailey_

* * *

**43 – The Mud-blood Liberation Front**

_December 26__th__ and 27__th_

Fires were replaced with snow. Tears were replaced with sunlight. Soldiers were replaced with statues. They, like so many other fighting families, had ridden thestrals all the way home from the crumbling castle, because Apparition was too risky with their wounds and because, by now, they had all seen death. They had all been as broken as those magical horses were, dark and hollow and forever fearful. But as the winter returned to the skin that had long since forgotten the difference between being numb and being cold, the Weasleys prevailed and soon were home.

Unlike Hogwarts, the Bird's Nest looked exactly the same as it had the last time Rose had seen it, back in September on the day of her grandfather's funeral. Now, she knew just how many more funerals the wizarding community would need to hold, but she chose to seek comfort in the unbroken, wooden walls of the house she'd grown up in, the house she'd produced her first spell in, the house she'd wept to leave. It looked stronger than she did in this moment, so perhaps she could gain some of its strength in the upcoming hours, which were sure to be the hardest of her life.

Her and Scorpius's thestral landed in the snowy driveway right behind Hugo's, followed by the one Colin and Nigel had shared, then the one on which Hermione was holding the body of Natalie Creevey, and finally Ron's with the body of Dennis. Flakes were falling lightly beneath the beaming afternoon sun, but as Hugo became the first to leap off his thestral he grunted with frustration and fiercely brushed the snow out of his hair as if he didn't want the substance anywhere near him, even though Rose knew how Hugo felt about snow. It was the same feeling she held for rain.

Hugo trudged right past the unmoving Colin and Nigel until he was by his mother's side, and together he and Hermione carried Natalie into the magically opened shed to the left of the main house's front porch. The pair returned to carry Dennis, for Ron had already abandoned the body and the thestral for his wounded daughter.

Rose hadn't had time to give much thought to her father's reaction upon seeing her post-torture, though of course his expression was far worse a sight than anyone else's had been, even Scorpius. She was still seated relatively upright on the thestral even while Scorpius had hopped off and had his hand extended to help her down. Seeing her father walking toward her in the corner of her eye, Rose waited and then Ron was there. Instead of offering a hand, he asked for no permission as he stepped in front of Scorpius and grabbed Rose's waist with his strong arms, pulling her up and off the thestral until she was repositioned into being carried bridal style, her feeble hands clasped tight around her father's neck as his tears seeped into the hair he'd given her. She didn't open her eyes again until she was safe inside, and even then she looked only at Ron, and for a moment she swore that she could see herself through his eyes. She could see the tiny babe he'd once carried inside this same way, only now that child was full-grown and fully bruised. She looked like her mother had after being tortured at Malfoy Manor, and Rose knew better than anyone that that particular sight was one her father had promised himself he would never see again. She wanted to tell him now that it was okay that he'd broken his promise, _all _his promises, because she'd broken hers too. They all had.

The rest of the family slowly gathered in the entryway, and though Ron never showed any sign of letting Rose go, Hermione had already started voicing a schedule that might let time return to them. "We should all get some rest," she said. "As much of it as we can. We'll get to the real work tomorrow."

Turning to the grieving guests, she added, "Colin, Nigel, take the guest room upstairs and please do let us know if you need anything at all. Ron and I will be right next door, and Hugo as well."

She must have looked to Scorpius then, for even though no words were spoken, Rose could see the back of his head as he nodded and then turned around, facing Ron and taking his turn to ignore any sort of permission as he pulled Rose out of Ron's arms and into his, carrying her up two narrow flights of stairs until he was depositing her in her attic bedroom, never once looking back or wondering if perhaps he should have taken the living room couch. She smiled upon knowing this, because for once she hadn't needed to stop him from leaving her. He hadn't even tried.

Standing between the door and the bed in her tattered blue dress, staring at Scorpius in his tattered white suit, Rose tried to focus on her heavy eyelids crying out for sleep, but her mind didn't have any intention of listening. Wondering if Scorpius felt the same, but seeing only his gaze locked on her tainted skin and a certain scar that had recently brandished her neck, she told him, "I think I should take a bath. I'll never be able to sleep like this anyway."

He nodded, but when she limped a few feet toward her bathroom and he didn't follow her, she yelled back at him, "I'll need you as well!" She had tried to sound playful as she'd said so, but of course it came out more vulnerable because this was no time for teasing. She knew why Scorpius hadn't wanted to join her. He didn't want to see any more of her in this state than he already had, but he knew upon her request that she would need him to.

Once they were inside the tiny room, Rose instinctively pointed Scorpius's wand at the bath faucet, from which water started flowing in a steady, comforting stream. She hadn't thought about how Scorpius might feel as he saw her use his wand to make magic that he could no longer make, but he didn't seem all that envious in the moment. All of his focus was on her and the dress he was carefully peeling off her shoulders, his hands soft and cooling as they gingerly brushed her burns and traced her scars.

Gazing at her reflection in the floor-length mirror, with Scorpius standing behind her and watching his hands, Rose saw her tousled hair that was falling out of its braid in frizzed patches and remembered the pure white hands that had grabbed that hair and pulled and pulled until throwing her against the floor. As Scorpius helped her wriggle her arms free of the beaded sleeves, Rose saw the snowflake scar that had recessed into her skin thanks to Ilana's medicines and remembered the blade Astoria's wand had become as it cut into her, and she saw the marks of Astoria's hands on her forearms where she'd fought for her freedom. Then the dress was sinking to the floor, and there were stains of dried blood running down every part of her legs. None of it looked as bad as it felt, because while magic could easily heal superficial wounds, Rose's internal injuries still made her want to scream.

The water had stopped running, Rose was completely naked, and her dress was sitting in a pile on the floor, when Scorpius suggested, "We should burn it."

"No," she refuted before he could go on. She understood all that she'd been put through while wearing that dress, but there was another moment regarding it that she'd never want to forget. "The good memories it holds are far stronger than the bad."

Knowing that he was now remembering the wedding before it had gone sour, the dance before McGonagall had been killed, the love they had made before the waterfalls had frozen, Rose turned away from the mirror so that she was facing Scorpius and pressed her forehead against his, her hands caressing his cheeks. Without having to tell him what she wanted him to do, he was quickly unbuttoning his shirt and hopping into the bath with her, laying himself down in the water and letting the back of her body mold itself into the front of his.

Those heavy lids of hers closed willingly just as soon as she was leaning against his chest, whose scars perfectly matched the ones lining her back. When their deep breaths became one, she reached for both of his hands, led them to clasp around her bare stomach, and said, "You've lost a lot in this war, but I don't want you to ever think that you're alone." After the battle had been won, everyone had focused on the newly orphaned Creevey boys, or the Scamander who'd lost his brother, or Lucy who'd lost her future, and the world that had lost its best Quidditch player, but Scorpius had become an orphan too. He had lost a brother too. He had lost his future too. The world had lost its best wizard too.

And worse than that, Rose had a newfound understanding of what it had been like for Scorpius to be raised by Astoria. She had seen his childhood first-hand through the witch's memories, so she knew about the fights between his parents that Scorpius had witnessed and the doors he'd smashed down to get to them and the tears he'd shed when they would leave for months at a time without even saying goodbye.

"I don't feel alone. Not anymore," Scorpius replied, and his words made Rose happier than she had ever felt because she knew he meant it and because he meant everything to her.

Turning her neck and looking up at him so that she could kiss his lips ever so lightly, she said, "Me either," and when he closed his eyes she fell into a dreamless sleep within the confines and contours of his arms.

They woke simultaneously the next morning, meaning they had slept for nearly eighteen hours. Their pruned skin was well-earned, and together Rose and Scorpius slowly stepped out of the claw-foot tub and dressed in fresh, comfortable clothes, Scorpius finding some spare garments he had left at the Nest last summer.

Rose was determined to walk down the multiple staircases from her attic room herself, even though Scorpius gave her plenty of protest. She compromised by allowing him to hold her hand the whole way, and he was patient as he guided her, step by miniscule step. They were only a few steps from the entryway when they discovered that they weren't the only ones awake in the house. Ron and Hermione were discussing something, presumably in the living room, and their daughter had absolutely no qualms in listening from afar.

"They need a real home, Hermione. A real _family_, like Harry used to need us," Ron was saying very seriously. Rose was leaning on the bottom railing at this point, taking a breather while Scorpius gazed out the front door windows.

Hermione was more soft than bossy as she replied, "Harry lost his parents when he was a baby, Ronald. That's too different. I agree that Colin and Nigel need a real home, but the last thing they need are new parents, because trying to replace what they've lost is never going to work. And even if they did agree with an adoption, I don't expect Hugo would feel the same."

"Why not?" asked Ron.

Hermione grunted, as did Rose. "Oh, I dunno', perhaps because he doesn't want to suddenly have his boyfriend be his _brother_!"

Ron's sigh was plenty loud enough for Rose to hear. "Fine," he said, "Then what do you propose we do?"

"Colin will turn eighteen in a matter of months, and in the Muggle world eighteen is considered adult. He'll have full custody of Nigel, and they'll make their life decisions together. Our home will always remain open to them when and if they wish to stay or return, but I expect they'll want to move on at some point. We all will."

There was a long pause after Hermione finished speaking. Rose took the opportunity to start the intimidating trek across the hall toward her parents, but froze once more when Ron said in his lowest voice, "The battle brought it all back, didn't it? The blood status, the scar, the M-word. It made you feel like you'd never really moved on from the first war."

"I suppose I just feel like we made no progress in the last twenty-five years, when clearly we should have. Blimey, what have I been doing all this time? Giving more rights to house elves when Muggle-borns still don't have any rights at all?" admitted Hermione. Rose couldn't see her mother from around the corner, but she could tell that Hermione had her head in her hands by the way her voice had been muffled by her bushy hair. Her voice was back to its usual clarity when Hermione added, "Since when did you get so perceptive, by the way?"

"I dunno'," answered Ron. "But if history has anything to say about it, it was probably you who taught me."

At this point, Rose just had to peer around so that she could see Hermione smile as she said, "Don't tell the kids this, but I wouldn't last two days without you." Then they kissed, and for perhaps the first time in her life, Rose wasn't disgusted by the sight of her parents snogging. In fact, she thought it was sort of beautiful.

Once she was fairly certain they'd broken apart, Rose dragged herself into the living room to announce her presence, but was silenced when she laid eyes on giant Christmas tree sitting in the corner across from her parents and farthest from the fireplace. It was undecorated but for the piles of presents hiding underneath its feathered branches, and Rose nearly cried bittersweet tears when she realized that they'd been waiting for her to hang the ornaments, but that they'd already missed her favorite holiday.

"It's never too late to celebrate," said Ron as Rose gaped at the tree and wondered how she should feel.

Rolling her eyes at Ron's corny phrase, Hermione suggested, "Why don't you open one, Rose? Then you can decorate and we can all open the rest together."

Rose didn't need to be told twice, but she winced in pain after being too quick to bend her wounded back, so Ron hopped off the sofa and picked up one of the gifts for her. She was surprised to read the beautifully wrapped box's tag and see that it was meant for Scorpius, but smiled up at her father in thanks to let him know just how well she knew what a breakthrough this was for Ron.

"Scorpius!" she yelled for him to join her in the room so that he could open his first Christmas present in many years.

When he didn't respond, she threatened to open it for him and was then on her way back to the front door, unwrapping the gift as she went. She was so focused on both the walking and the unwrapping that she didn't notice just how lost in his gaze Scorpius was until she was holding the hand-woven, sky blue sweater with the letter 'S' on it and asked Scorpius to look at it.

Even then, he didn't listen, though he did make room so that she could see out the window herself, where a massive slew of people had gathered both on and off the front porch. There were photographers with their cumbersome cameras, journalists with their floating quick-quotes quills, and reporters with their magical microphones, and it seemed as though the only reason they weren't banging on the door was because Hermione's well-established protective charms wouldn't allow them to.

"What do they want?" asked Rose, but she already knew the answer.

"Me," said Scorpius, wrapping his hand around hers. By now, everyone in the wizarding world would know about the battle, but they wanted details, and Scorpius had always been the one they'd wanted details from in the past, especially when Al couldn't be found. Scorpius hadn't been the only hero in this war, but reporters rarely cared about writing more than one story.

Rose was about to call her parents over and ask them to cordially escort the intruders off the Weasley property, but she didn't end up having to when Hugo surfaced from upstairs and walked straight out the door without a word of greeting. He was still dressed in Chudley Cannon pajama bottoms tucked into thick blue socks at his ankles, his hair a compound of unruly flames atop his freckled face. Rose felt comforted to know that her little brother really hadn't changed as he ran into the snowy front yard the same way he always would when he was younger. The only part of him that looked any different on the surface was his height, already soaring at a solid six feet.

Such lankiness helped Rose and Scorpius keep track of him as Hugo sifted through the large _Daily Prophet_ team, then a group of spectacled witches from Wales, and even a few Americans who looked nothing like Abby Chang-Turner. Though Rose couldn't hear him through the glass barrier, she could sense how professional he was being by the way his baby blue eyes would squint like he was studying while he talked into the microphones, and the way he would place his hand on a reporter's shoulder when he was ready to move on as if they were the ones who needed consolation. Every once in a while, Hugo would look back at the window, behind which waited Rose and Scorpius who were soon joined by Hermione and then Ron, and Rose had a funny feeling that Hugo could see his parents' proud faces through the glass as well as his own reflection.

When he re-entered the house, the crowd had dissipated, but none of the attention Hugo had garnered was lost. Hermione, concerned as ever plus some more because she was a mother, was the first to ask, "What did they say?"

"Yeah," Ron backed her up.

Less curious about what they'd wanted to know and more so about the select information they'd just grown privy to, Rose asked, "What did you tell them?"

"Yeah," Scorpius backed her up.

Hugo had to catch his breath from the last bombardment, but he didn't bother pretending he wasn't enjoying the attention. He also seemed to have every word memorized as he eventually reported, "Well, two asked about the Creeveys, but the other sixteen only asked about Astoria. They wanted to know what had happened to her inside the castle when Rose was taken, why she'd left the castle, who pulled out the Sword of Gryffindor, and how Albus could have been brainwashed into killing her."

"_Brainwashed?"_ asked Scorpius with a newfound ferocity. "He acted completely of his own accord; we all did."

"Which is exactly what I told them," Hugo confirmed before Scorpius could go farther or Rose could add more defense. "I said that the only brainwashing came from the other side, that the sword showed itself to worthy Gryffindors, that there was nothing left in the castle by the time Astoria left it, and that only Rosie can say what happened inside. Oh, and I hope you don't mind, but they seemed to have heard about somebody turning into a Floe, and I accidentally told them it was you."

Scorpius was shrugging with acceptance, for it would have only been a matter of time before the world knew exactly what he'd lost this Christmas, and only Ron decided to continue the question and answer period when he asked, "_Floe?_ What's a Floe?"

"In between a Squib and a Muggle-born," Hermione and Hugo answered in unison.

"A person born magical who loses their magic at some point in their life," Rose added.

Ron was nodding while Hugo was concluding, "They're very curious about you now, and I only convinced them to scram by promising that I'd write something about you for the _Prophet._ Don't worry, it'll be short."

"It can be as long as you want it to be, Hugo," Scorpius told him. "Honestly. An outside explanation might even help me make sense of it myself."

Rose's hand was still locked with Scorpius's, and she squeezed his at that moment because she was proud of him for being so strong, but also because she wanted him to know that he needn't be strong with her. He was turning his neck to face her when their hands twirled together and knuckles brushed each other and a different set of knuckles hammered at the door.

This time, Ron was the one to magically check who the visitor was, and opened the door wide to invite the Minister for Magic inside. Shacklebolt shook Ron's hand firmly and kissed Hermione on the cheek as she greeted him on a first-name basis. Then Rose's parents led him into the living room and Hermione offered him some tea, but he politely refused upon announcing that he wouldn't be staying long. Rose wasn't sure if he would want her, Scorpius, and Hugo there for whatever he had to say, but she followed him down the hallway anyway.

The group of six was sitting in a circle of sofas and cushioned chairs, five of them gazing at the dark-skinned man in purple robes and a rather beautiful jeweled cap. Shacklebolt must have sensed their eagerness, for before long he spoke in his highly commanding but ruggedly aged voice, "I've just come from an inspection at Hogwarts followed by a meeting of department heads at the Ministry, where a unanimous vote decided that it should be me to bring personal updates to all Order families regarding the future of a new wizarding world."

"A _new_ wizarding world?" asked Ron with concern. "How much exactly is it going to change?"

Shacklebolt clasped his hands in his lap and explained, "Well, for starters, Hogwarts will be closed until the fall, by which time it will be rebuilt, refurbished, and reassigned to a new Headmaster."

Everyone in the room sighed to hear that, though for very different reasons. Ron and Hermione hated to think Hogwarts would have to be rebuilt a second time or that their daughter would miss graduation just as they once had, Hugo dreaded the idea that he would have to keep himself busy for half a year without loads of friends and schoolwork, and Scorpius was relieved to know that he wouldn't miss anything at Hogwarts since he couldn't go back anyway but was still grieving McGonagall's death. Rose was the only one who had no idea what she felt, because she had no idea what she was going to do. Would she return to Hogwarts when it reopened and finish out her seventh year like her mother did many moons ago, or would she follow in her father's footsteps and find a job without a diploma?

She was still pondering this new dilemma when Shacklebolt continued. "We have already done an inspection of the grounds," he said, still on the topic of Hogwarts. "All deaths have been accounted for, and funeral services will be held according to family wishes."

"And what of the family wills?" asked Hermione, not needing to explain that she was referring to the Creeveys, as Shacklebolt had no doubt already been informed of the boys' and bodies' whereabouts.

Sure enough, Shacklebolt answered knowingly, "Dennis and Natalie had no surviving relatives other than their sons, so everything they had will go to Colin, and then will be split with Nigel when he is of age." Once Hermione was satisfied, Shacklebolt turned to Scorpius, whose head was half-buried in Rose's hair, and said, "The Malfoys will be slightly more complicated, but I will get back to you on that as soon as I can."

It was Rose's turn to be worried when Shacklebolt added, "We also failed to locate Albus Potter during our search, and although the Potters have decided not to post a search warrant so as not to bother any Aurors, they have asked to report any sightings."

Most of the Weasleys nodded and said of course, but Rose and Scorpius just looked at each other. Rose's eyes were wide with worry as if to say that she wanted to look for Al, but Scorpius's half-open mouth suggested that he wasn't so sure. Maybe Al would be best left alone. It was Scorpius's sullen nod that reminded the both of them that Al would never be alone anymore, not with the ghost of his brother haunting him for all eternity.

"There is just one more point of business left to attend to," said Shacklebolt in an effort to regain Rose and Scorpius's attention. "During the department head meeting, we discussed some needed changes within the Ministry, and everyone has agreed that the Department of Magical Law Enforcement could use some new blood, preferably Muggle-filled."

He was looking at Hermione now, and she was staring back at him with mostly anxiety and just a glimmer of excitement. "Kingsley..." she warned, but he wouldn't let her protest further.

"No, Hermione. Unfortunately, you don't have a say in this. Your name was brought up by every wizard at that meeting, and with Berric retiring soon it is the perfect opportunity to start training you for his position. It's about time you took on a leadership role, and I'd much rather you take his than mine."

The tears in Hermione's eyes were enough to let Shacklebolt know that she was more than okay with this change of scenery. Ron was kissing those tears away, ridiculously proud until he realized that his wife was about to become his boss, but even that only sparked one small complaint. Hugo was perhaps the proudest of them all, however, for as Shacklebolt readied to leave, Hermione decided she should go into the office to care of her unfinished projects and Hugo practically begged to go in with her. He claimed he wanted to be her assistant, and for once Rose actually believed him in his desires to spend a whole day at the mundane Ministry. For him, it was just like his beloved library, only instead of books about dead people he had real live ones in every corner.

Shacklebolt had already gone and Hugo and Hermione were putting on their respective coats when Rose asked her father if she could go looking for Al with Scorpius. Not surprisingly, Ron was outraged by the idea, arguing that Rose was in no condition to go traipsing off on a rescue mission for a boy who didn't exactly deserve rescuing. Around the same time they were caught in the middle of this spat, Colin and Nigel seemed to have awoken and were descending the stairs to the entryway where the rest of the family had congregated.

"I'll be perfectly fine; we'll take a thestral," Rose gave her rebuttal. Colin and Nigel were at the top of the stairs and only Hugo had noticed.

Ron grunted, crossing his arms and asking, "And what makes you think it'll be so easy to find him? Do you even know where to look?" They were halfway down the stairs now, Nigel in the lead but refusing to meet Hugo's gaze.

"Of course we do! We're his best friends," Rose said. Nigel had reached the bottom step, and as everyone finally turned to him he turned away and walked right past them and into the kitchen, not speaking a word and not looking anywhere but the creaky wooden floor. Colin ran after him, but Hugo ran away, Hermione following him out onto the driveway so that they could Disapparate together.

Because Rose knew that the majority of Ron's concern was coming from his fear of being alone in the house right now, she tried to reassure him with, "Looks like you have plenty going on here," before heading out herself, her arm around Scorpius's shoulder for support as she guided him to the magically winged horse he could no longer see.

Once they kicked off the ground, Scorpius asked from behind Rose, "Where to?"

"Hogwarts!" she said. "Where else?"

A few hours later, they landed at the edge of the Forbidden Forest and set their thestral free, then walked all the way to the Quidditch pitch where they both knew Al would be. He may have hid from the Ministry by leaving the grounds for a while, but he'd have to have come back afterward, because he'd never be able to leave James so easily. They passed Hagrid's empty, burnt hut along the way, as well as a very serene Black Lake that was hiding many secrets beneath its surface, and didn't dare step foot on one of the castle's upheaved and crumbling stones. They found a group of dragons frolicking by the locker rooms and eating leftover wedding cake, and finally they noticed Al floating on a broomstick directly above James's makeshift grave.

He was in the same black suit he'd been in during the battle and he still had the Sword of Gryffindor in his hands, but Rose couldn't tell from this far away whether he felt proud to have wielded it or guilty to have stained its silver with blood. She was so busy contemplating this that she didn't even notice Scorpius had abandoned her until he returned with her red Nimbus 2021 in his hands.

She took the broom from him willingly, but was far less willing to part with Scorpius at a time like this. Her injuries were still in pain, but he said, "I believe in you. It'll make you stronger." She didn't want him to have to stay behind, but he said, "I'm fine. It's you he wants, not me. I'll enjoy walking around for a bit." She kissed him and he said nothing at all.

Mounting the broom was difficult, but she managed to kick off and then flying was easy. In fact, the freedom of the wintry air felt soothing against her punctured skin, and by the time she reached Al she felt quite comfortable in the position. He, on the other hand, looked more _un_comfortable, more exhausted, more still than he had ever been. The only part of him she recognized was the way he was staring down at the muddy pitch the way he'd always look at the floor when he was about to talk to somebody because he liked to pretend that he was just talking to himself.

So she was actually pleased that his eyes failed to meet hers as she asked, "Al, what are you doing?"

"D'you know what he said to me before he died? What he said to make me step up?" Al asked. When Rose didn't answer, he replied for her, "He said that he loved me, and that I was the bravest man he'd ever known."

Rose was crying before she could stop herself, and the salty water dripped off her face and fell all the way down to the pitch, where they sunk into the frozen dirt and were absorbed by the exact person they'd been created for. "That's incredible," she said, for Al and for herself.

"It is," Al agreed, "But the only problem is that now I don't know how to live up to it. How do I move on after everything I've done? How do I choose what to be good at when all I was ever good at was fighting?"

Ironically, Rose had all the same questions. For so many years, she had just been trying to get through Hogwarts with the best possible grades she could earn, become Head Girl and be a good girlfriend and be appointed to the core alliance and fight in the war. Now that she'd done all that, what was she supposed to do?

Rose never did formulate a response before Al flew forward slightly, waved the sword in the air, and said, "Bloody hell, how did we even end up here? James is dead. Scorpius has lost everything. Even Lily's forgotten who she is, and the star she's supposed to become. I finally feel like the people I love really need me, but I don't know how to gratify that need."

Thinking about the way Hugo had jumped to help Hermione but didn't know how to help Nigel, or the way only Scorpius's arms had helped her heal even when Ron's had tried, Rose thought aloud, "Maybe you can't give them what you think they need, but perhaps it's just as okay to give them something else. Maybe we can't remind Scorpius of what he still has or make Lily see the promise of her future, but perhaps we _can_ remind them of who they were." Pausing mid-conversation, Rose glanced down at the pitch to find Scorpius walking back to its center with a snow-white ferret clawing at his shoulder. Then she looked over at the half-demolished castle and continued with, "Maybe we can't go back to Hogwarts, but perhaps we can make our own diploma."

"Maybe we can't believe in anything we did before, but perhaps we can believe in something new," Al finished for her, suddenly on the same page.

Smiling, Rose asked him, "And what are you going to believe in, Al? Starting now."

"I think I'll believe in love, in happiness. I'll believe in everything that doesn't break."

* * *

_January 22__nd_

How many uses does dragon blood serve? Twelve. What are Erklings? Elfish creatures of the dark arts with particular taste for small children. What is the most identifiable characteristic of the Shrivelfig? Its rich purple coloring. What is one negative consequence of attempting to turn vinegar into wine? The vinegar may explode. The Gemino curse can be used to duplicate an object, but what must be done to bewitch said object into multiplying repeatedly when touched?

"I don't know," Rose whispered as she began to scour through every last page of her thick Transfiguration textbook. "I should know this," she cursed herself in the meantime. "Why don't I know this?"

When she couldn't find the answer in her main book, she anxiously turned her body around in circles to search for other resources. She was sitting in the middle of the living room, which had been cleared of all furniture upon her request for floor space. To her left was an entire stack of Charms notes both she and her mother had built up over their respective years at Hogwarts. Next to that was a goblet currently boiling a perfectly made Draught of Living Death potion. She was planning to use one of her ten overgrown Tibetan turnips to test it out in an hour. Then there was the whole half of the room that had been devoted to Defense Against the Dark Arts, as there was no better studying tool for the subject than applied practice. So far, she'd protected herself against a boggart dementor with the Patronus Charm, she'd lost a duel with her father but had won easily against Hugo, and she'd turned the walls to ashes when she'd spent an entire day working on her offensive curses. Other subjects that she already knew well, like History of Magic and Arithmancy, were scattered in the corners, and Transfiguration books and test subjects were laid out directly in front of her.

Sighing when nothing in the area brought her any relief, Rose refrained from burying her head in the useless pages and instead procured a flock of canaries out of thin air that flew peacefully above her head and duplicated them with the Gemino curse, trying to see if her muscles could remember how to make them automatically multiply even when her mind was failing her. The birds kept flapping their wings, and she found herself counting those wings and ending with the same number every time.

Her body curled over in defeat as the birds vanished and Rose winced in pain when her fractured ribs cracked under the pressure. Physically, she was feeling much better these days, but her perpetual stress tended to remind her that she was foolish to think she was completely healed. She was about to haul herself up and head to the kitchen for a cup of soothing tea when someone came from that direction and offered her one himself.

"Figured you could use something to warm you up tonight," said Colin as he cleared a place beside her and she accepted the steaming drink graciously.

She had to crane her neck to look over her Herbology specimens and out through the window, where she saw tiny spots of white floating through the blackening sky. "I hadn't even noticed," she said. It hadn't snowed much since Christmas, and the sight of its magic almost made her want to cry.

The feeling was even worse when Nigel entered the room, tip-toeing past her piles until he came to the row of windows and paused to gaze outside at the weather that perfectly matched his soul, and even his outfit. He was still wearing the black suit from his parents' funeral, which had been held just yesterday after allowing the boys a month of pure privacy. The suit was speckled all over with spots of lighter color, having been stained with blizzards of tears.

"Hi, Nigel," Rose said to him.

"Hi, Rose," he said without turning to face her. A greeting was about all one could expect to hear from Nigel these days.

Knowing this, Rose tried to refocus her attention on Colin as she pointed her white wand at the open fireplace and starting a roaring fire with one motion, immediately feeling cozier as the heat fused with her tea and soon her throat. It was much harder to feel stressed when warmth was swimming through her skin.

"So, how's the studying going?" he asked, already sounding so strong in comparison to his younger brother. Rose understood why Colin was trying to act that way and why he was so accepting of Nigel's numbness: Colin had had years with Dennis and Natalie that Nigel had spent away at Hogwarts, so he would give Nigel all the time he needed to spend with them now.

Smiling lightly at the thought, Rose replied, "It's a bit frustrating, but I'm trying my best." Her NEWT exams would be taking place tomorrow in London. Hermione had found out about the opportunity through the Ministry after hearing about certain home-schooled witches and wizards who had to take their exams outside of Hogwarts. Unfortunately, the lack of participation in these exams meant that tomorrow's was Rose's only chance. Results would come in February, and Rose was trying not to think about what would come after that.

"What are you struggling with most?" asked Colin with the utmost concern. He'd been home at the Bird's Nest most of this month even while others were out working, so he knew how much time and effort Rose had put into this.

Rose was about to say Transfiguration, but stopped herself when she thought that this may just be because of Scorpius. He had been visiting Ilana for her nineteenth birthday, and it had been the first day since the battle that she'd been away from him. Trying not to think of him or his lost talent, she answered instead, "Surprisingly, all of the details that I'll need to remember for the written portion. If anything, the applied parts give me a good deal of comfort."

She felt immediately guilty as soon as these words came out of her mouth, even though Colin didn't look hurt of offended. But before he could say anything, she found herself asking, "Pardon my curiosity, but what does it feel like to not have that comfort – to not be able to just pull all your favorite things out of thin air? What is it like to live without magic?"

Colin was looking at Nigel, whose head had been turned to follow the line of his shoulder as if interested to overhear Rose and Colin's conversation, and eventually Colin told the room, "I don't know exactly. I guess I can't say because I've never known what it's like to live _with_ magic, so living without it doesn't feel like anything to me. I suppose I get jealous of magical folk sometimes, especially my family, but other times I'm sort of thankful to be left out of the mess it all makes."

Nodding slightly, Rose knew she couldn't hide her disappointment. That wasn't the answer she'd wanted, and Colin knew it, hence why he said, "Pardon _my_ curiosity, but why don't you ask Scorpius? I'm sure he'd have a better idea of what you're getting at."

"I can't ask him. I-" Rose started, thinking that she couldn't ask that of Scorpius for the same reason she hadn't asked for his help in her Transfiguration studies: she didn't want to cause him any more pain. But she was interrupted by the sound of the front door opening, followed by a parade of familiar voices returning from another hard day's work.

"We need to pass this bill as soon as possible if we want to guarantee Muggle-born liberation," Hermione was saying as heavy boots shuffled over the doormat and dirtied the wooden floor.

"Yeah, but-" Hugo was about to protest.

That was until Ron interrupted, his low and booming voice rising above the others to ask, "Is this the bill that will officially make the M-word illegal?"

"That is part of it," Hermione answered, "But there's so much more!"

Frustrated and suddenly impatient, Hugo completely cut her off. "Yeah, yeah, there's loads more, but that's not the point. We _need_ to wait and re-write some sections so that it will include both Squib and Floe rights as well, or would you rather we forget about people like Colin and Scorpius?"

There was a long moment of silence then, and Rose looked over at Colin's smiling face before she stood up slowly and made her way to the main hall. Once she had a view of the entryway, she could see each of her parents looking at Hugo and then back at each other as if sharing an inside joke that Hugo didn't understand but that somehow made them prouder than they'd ever been.

By the time everyone had their coats on and were beginning to settle in to the kitchen, Scorpius walked inside to join them. Rose was ready and waiting at the front door, though Hugo wasn't far behind; as always, he had more questions for Scorpius thanks to the _Daily Prophet _column he was no writing about him. At dinner, Hugo harassed Scorpius about his indeterminate future and what Ilana had seen in the castle during battle, keeping himself plenty distracted to yet again ignore the unresponsive Nigel from across the table. Scorpius was good enough to provide Hugo with a few updates on Ilana, even going so far as to suggest that Hermione speak with the young witch about her "de-scarring" potion, and Rose tried to be patient as she waited to have Scorpius all to herself.

Eventually, her patience was rewarded. Once people finished eating, they all disappeared to their separate rooms, Rose leading Scorpius upstairs with only a few necessary books in her hands. Inside the attic, they turned to each other and asked in unison, "How are you?" Then they added in unison, "I missed you." Then they blushed, also in unison.

They were settling into bed when Scorpius finally got a word in edgewise and said, "I'd forgotten how hard it was to be away from you, even for a day."

"I'll never forget how it feels to be away from you," replied Rose, thinking about the hour she'd spent dueling Astoria while believing that Scorpius was dead. "Even when you were gone for that short moment, it was like the world had lost its hero and Draco had lost its son, but I had lost my heart."

Scorpius's arm was wrapped around her shoulders and her hand was wrapped around his in an attempt to pull it closer to her even though it was already as close as it could be. "I'm so sorry," he said.

"Don't be," she said genuinely. It wasn't his fault that Astoria had tried to kill him, plus Rose didn't like remembering that hour. Scorpius's death wasn't the only memory from that night that she was trying to suppress. "Anyway, you're back now, and I'm sure Ilana was thrilled to see you today. How was she doing?"

"She's all right. She hasn't seen much of Al, so she was a bit worried, but she has her family and they're all quite brilliant." After taking a breath, he asked, "How was your day? You ready for tomorrow?"

"I hope so," said Rose. "To be honest, I'm more worried about what comes after that. I know that I don't want to go back to Hogwarts, but I'm not exactly sure what I _do_ want to do."

"What happened to finding a Ministry job?" Tens of Hogwarts students were hired for internships at the Ministry of Magic every year, and Rose had been planning to be one of them since she was eleven years old, but things were different were. So many other plans had fallen through because of the war, and something about working in a cubicle, even if a highly prestigious one, didn't feel right to her.

Trying to explain this to both Scorpius and herself, Rose told him, "I admire what my mum and Hugo are doing these days, and I do love the practicality and the knowledge I gain from all my books, but-"

"But you don't really love _books_," Scorpius finished for her. When she was about to question him, he went on to say, "Like you said, you love what you gain from them, but you don't actually love _them_, at least not the way your mother or Hugo does. Hermione could just smell books and feel like her life was complete, and Hugo still likes to hide out in libraries for weeks on end reading exciting stories even when his own life has the potential to be just as exciting.

"What _you_ love is thinking back on something you read and applying it to a situation. You love looking for clues and solving mysteries with Al. You love getting into people's heads, and not in a creepy, sinister way, because when you do it you feel empathy for them. You love applied magic, because you love the way you can create something out of thin air, and just as easily, you can make it disappear."

Rose knew that he was right, but she also didn't want him to be. She didn't want to practice applied magic when he would never be able to again, because the things he'd just described about her were the same as what he used to say when explaining his own affinity for Transfiguration. Wondering how she might put this without sounding like she was insulting him or treating him like a child, she decided to look him straight in the eyes, think about the day she'd had, and say, "But I don't want to go where you can't follow."

He smiled and even laughed, which didn't make her feel much better. "Rose, I've never known how far you'd go in your life, because I've always known that you are capable of going anywhere. I don't expect to follow you, because I need to find my own path to take, but I promise that I will never lose sight of wherever you decide to go."

Truth be told, she had only prepared for five of her potential twelve NEWT examinations, and it was only now that she understood why. Hugo would grow up to be a historian or a writer, and he'd join his mother in saving the world one word at a time, but Rose didn't want that. She wanted to save the world in a different way – in the way her father had always set off to do. "I want to be an Auror," she said."

"You will be," said Scorpius. "I know you will."

* * *

_February 29__th__ and March 1__st_

Leap years were always special, and 2024 was no exception. Technically, Hugo was celebrating his fourth birthday and sixteen years tonight, and for the first time since before he'd gone away to Hogwarts, he'd be sharing the night with his father, whose birthday took place the day after his. Now, the Weasleys were all gathered at a table in the kitchen, Ron at one head and Hugo on the other, and ten minutes from now when the magical clock struck midnight they would each have to make a wish and blow out their candles (of which Ron had many more than Hugo).

While they waited, Hermione and Rose had agreed to prepare short speeches for the very special men in their family, and as Hermione stood from her chair to raise a toast to Hugo, Rose was beginning to grow nervous about the closed envelope she held in her hands and the words she was planning to say to her father. Luckily, Scorpius was rubbing her arms to settle down her uprooted hairs, and she tried to match her hitched breaths with his steady ones.

"Well," started Hermione after she cleared her throat and gained everyone's attention. "I suppose it's only appropriate that I say a little something about my son tonight, as it was on this day sixteen years ago that I brought him into this world. Although, in retrospect, I don't entirely like taking all the credit for bringing Hugo into the world, especially since I feel like it was him who brought me out of it.

"Surely you all know what I mean when I say that I'm the ambitious type. Everyone in this family is, so having children was never set in stone for Ron and I. But then Rose came along, and she was as perfect then as she is now, and for once in my life I wasn't jealous of my best friend and husband loving someone more than he loved me, because that someone was our daughter." From across the table, Rose was blushing profusely and Scorpius was leaning forward to kiss her cheek. "By the time I was pregnant with Hugo, we actually knew what we were doing but we also had too much to do, and so, also for the first time in my life, I was forced to take some time off. I stayed at home for a month before going into labor and then didn't go back to work until Hugo was three months old. At first, I was so terrified of having nothing to do all day or being stuck with this high-tempered baby – because, yes, Hugo was and is _extremely_ high-tempered – with no escape.

"But I didn't need an escape from him. I don't think I've ever been more ambitious than I was during those few months I spent alone caring for you, Hugo. Every day that went by was another day that we survived together, and I found myself imagining years in the future that you and I would still be sharing. We had plenty of adversaries and obstacles along the way, but here we are, and I can safely say that what started out as a few months of hope is now a sixteen year reality. Actually, the past two months I've spent with you have felt quite similar to the first ones you ever had, because you're still bringing me out of that tedious working world every day and leading me into a better one. Happy birthday, Hugo, my almighty fireball."

Everyone clapped and cheered and congratulated Hugo while he stood up to hug and thank his mother. Only Nigel seemed unimpressed by the speech as he kept his hands to his sides, and Rose couldn't help but notice that Hugo was staring at him and had to blink his eyes to death just to make himself look away.

It was Scorpius's light push on her shoulder that reminded Rose she was next up. Her nerves returned to her in a panicked flood, but she managed to stand up straight and start speaking, if slightly monotonously at first. "Er, I am quite fortunate to love a great deal of people in this world, most of whom I'm fairly certain love me back." She looked to Scorpius for confirmation here, and he gave it to her with a wink. "I'm also so incredibly lucky to never have had to learn what unrequited love feels like, and I think I have my father to thank for that. I mean, he's the one who made me who I am today. He's the person I've always aspired to be.

"My mum just said that she's an ambitious person, which of course isn't news to me. I'm rather ambitious myself." Everyone laughed there, Scorpius even going so far as to smirk in agreement. But his face was all warmth when he watched Rose hold the envelope she'd been keeping all week with both hands and hesitantly tear off its seal, all the while continuing with, "So ambitious that I am currently holding the results to the NEWT examinations that I either idiotically or cleverly took early."

Hugo set off a magical drum roll as Rose pulled out the paper and announced her foot. She hadn't yet announced to her family what she was planning to do with her results, so only she and Scorpius knew to hope for at least five successes as she read off, "Charms: Outstanding. Defence Against the Dark Arts: Outstanding. Herbology: Outstanding. Potions: Outstanding. Transfiguration…" she paused. She needed one more, and this was the one she had feared the most. That was until she said, "Outstanding."

Rose shared a smile with a Scorpius before she even noticed the excitement sweeping across the table. Hermione, Hugo, and Colin also appeared to be catching onto what these particular NEWT subjects meant for Rose's future, as they were looking to each other with both surprise and understanding. It was only Ron who was still oblivious to Rose's recent decision, too lost in his pride to piece together what was going on.

Knowing this, Rose said for her father, "So, as you might guess, I only took the exams that I'd need to become an Auror, and now it looks as if that really is a possibility." Ron wasn't so oblivious anymore. He was looking at Rose with utter clarity now, so much so that he couldn't help but cry in order to force every last speck of fog from his sight.

"Anyway," she said as she met Ron's gaze, "I didn't mean for this to be all about me. The reason I waited to read my scores was because I wanted until today to ask you, Dad, if you would like to mentor me through my training. I can't exactly think of anyone better suited for the task, since you're more than just the best father a girl could ask for. You're the best idol too, the best role model, the best leader. I love you, happy birthday, and please say yes!"

It was one minute to midnight when Ron nearly knocked over the table to reach Rose, pull her into his arms, and say the word "yes" about as many times as humanly possible. Hermione had to pull him off their daughter in order to have him seated in time for the wish, and though Ron complained about having nothing left to wish for, Hugo looked directly at Nigel as he blew out his candles with a single gulp of air. As everyone started to sing and Scorpius and Colin jumped in to cut the cakes – Ron's bright orange with magical Chudley Cannons figurines flying through the frosting, Hugo's in the shape of the one and only snitch he'd ever caught – Hugo looked at Nigel, who was silent and still. When pieces of cake were passed around the table, Hugo looked at Nigel when the latter refused to eat anything.

Most of the family members were about half-way through their dessert when Hugo ignored his still being underage and used his wand to pick up Nigel's plate and then plop it back down, producing a huge thumping sound that reverberated throughout the room and that caused Nigel to shutter in fear.

Finally having Nigel's attention, Hugo said just loud enough for his boyfriend to hear, "Talk to me. Why won't you talk to me?"

Nigel's lips were trembling and his ears were as red as Weasley hair, but he still didn't verbally respond. Nobody else dared to say anything, though, and the silence also didn't stop Hugo from pushing even harder on Nigel's weak spots. "I miss my best friend, Squirmsnail," he said with tears welling in and out of his eyes. "I miss the love of my life – the bravest man I knew. Who is this boy in front of me, with these distant eyes and numb body, who does nothing but stare at the walls all day? Tell me, please, who is that?"

Everyone but Hugo felt very protective of Nigel in that moment. They had all watched him grieve and they had all known and loved the boy for different reasons before his grief had even come to him. Colin had loved his brother, Scorpius had loved his wandmaker, Ron and Hermione had loved their stray, and Rose had loved her friend. None of them wanted Hugo to hurt Nigel any further, but they also sympathized with Hugo in wanted their loved one back. So, though some of them leaned forward in preparation of defense, they all waited for a response they all needed to hear.

"I'm an orphan," came a whisper, so quiet it made everyone strain to hear, but gradually it grew louder until everyone strained upon hearing it. "I have _orphan_ eyes and I live in an _orphan_ body and I stare at _orphan_ walls all day, and all I want is to be _FREE._ _That's_ who I am. _That's _who I've become. So forgive me if I don't much feel like wishing you a happy birthday when I've lost the two people who gave me mine."

"I do forgive you," said Hugo without pause. "I never blamed you in the first place. I just want you to let me help you. Just talk to me, tell me what you need me to do, and I'll do it. I'll do anything for you, because you're the one who made me brave enough to do it."

Nigel looked at Hugo with eyes squinted rather than their usual wide, and Rose wondered if he no longer trusted Hugo. He sounded hesitant that Hugo would keep his promise as he requested, "Erase it, then. Erase it all."

No one needed to ask Nigel what he meant; they all knew that he was referring to his memory. Dennis and Natalie had worked as Obliviators for the memory and Scorpius had used their skills to erase the memories of countless Forbidden Flock members during the Battle of the Blood. Still, knowing what Nigel wanted didn't make it any easier to accept.

"Why would you want me to do that?" asked Hugo, his voice cracking on the second word.

"You know why."

"No! No, I _don't_ know why. I understand that you don't want to keep reliving that night in your head, but I don't know why you would want to erase every memory you have of your dad telling you he's proud of you or your mum saying she loves you. I don't know why you would want to forget the first time you walked onto Platform Nine and Three Quarters or into the Great Hall. Why would you want to forget the spells you cast or the wands you made or the Quidditch matches you won? Why would you want to forget _me?"_

That was a question Hugo clearly didn't want answered, but Nigel had other plans. "Because I love you," Nigel told him, "And because love hurts."

"Yeah," Hugo nodded before he stood up and walked away, not caring that he was breaking his promise. "No kidding this time."

* * *

_April 18__th_

The first of her birds Rose had seen since September greeted her outside the Bird's Nest after a long day and half a night of Auror training. There was only one singing, and it was far too early in the morning for such loud noise, yet the cardinal made Rose feel like things were actually getting back to normal. Hermione and Hugo's bill had passed, abolishing the use of the word 'Mud-blood' and granting exclusive wizarding rights to Muggle-borns, Squibs, and Floes, the latter of which it seemed Scorpius was the only recipient. Ilana had perfected her de-scarring potion to make it permanent (with the help of a few phoenix tears) and it had been distributed to scarred Muggle-borns all across the country. Only Hermione had refused to use it, claiming that she wanted to remain marked as a reminder of what the world once was. Hogwarts had yet to name a Headmaster, but Flitwick had used his powers as Interim to declare Slytherin a blood-blind house. Colin and Nigel had been moving forward too, spending more time back at their old house and beginning to discuss what they were going to do with their inheritance. Then there was Ron, and Rose couldn't recall a time he'd ever been happier.

She adored working with her father, adored his talent and his humor and, best of all, his attention. For once, Hugo wasn't vying for it thanks to his job beside Hermione, and because no one else in Rose's year had taken their NEWTs she was the only trainee in the Auror office. Ron worked with her constantly and exclusively, and within only a few weeks she had learned the lay of the land around the department. She knew which Aurors Ron favored, usually because of their poor backgrounds or unrefined skills; she knew which Aurors had been killed in battle and spent a minute looking at their moving portraits every day; she knew all of the drills and fake missions she would be tested on for her exam even though it was slated to occur at least a year from now. The only mysteries about her new second home was when Harry or Mercy Golding would return to work, for both had taken some time off following the battle, most likely for the same reason.

The job had brought new energy and a newfound sense of fulfillment to Rose's life, and she must have been enjoying it, since even after long nights like tonight she home with a smile on her face. There was something about hard work and pure exhaustion that, though painful at the time, made coming home to a boy's arms and a well-molded pillow that much more rewarding. Today, Rose and Ron had Apparated all over Scotland to practice Rose's 'jumping' techniques, Ron always one jump ahead so as to make Rose track him along a path with no pattern. That path had ended here, on the front porch of the Weasley house, where Rose could just barely see her father climbing up the dimly lit stairs through the window.

Relieved to finally be home, Rose silently unlocked the door and headed inside, following in her father's footsteps as she mounted the two staircases to her bedroom. Unlike back in December, she made it all the way herself and only had to stop to catch her breath once because she was out of shape, and then again to grimace slightly because of a small splinching she'd earned on her back this morning.

She set the _Muffliato _charm on her room before she walked inside so as not to wake Scorpius, but it turned out that she didn't need it. The lights were off but he was still sitting up on his side of the bed, and when Rose asked him what he was doing awake at this hour, he responded, "You know I have trouble sleeping without you."

"I thought that issue had been dealt with last year," said Rose concernedly as she rushed into the bathroom to change out of her Auror uniform. There was no real cure for Scorpius's insomnia, so she didn't mean to treat the problem so lightly, but he hadn't mentioned any returned struggle since they'd gotten back together for good the November before last.

"It resurfaces every now and then," replied Scorpius with a yawn. "Like when you suddenly start coming home at two in the morning every night, and I spend hours wondering if you're safe."

Because she knew exactly what he meant, Rose didn't wait to pull her loose shirt all the way down before joining Scorpius on her bed and reassuring him of her safety. She was apologizing for the long hours and was just about to ensure him that Ron would never let anything happen to her when Scorpius noticed her shirt and decided to pull it down himself. Of course, the splinch did not go unnoticed and suddenly Scorpius was even more concerned than he'd been before.

"Rose, you can't push yourself like this. Your body is barely even healed from the battle," he tried to tell her.

Swatting away his hand and turning herself around, she refuted, "But I _have_ to push myself; it's how I learn. And it's only a splinch."

Rolling his eyes, Scorpius pointed to the snowflake scar below Rose's ear that was still red and puffy even after months of healing and said, "Yes, and _this_ was only a cut! Your skin is fragile, Rose, much more than you know. And I'm so unbelievably happy that you're doing well at training, but you haven't taken a day's rest since Christmas. I just think you need to slow yourself down, that's all."

"But I don't want to slow down!" Staying busy was all she knew how to do, just as Hugo and Hermione and Ron had done, and Rose wasn't about to experiment with other methods of time management. "I mean, I would rather move forward than stay frozen and do nothing but sulk all day."

His eyes, which had been so wide and kind, turned narrow and sour then. She hadn't meant to accuse him of anything, but it seemed to have come out that way and Scorpius was taking it very personally. After all, he was the only one in the house now, even including Nigel, who hadn't made any future plans whatsoever, so he couldn't help but feel attacked when Rose talked of laziness and a lack of ambition.

Rose was about to take back her words when Scorpius pulled his eyes out of his lap to face her guilty ones and said, "You think I don't wonder what I'm going to do with my life now that the war is over? You think I don't daydream about all the amazing opportunities I might have had if I hadn't lost my magic? You think I don't spend every day wishing for the press to come back to the doorstep so that I can feel important again? It isn't exactly easy to learn how to fly when you've had your wings permanently clipped, Rose."

"I know," she nodded, once again remembering just how much he'd lost in this war.

"I don't know what I'm good at anymore," he confessed, "And until I figure that out, I've no idea what I'm supposed to do with the rest of my life."

She wanted to tell him that he didn't have to do anything. All she expected or desired of him was that he'd be with her like he promised, but she knew that wouldn't be enough. Determination and drive were Scorpius's most prominent qualities, and the last thing she wanted to do was strip him of them. So, she said nothing. Instead, she brushed his cheek with her hands and then kissed him.

He was in the middle of reciprocating the kiss when someone knocked on the door and Rose opened it to find Hermione standing before her, hair a bushel of alfalfa atop her head and cheeks flushed with sudden excitement. "An owl came from the Potters," she announced, and Rose's heart jumped at the name Potter, because they'd barely heard a peep from the family for months. "Victoire went into labor last night and the baby was just born a couple of hours ago. They've invited us to go to the hospital for a visit."

Rose practically squealed to hear of new life being brought into the world, and she was halfway out of the room when she asked Scorpius if he was coming and saw that he'd fallen asleep. Deciding not to disturb his peaceful and much-needed slumber, she left a note explaining where she'd gone right on top of his forehead and then rushed outside to Disapparate with Ron and Hermione. (They would have woken Hugo as well, but he had a knack for sleeping through anything as loud as Mandrake cries.)

St. Mungo's was a rather stark and frightening place, with room upon room of demented wizards calling out for people who no longer existed, and entire wings devoted to the rarest and harshest of maladies like acromantula bites and mermaid kisses. The maternity ward was located on the far side of all these wings, but, for Rose at least, it was no less disturbing.

Dozens of sleeping babies had been corralled into a nursery that every visitor good ogle at whenever they pleased, while new mothers slept and snored in beds that had been sterilized of all possible comfort and new fathers stared at white walls the way Nigel used to: like their lives had changed forever and in the most significant way, but as if they had no idea how to handle it.

Victoire and Teddy weren't like that, though. They were in a room like any other, but Victoire was awake and holding her squirming infant in her arms as Teddy ogled at his son and Dominique struggled to keep a jealous Remy from climbing all over the bed. The Potters were there too, and were telling Ron and Hermione that the baby had been named Tonks but was being called Tony when an upset Lily fled from the room and Rose considered following her.

There was something about the scene that bothered her. It wasn't Al's absence, which she had expected, or even the awkwardness surrounding Tony's questionable genes, or the joy expressed by all the guests the baby's few strands of hair suddenly changed color from brown to black upon being held by his grandfather. There was something missing, and in it Rose couldn't help but feel as though she'd lost herself.

After telling Ron that she felt too tired to stay, Rose backed up and out of the room and started down the halls, ready to go straight home, when she saw Lily sitting on a bench wing dedicated to the treatment of gruesome werewolf bites. Rose hadn't seen much of Lily over the past few months, so it was only now that she noticed the very obvious scars on her face and quickly realized that Lily hadn't been coping well with her monthly transformations. Of course, there was another thing she hadn't been coping well with, but Rose didn't want to think about that.

Rose sat down expecting Lily to automatically confess all that she was feeling, for even though she'd always loved secrets, the girl had never been good at keeping them. But for a while, Lily didn't say anything at all, and then when she finally did, it wasn't at all what Rose had expected to hear.

"I can never have kids, can I? Not in my condition." The tears running down her cheek were not drying or faltering; they were constant.

_Sure you can_, thought Rose. _Remus and Tonks did, and Teddy turned out fine._ Only that had led eventually to Remy, and Remy had led to Lily, and Rose knew that Lily didn't even want to pass on half a gene to a child for fear that one day it might find its other half. It may not have been fair, but Lily understood that. In fact, she had never known much of fairness in all her fifteen years.

Rose was cursing these unfortunate circumstances as Lily added, "I don't think I ever wanted kids before, not when Teddy was already having them and when James was sure to have them eventually. James would have been an absolutely brilliant father, don't you think?"

Now Rose was crying too. "Yes," she said through heavy breaths. "Absolutely brilliant."

"Cute kids too," Lily chuckled. "Al and I used to ignore him when he bragged about being the handsome one in the family, but he was right all along. Blimey, his kids would have been cute."

"Very cute," Rose agreed as she looked down at the tile floor and found that she was unable to move, paralyzed from the memories she had kept locked inside for so long. All she could think about were little kids with scraggly brown hair and giant mousy eyes and crooked teeth. She felt like puking when she told herself she'd never see those children, and she nearly did when she told herself that he'd never see hers.

At that, Rose was able to snap out of her paralysis and find a way out, leaving Lily behind a pool of their shared tears and walking around the hospital for a few minutes before she Apparated home. The sun was just rising over the wooden house and the cardinal she'd seen earlier had fallen asleep now, its crimson feathers barely visible amidst the newly sprouted leaves covering every last branch of the large maple tree.

Inside the house, Hugo was sitting on the bottom staircase with his head in his hands and an opened envelope crumpled at his feet. With the mere sight of him, Rose could tell that he was crying, and she had to refrain from saying, "Not you, too." Things were supposed to be getting _better_. Birds were coming back and babies were being born and lives were being lived, yet death and loss refused to fade.

"What's wrong, Hugo?" Rose asked as she took a seat beside him, reaching down cautiously to grab the paper so that she could unravel and read it herself. "What was in the letter?"

"It was from Nigel," Hugo answered in a muffled voice, not bothering to pick his head back up. "He's gone."

"Gone?" Rose scanned the letter for answers, but all she saw was something about Colin starting summer school at a Muggle university in London. "Gone where? For what?"

Hugo looked up then, if only so that he could wipe his soaking face with the sleeve of his shirt. "To Bulgaria. He says that I'm right and that he can't just forget his past, but that he also needs to make a future, and he can't do that at Hogwarts. He wants to study wandlore, and apparently some wandmaker in Bulgaria offered him an apprenticeship."

"How long will the apprenticeship last?"

"He didn't say." Hugo was getting up now, and soon was opening the coat closet and rummaging for something that Rose could see. After a moment, he pulled out a coat that was much too small for him and was then carrying it across the entryway.

Worried for him, Rose asked, "Well, where are _you_ going? If he's already left, you won't be able to catch him."

"I'm not going to catch him," Hugo admitted, but continued until he was out the door. "I'm going to sit on the porch and wait for him to come home."

Rose wanted to tell him that his faith was completely useless, completely falsified, and that he was only setting himself up for disappointed, but then she saw him stop on the welcome mat and bring the coat he'd been carrying up to his face, where he took in a deep whiff of its scent and then clung to it with all his might. That wasn't just any coat, and Hugo's faith wasn't completely unwarranted. The coat was Nigel's, and his faith was just a side effect of love.

Before she forgot everything that was going through her mind, Rose ran up the stairs and burst through her bedroom doors to find Scorpius standing in the bathroom and holding her tattered blue dress in his hands, its train running all along the floor and underneath the bathtub.

"I'm sorry," she told him before he'd even turned around. When he did, he dropped the dress and gave her his full attention. "You were right. I do need to slow down, because while you and Nigel have faced your past head-on, I'm pretending to have forgotten it."

"Rose, where is this coming from?" Scorpius asked now that she was pacing around a room that really wasn't big enough for pacing.

"Back at the hospital," Rose attempted to explain, "There were two parents and one baby, there were two beds and one was empty, and there were two ghosts and I could have sworn one of them was me."

Scorpius's eyes were following her with every miniscule step she took, but she wouldn't let him interrupt her just yet. She needed to finish, so she said, "I've been convincing myself that the only people who really lost something in the war were you and the Potters and the Creeveys and the Scamanders, everyone who experienced a death closer to them than just a cousin. But the truth is that I miss James. I miss him more than anything, and I don't want him to be gone, and the only reason I even know how to keep going is because I know he wouldn't want me to stop. The truth is that I lost a part of myself when James died, and I haven't been able to say goodbye to that part of me. The truth is that you're right: I'm not completely healed, and I need to come to terms with the fact that I might never be."

"I wish I could bring him back for you," said Scorpius sadly. "I tried to save him. I really did."

"I know," Rose said as she finally stopped walking and took hold of Scorpius's hands, hoping that he would see that this wasn't about blaming him. "You've already done so much for me, Scorpius. All the other parts of me have healed thanks to you, and I think it's about time that I return the favor and help you for a change."

"Rose, you help me every day just by breathing."

"Thank you," Rose said with a blush, "But I want to do more than that, and I think I've finally thought of something that will actually help. See, when Astoria killed you during battle, the part of you that she really took was your magic, which is why you lost it. But you were in you Animagus form when you fell, and it wasn't really magic at the time because you were doing magic _while_ flying as a falcon. Your Animagus became a part of you as soon as you completed your first transformation, and it shouldn't just disappear because you suddenly can't cast a spell anymore. The falcon isn't in your blood; it's in your _bones_. And if there's one thing I know about you, it's that no matter how many bones you break, you always re-set them. You _always_ learn to fly again, and this time I'm going to help you do it."

Scorpius was shocked. She wasn't sure if he believed her or not, but she was certain that he appreciated all that she was telling him, especially when he asked, "And what makes you believe in all of this?"

The answer came to her instantly. "Because I believe in love," she said, "And that's how I feel about you. I believe in happiness, and that's how you make me feel. I believe in everything that doesn't break, and Scorpius, that everything is you." And just like that, as if touched by magic, the snow in Scorpius's eyes was replaced with a whole new sense of fire.

* * *

_**Note: **I'm in denial about that being the last time I will ever write from Rose's perspective, but it is actually true. Leave a review about this and we can grieve together. Also, what did you think about Rose becoming an Auror, Nigel leaving, etc.? Most importantly, **how are you hoping for the story to end?**_

_Next chapter will follow Scorpius and should be a good one. Check out spoilers on my profile page and stay tuned for the update._

_Thanks so much for reading!_

_-Hailey_


	44. King's Loss

_**Note: **Yet again, I have failed to keep to my own deadline (for a number of reasons - classes just started, and I also still don't want this story to end). Sorry about that, but I hope you're all still reading, because the end is very near. This (penultimate) chapter marks the end of Scorpius's POV, which is extremely depressing for me, but the chapter itself is meant to be sweet, so I hope you can eat up every word of it. It means a lot to me._

_-Hailey_

* * *

**44 – King's Loss**

There was something to be said about running in the winter. Suddenly, he stood from a bench that was so cold even the wood was freezing, shrinking and splitting like rain on snow. His hands went numb as the color seeped from the inside out, even while the chill spread from the outside in. In order to run, he had to push through that numbness simply to press his feet to the ground, his heels making the mark that life should make – every step counts. Everything in sight was white from the morning frost, and all that white – the lakes of ice that had hidden creatures beneath its surface like a memory subdued, the sharp hail that pounded and crashed with the rawness of a virus, the wind as silent as magic forever lost – reminded him of places he had yet to go, things he had yet to see, moments he had yet to live.

Scorpius could barely breathe as he sprinted and slid across the icy streets of inner London. He had to narrowly avoid Muggles who all looked just like him, all of them pale and blond and dressed in white. The sky was white too, but a friendlier shade of white, like cream as opposed to skim milk. It looked welcoming to his eyes, open and free and waiting for him, and so as he ran he began to think about transforming. He pictured his falcon self soaring through the clouds and diving down through the windows that would bring him to her. He imagined the impossible feeling of weightlessness that flying gave him, closing his eyes and bending his knees as if about to take off. But instead of being swallowed by the sky, his face was cracked by the ice as he fell to the ground.

Healing instantaneously, he picked himself up and kept going, running on the very edge of the sidewalk and hailing a cab all at the same time. Even the taxi was white as it pulled up beside him and he jumped in, telling a driver who looked remarkably similar to the late Arthur Weasley, "Purge and Dowse, Ltd. It's about fifteen blocks from here."

"Purge and Dowse?" asked the driver as he stared at Scorpius through the rear-view mirror, which looked more like crystallized ice than transparent glass. "You mean tha' nutter department store on Phoenix Street? 'Asn't tha' been closed for refurbishment the last fifty years?"

Scorpius rolled his eyes. "Just drive! Please," he ordered in a frustrated growl. It wasn't like him to be so demanding, especially of a stranger, but this morning's circumstances called for acts of desperation.

They arrived far sooner than they should have for a distance of fifteen blocks, but Scorpius didn't question this as he flicked a silver coin at the driver and sprinted for the window of the decrepit black building, where he spoke to a dummy that allowed him inside even when it shouldn't have. Then the winter disappeared and all the blood in his body rushed back to his feet as they raced across a tile floor that looked just like a chess board, Scorpius the one white knight in a sea of black pawns. Those pawns were wearing oddly shaped robes of the darkest color and had formed such a large crowd that they were blocking Scorpius's view of any wing signs of or patient windows.

Before he started to spin around in circles of blind faith, he stopped some of the Healer pawns and asked for directions, explaining that he was looking for, "My wife! Please, where is she? Where's my wife?"

But none of them responded, and some even glared at him before moving on their way, all headed one direction even though he was going another. He had crossed at least two floors by the time he found a black-haired woman who looked slightly different from all the others, and it was this one he was sure would have an answer for him.

He practically collapsed into her arms, taking firm grasp of her shoulders and looking directly into her widening green eyes to ask, _"WHERE IS SHE?"_

Ilana hesitated, trying to calm Scorpius by covering his hands with hers and breathing deeply, before answering, "She's at the end of the hall. But Scorpius, it isn't good. I'm sorry. I'm _so _sorry. Magic just wasn't strong enough."

He was gone before she had finished and as he reached the small room at the end of the hall, all of the black disappeared and it was just him, white and abandoned and white, and it was just her, red and beautiful and red. She was lying in bed and facing the opposite wall, but he could hear her crying like the whimpering of frozen pipes. He didn't need to ask what had happened, though upon seeing the product, he wasn't so sure that he could be as strong as he knew she needed him to be.

Luckily, his legs did a lot of the work for him. They were quickly pulling his body to her cot in the center of the room, and then they were placing themselves gently behind hers as his arms wrapped around her chest, careful to avoid her tender stomach and wounded womb. When his hands reached hers, he absent-mindedly twirled the ring around the fourth finger of her left hand and could have sworn he felt wetness there, as if the stone was melting just like their eyes.

The red of her hair obscured the white of his just like her blood obscured the bed sheets, and he tried not to look at any of it but her as she whispered in a slew of broken sobs, "Why does this keep happening to us?"

He didn't have an answer for her, so for a while he didn't say anything. He just cried with her and held her like he had every other time, thankful that this time it had ended sooner than the last; it was always harder the farther along they were, and this time Rose had only been four months. Last time, there had been a little boy and he had entered the world blue and smiling; this time there had only been blood.

"We don't have to try again," he told her once he could accept the thought himself, since it was usually his idea to keep going. "I have you, so I don't need anything else. You will _always_ be enough for me."

All Rose said in return was, "It was a girl."

"She would have been beautiful," said Scorpius, making himself push through the numbness once more. "I know she would."

Scorpius's eyes opened to the sticky heat of May humidity and underground pollutants. Shifting in the plastic seat he'd been sweating in, he searched frantically for the bright sign on the moving ceiling that was flashing the name of the last stop. _Bermondsey_, it read, making Scorpius relieved to know that he hadn't missed his destination. He often fell asleep on the tube, since he had to wake up frighteningly early to catch a ride in Ron's flying car, which he and Rose would drive all the way to London on their way to work if only to accommodate Scorpius so that he could make better time on days like this, when he had to go all the way to Surrey to visit Ilana for more "Muggle training."

She'd been helping him ever since he'd visited her on her birthday in January, and their meetings had grown increasingly frequent since Rose had urged him to start doing something with his time only a few weeks ago. Rose was also convinced that Scorpius could find some of his magic again in the form of his Animagus, which would make both his commute easier and his lessons with Ilana less necessary, except that Scorpius didn't quite believe that a full transformation was possible anymore.

Sighing at the thought, Scorpius tried to remember what he'd been dreaming about while looking around the subway car he was in and realizing that only one other person was keeping him company. The man was bald, plump, and happily snoring in the back corner, so Scorpius didn't exactly feel threatened or even noticed by him. Then he glanced at the most recent issue of the _Daily Prophet_, whose images no longer moved in his eyes, and saw the articles detailing successful arrests of all remaining Flock members, other than Knox Rookwood and Albus Potter, both of whose sentences were lifted for their outstanding service to the Ministry (and, ultimately, their respective connections to Ministry officials Teddy Lupin and Harry Potter). No one was around and the magical world finally seemed to be as safe as the Muggle one, if not safer, so what was Scorpius so afraid of?

He had only attempted to transfigure a few times since Rose had brought up the idea, and it had never worked. Now, he tried to focus only on his left wrist, picturing a wing of feathers sprouting from his fingers to his elbows. He wasn't picturing the pain that had accompanied his very first transformation two summers ago, as he didn't want to and wouldn't be able to start the process over; he was simply returning his body to a process it had already developed.

Yet again, nothing happened. His focus was completely driven to the task at hand, but his arm remained in its human flesh. The only difference he noticed about himself was the softness he felt as his arm brushed against the seat while the subway slowed to a halt and the doors opened to the Surry Quays station. Shaking his head to shake away the feeling, Scorpius hopped up and left his newspaper behind as he crossed the open threshold.

He still felt empty and sometimes unsafe without his wand in his pocket, but Hermione had been kind enough to lend him a good deal of Muggle money and he was slowly learning about all the things he could do with it. Water could still be summoned, only now he had to find it in a store and wait in a line to purchase it. He could still travel, only now he had to use public transportation and it took an eternity to get anywhere. Communication could still be made, only now he had what was called a mobile telephone that he brought everywhere and that could really only reach Hermione or Ilana at any given time. Still, he didn't miss magic so much. He just missed his wings.

It didn't take him long to find Little Whinging, as he had grown rather used to this route, with its large roads and brick buildings and quick cyclists. Ilana was waiting for him on the corner of Privet Drive, wearing a long orange dress and holding the leash for her golden retriever, Buddy, who was lapping water out of a puddle beside her.

"I do believe congratulations are in order," she said as soon as he was near enough to hear her.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked.

Ilana rolled her eyes, explaining as they started to walk toward Southwark Park, "Scorpius, you took the tube here yourself, you're standing nonchalantly with your hands in your pant pockets, and you still haven't gotten run over while crossing the street. You're a genuine Muggle now, and you sure as hell don't need my expertise anymore."

Scorpius would have argued that he'd been crossing streets his whole life, but decided against it because Ilana was too good at winning arguments. Instead, he thought of what he'd be doing right now if he wasn't walking with her, being that Rose was busy being an Auror and Al was still missing, and eventually admitted, "Well, I may not need you, but I also have absolutely nothing better to do than drain you of any last advice you may have."

"Terrific!" Ilana laughed. "Let's see then, what else can I teach you? Perhaps a few card games? Some table tennis?"

"What is that? Some sort of mannerism?" asked Scorpius with an air of naiveté he didn't know he still had.

Ilana stopped walking for a moment now that they had reached the park to let Buddy off his leash, having to cover her mouth with one hand to keep from bursting out laughing at Scorpius. Then they both shared a bench and Ilana never did answer Scorpius's question.

"Anyway, my point is that you know enough about the Muggle world," she said in an attempt to change the subject to something more serious. "It's your turn to fill me in on the wizarding world."

Scorpius was the only person Ilana ever gained wizarding news from, though he sometimes wondered why she was always so curious if she was planning to continue at her Muggle University and remain in a world without magic. He was also curious as to why she still kept her wand tucked into her shoe.

Deciding it wasn't his place to pry, however, Scorpius merely replied, "Things are all right, I suppose. Mostly everybody's just grieving, but there seems to be some hope now that Teddy and Victoire had their baby and Rose is enjoying her training, possibly even too much." The last part came out in a mumble, but Ilana heard it nonetheless.

"Too much?" asked Ilana, seeing right through him because she felt the same way about someone else. "So much that you miss her?"

"I think I'd miss her in a minute. I can't imagine a life without her." And just like that, a flash of Scorpius's dream came rushing back to him, as if he'd seen a photograph with little context yet full clarity – the picture of him asking for his wife.

Ilana was quiet now, and when Scorpius felt guilty for retreating into his head for too long, he couldn't help but ask her, "Don't you miss Al?"

"We were terrible together." Her answer was instantaneous. "But you don't fall in love with someone you can live _with_, do you? Like you said, you fall in love with someone you can't live without. And yes, sometimes I feel like parts of me are melting when I realize he isn't there, and not even phoenix tears can heal that feeling."

The thought of phoenixes made Scorpius absentmindedly attempt to transform his arm once more, but as he became more and more convinced that he would never fly again and that Ilana was right, because even the strongest form of magic couldn't save the Creeveys or James or Draco, Scorpius said without facing Ilana, "Muggle-borns and Squibs and Floes look a whole lot like the rest of the world, yet we always end up being the ones wizards discriminate against. I mean, did you ever think that maybe it isn't our _blood_ that's polluted? Maybe it's them. Maybe it's the magic."

"Maybe," Ilana nodded, but she wasn't looking at Scorpius when he turned to her. She was looking at his arm, and she was smiling. "But I'm not sure I would use the word 'polluted,' at least not in this case."

She was gesturing to his arm and his heartbeat sped up as he looked down in anticipation of finding a feathered wing there, but still he saw nothing. Gazing back and forth between the bare arm and Ilana, whose eyes conveyed that there was absolutely something magical occurring to him, he purposefully brushed his arm against the wood of the bench and felt that familiar softness once more. That was when he realized that there _was_ a wing there, and that he _had _transformed, and that Ilana _was_ seeing it. It was only him who couldn't see it, just like he hadn't seen the photos of the _Daily Prophet_ move before him. He had Muggle blood now, and Muggle eyes as well, but Rose really had been right: there was still some magic in his bones.

He left Ilana with a friendly kiss on her forehead and ran off into the sunset, eager to share his news with Rose. This time, there was no chance of falling asleep on the subway in the midst of his anticipation, and the only thing that did momentarily distract him was the owl that circled steadily above his head as he exited a station in the heart of London. There weren't many Muggles on the streets, but Scorpius still thought it odd that an owl would make such a scene outside of wizarding territory.

Stopping and sighing with frustration outside the Leaky Cauldron, Scorpius gave the snowy bird a pat and relieved it by taking the enveloped letter from its sharp talons. He had been planning to wait to read the note until he was reunited with Rose, but something about the perfect cursive handwriting illustrating his full name and the misshapen object protruding from the envelope's bottom made him too curious to wait. Opening it, he pulled out the first of multiple thick papers and read:

_To Mr. Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy,_

_ After long inspection and negotiation amongst Ministry officials, it is my pleasure to officially grant you with the wills of Draco Lucius Malfoy, Astoria Greengrass Malfoy, and Madam Headmistress Minerva McGonagall._

_ Minerva McGonagall has been kind enough to leave you with the entirety of her book and animal collections, both of which will be delivered to you from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry upon your request. She has also expressed a desire for her late post as Professor of Transfiguration to be replaced by none other than you. Of course, unforeseen complications have made the Ministry hesitant to allow such, but I have chosen to withhold judgment before speaking with you about your future in due time._

_ Regretfully, all possessions and deeds belonging to Astoria Greengrass Malfoy have been permanently placed in the Ministry's ownership. This includes the properties of Borgin and Burke's shop in Knockturn Alley and the "Forbidden Cave" lair in Scotland, as well as her thestral tail wand._

_ Lastly, Draco Malfoy has left you with the Wiltshire property first obtained by King William I and the estate which sits upon it: Malfoy Manor, founded by Armand Malfoy in 1066 CE. You will find the deed to the estate alongside this letter. Within Malfoy Manor you will find an abundance of small trinkets he has also passed on to you, including his mother Narcissa's fine pieces of jewelry, as well as his personal owl, Eldrich. He gave explicit directions, however, to pass along the item you will find in this envelope rather than leave it at the estate for you to find._

_ I am genuinely sorry for your losses, young Scorpius, though I hope that these possessions will bring you some comfort in your time of grief. Take note that Head Banker of Gringotts, William Weasley, has transferred your father's account to your own, and please do contact him with any monetary-related questions you may have._

_Sincerely,_

_Kingsley Shacklebolt, Minister for Magic_

Scorpius was overwhelmed by the time his eyes stopped moving, but he couldn't even begin to think about McGonagall's job offer or the home he hadn't visited in two years. All he could think about was the object his father had left him that was still sitting in the opened envelope. So hastily that the ancient deed to Malfoy Manor fell into a puddle on the street, Scorpius reached around for the item and pulled out something as smooth and cold and white as the morning frost.

The material was marble, as pure as any snow but for the crack running all the way from the miniature horse's pointed ears to the platform it melded into, whose bottom was covered in silver felt. Scorpius ran his finger along the length of the crack, slowly understanding as he went that it had been mended with some form of magic, for this chess piece was one he would know anywhere: it was the white knight his mother had given him and that he had crushed and lost in the snow the night of Narcissa's death. Draco must have found it after Scorpius had retreated to the castle, and he'd held onto it for him ever since. Clutching the vice in his hand before returning it to the home it had once known in his newly deep pocket, Scorpius didn't cry at the sentiment his father had left for him, but he did smile.

His hand was stowed in his pocket and wrapped around the knight the whole way to the red telephone booth that served as the visitor's entrance into the Ministry of Magic. Scorpius hadn't thought much about Draco since Christmas, too focused on Rose and Nigel and the Potters. It would be a lie to say that he missed his father, and he didn't feel guilty about that. Draco could have done so much more to protect his son, or even to get to know his son, throughout Scorpius's life, and he only pulled through in the very end. Like the way he felt about magic and flight, Scorpius didn't so much miss Draco as he missed having someone for whom he could use the word "Dad."

The ding of the lift sounded and the booth's door opened to the Atrium, where older witches and wizards were lining up in front of Flu Powder fireplaces to head home for the night. Most of them stared at Scorpius as he walked past and toward the Fountain of the Magical Brethren, recently remodeled to include all five magical beings as well as a wandless Muggle, courtesy of Hermione and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Ignoring the pitiful whispers and curious glares, Scorpius admired the fountain and gave a single nod to security guard Zachary Munch before coming to the room of elevators that would bring him to any floor he pleased. He had done this enough times for Munch to know who Scorpius was and that he no longer had a wand to identify himself with.

Soon, Scorpius was enclosed within a lift yet again, and immediately he felt more comfortable alone and contained than he had in the larger, more crowded Atrium. He must have been quite the extremist, for although he liked the infinite freedom of flying, he also appreciated the safety of confinement; while he was undoubtedly driven, he had no idea what he was going to do with the rest of his life; although he had received very little adoration as a child, he felt unbelievably loved by the woman standing before him when the door opened to level two.

"Scorpius!" Rose exclaimed, her face lighting up at the sight of him – eyes widened, cheeks flushed, a hint of dimples showing, teeth shining in their broadness. She was jumping into his arms in seconds, completely ignoring any lingering pain from all of her old wounds in order to embrace him. "I was just about to send out an owl to look for you," she said into his ear, worry underlying her fractured tone.

They had broken apart but their hands were still clasped together as they started walking and Scorpius said, "Sorry I'm late. I just got this from Shacklebolt and couldn't bring myself to wait to read it." They were just turning the corner into the room filled with Auror offices, and Scorpius handed the letter to Rose for her to read as he took a seat at her desk.

While she scoured Kingsley's letter with the utmost intensity, Scorpius took the time to notice all that Rose had done to personalize her first cubicle, which was located right outside the Head Auror office that currently belonged to Ron. The desk was wooden and plain, but atop it perched at least a dozen framed and unframed photographs mixed in with different memorabilia. There were family portraits next to Chudley Cannons tickets, Ron and Hermione's wedding photos beside invitations, a stolen kiss between Hugo and Nigel captured behind a paper snowflake, Lucy and Lorcan's engagement photo, and hoards of snapshots of a young Al back when he'd been carefree and careless alongside diagrams of the Elder Wand and some of Al's favorite potion recipes. James was the most featured of all of Rose's loved ones, though, starring in every Gryffindor Quidditch team photo and newspaper clipping concerning the Montrose Magpies. Rose had even pinned up a copy of the Marauders' Map, no doubt one of the ones James had distributed to the Order for battle, and she had clipped it so that only the Quidditch pitch was shown, James's name permanently placed in the middle of it. There was only one picture of Scorpius amongst all the rest, and it was simply something the _Daily Prophet_ had published back in January, locked inside a frame with a blue jeweled piece of fabric Scorpius instantly recognized as the dress Rose had worn for both the wedding and the war.

Before he could pity himself for simply not being photographed enough in his life, Rose's arm was stretching into his line of vision and she was casting a sticking charm onto the envelope that had his name on it and pinned it to the wall. He turned to her with grateful eyes as she sat down in his lap and said, "Are you going to take the job?"

Scorpius wasn't surprised that Rose's first question was about McGonagall's job offer, even when it was the one part of the will he had yet to even think about. Her work had been her life lately, and he knew she just wanted the same for him. Still, he couldn't lie to her, so he simply answered, "I dunno'."

"But you know you _can_, right?" asked Rose. "I mean, you know that you're _capable?"_

She was trying to tell him, in her own way, that just because he'd lost his magic didn't mean that he couldn't teach students how to find theirs. He understood that, and he even agreed, in his own way, but something about teaching at the school he'd seen crumble while Rose worked to build the Ministry up didn't feel quite right. But he decided to play nice with her anyway, because he had no alternative plans as of yet and because he always loved to make her smile.

"Oh, I know I am," he said with more confidence than he'd displayed in months. When Rose leaned back and raised her eyebrows at him, he convinced her by taking her face in his hand and then transforming that hand into a wing that only she could see.

Her eyes followed the white with every sprouting feather, and he finally felt like he could see the falcon again as he stared at the reflection in her eyes. As he had expected, a smile formed across her cheeks and when she kissed him he lost his focus and so the feathers disappeared. Neither of them cared, though, and when they broke apart, Rose whispered in his ear, "Want to go flying then?"

He was taken aback at first, and was about to ask if perhaps that was too large a step to take when so far he had only successfully transfigured the one arm when he followed her eyes to the broom that was leaning against her desk. It wasn't her Nimbus 2021, however, its color a light brown instead of deep red and its tip enhanced with the kind of golden foot rest Scorpius had only ever seen on Firebolts.

"You're not the only one who was brought a will today," explained Rose when it was clear that Scorpius still didn't understand where the broom had come from.

Knowing now, he asked for confirmation, "James?"

She nodded. "Shacklebolt said it took so long to get the word out because James hadn't actually written a will for himself, so the Ministry had to extract some of his last memories to figure out to whom he would have wanted to leave what. His last thought had to do with Al, so he gets to keep James's wand, and Lysander and Lily are sharing the original copy of the Marauder's Map. Harry and Ginny got everything else, except the broom. Shacklebolt said that James's happiest memories contained either his Firebolt or me, so it made sense to combine us."

The last thing Rose needed was another broom. She had stopped playing Quidditch the moment she'd graduated early from Hogwarts, plus she already had hers as well as Scorpius's Falcon Flyer. But she needed James, and Scorpius understood better than anyone that the largest piece of him left in this world was coursing through the wood of that broom.

This made Scorpius think back on the will he'd received, and while it was clear that Draco had left him a piece of himself in that knight, Scorpius decided that he did in fact want to know what else was waiting for him inside Malfoy Manor, because he wanted a part of his grandmother as well. So, after he asked Rose what they were waiting for, together they walked out of the Ministry, hopped on the Firebolt, and headed for the hills of Wiltshire.

Malfoy Manor was more abandoned than Scorpius ever thought possible. The albino peacocks had long since run off, the tall hedges that were normally so perfectly trimmed were overgrown and shedding onto the main drive, the iron gate had rusted so much that it was difficult for Rose to open with her unlocking spell, and a large portion of the front windows had been smashed open from Astoria's multiple break-ins and Draco's final break-out.

Inside, many of the lights had burnt out but Rose was quick to provide new energy from her deluminator and set candles aflame with her wand. She had never been to Scorpius's old home before, so she didn't wait for his permission before she began to explore every last nook and cranny, perfectly content with staying alone on the ground floor even when Scorpius announced that he was going upstairs.

Ignoring Eldrich's angry calls, Scorpius made his way to Narcissa's old bedroom, hoping as he walked that there would be no leftover signs of her untimely death. There weren't; the black-painted floors looked the same as he remembered, as did the floral sheets on her made-up bed and the crooked portraits of Lucius's youth and Draco's childhood. Scorpius walked over to everything, touched everything, smelled everything, just to see if he could feel her presence there, and it was the jewelry box sitting on her bedside table that seemed to call his name.

The box itself was made of silver with traces of dark green velvet on its corner, and inside there were earrings and bracelets and rings that he had only ever seen a few times before, all perfectly organized along the lining and lid. Scorpius's fingers were brushing over a string of necklaces as the sound of Rose's light footsteps reached the top of the stairs. He heard her stop in the doorway of Narcissa's room, no doubt eyeing him to see that he was okay, but after a minute she moved on and he continued to inspect his grandmother's possessions.

The only jewel he'd never seen before was buried under Narcissa's old wedding band and engagement ring, which she'd sometimes worn even after Lucius's death. Both of those were far too pretentious for Scorpius's taste, with their giant gleaming diamonds and pure silver bands. The one he'd spotted beneath them was different: it had a band shaped like a feather, with tiny notches like lifelines on a hand along its length. As Scorpius followed the lines, he saw that the band itself had two parts including the feather, the other being a medium-sized jewel cut in a perfect circle and half-hidden by the feather itself. He wasn't sure what the jewel was, as it almost looked too clear to be a diamond, and it was colder to the touch than any stone should have been.

Deciding that this ring would be enough, Scorpius dropped it into his pocket beside the white knight, just as he used to keep the Resurrection Stone, and closed the door to Narcissa's room before moving on to his own. Rose was standing with her back to the open doorway, her hands leaning against the board of Scorpius's bed. Her head was moving slowly back and forth, and he could imagine her eyes lingering from the bare wood atop his desk, to the plain sheets on his bed, to the empty drawers of his dresser. It was as if nobody had ever actually inhabited this room, and in a way, that was true.

"Rose," said Scorpius so that he didn't scare her as he came up from behind and wrapped his arms tightly around her stomach.

The deluminator in her hand lit up with bright blue and she turned around without breaking his embrace to face him and say, "Thank you for showing me this place. I never could picture it quite right."

"Funny," said Scorpius. "You come here to find a way to picture it, and I come here to make the picture disappear."

"I'm proud of you for that," she said, but this time her words were hesitant, almost fearful. He understood why when she added, "But I just hope that I can be enough of a future to make up for your past."

Scorpius had never thought about things this way, but suddenly he realized just how much pressure he put on Rose simply by loving her so much. He had no one else, so she had to be everyone all at once. Luckily, she was bloody good at it. To show her this, Scorpius pulled her closer and kissed her hard on the lips, for the first time since Christmas not scared of tearing her thin skin or breaking her fragile bones. She reciprocated the kiss with burning desire, for they had also abstained from revisiting their Christmas discovery these past five months and both of them were yearning for it.

Their lips parted so that Scorpius could kiss her snowflake scar. Doing so made Rose shiver, and his body reacted to the motion with a kind of ecstasy he had only ever felt in the sky. He was more ravenous than he had been at Christmas, back when anxiety and fear had controlled his thoughts, and this time he grabbed hold of Rose's black Auror uniform and slid it off her arms and legs like lightning striking her dry. Then he picked her up and carried her onto the bed, never forgetting to shower her with feathery lips at all times. She shone like the sun beneath him, and he could feel the numbness being pushed away as he went to all the places he wanted to go, saw all the things he wanted to see, lived every beautiful moment of this present with the girl for whom he was silently promising his tomorrow.

* * *

"It was a boy," Rose whimpered in his ear.

"He would have been handsome," said Scorpius. "I know he would."

He woke with a start, having dreamt the same dream as the night before, as well as the night before that. As Scorpius sat up straight and began to feel the sweat beading down his naked chest, he remembered the sleepless nights he used to have in the woods behind Godric's Hollow, but smiled when he looked around and reminded himself that, in fact, this kind of sleeplessness was very different. Now, he was in an actual room filled with memories on the walls and infused in the creaky floor. Now, he was in an actual bed, with faded sheets and a comforter that had a tiny hole on his side. Now, he was beside the actual Rose, who was snoring rather loudly in the midst of her peaceful slumber.

The sound of the snores she'd inherited from her father made Scorpius smile, because Rose only ever snored when she felt perfectly content. She would never admit to making such a "hideous" noise herself, but he loved that too. He loved her stubbornness as well as the secrets even she didn't know, and in the moment that he heard that familiar grunting noise once more he knew without a doubt that he wanted to spend the rest of his life waking up to it. That was perhaps the best part of the dream he'd been having all week, and often the only part of it he remembered in the morning: in it, he called Rose his wife.

Mulling this over, Scorpius scrambled out of bed, got dressed, and headed downstairs and into the kitchen of the Bird's Nest. Just like any other Saturday morning, Hermione was the only Weasley awake this early, busy sitting in the kitchen reading the _Daily Prophet _and waiting for a sign of Hugo to start cooking the pancakes. She'd been making extras lately to try to cheer him up, and luckily not even Nigel's disappearance had ruined his appetite.

"Good morning," Scorpius announced himself to the middle-aged witch as he took a seat on the other side of the breakfast table.

"Ah, there you are," replied Hermione while handing him the sports section of the paper. She read everything but the Quidditch highlights, and Scorpius's early rising always gave him a leg up over Ron on the subject.

After thanking her, Scorpius perused the articles in search of Ginny's name, but was disappointed as usual when he concluded that she had yet to return to writing her column. There was, however, an announcement regarding an upcoming memorial being hosted by the Montrose Magpies in James's honor.

When Scorpius had finished, he waited for Hermione to put down her half and then asked her cordially, "How's work going?"

"Brilliantly," she smiled. "I've never been so proud of anything in my life."

"That's fantastic." He was sincere.

Hermione nodded. "What about you? Rose told me about your arm, and I bet you anything that Quidditch teams would be knocking at your door in a heartbeat if you started flying again." Hermione rarely pressed Scorpius on the subject of his future, but he could tell that she was hopeful for him now. And, of course, she was also correct – a clipping for the Falmouth Falcons reminded Scorpius that the team had contacted him not too long ago looking for a new Seeker and explaining that it wouldn't be against league rules for him to fly with wings so long as he could carry a broomstick while doing it.

Shacklebolt's offer was still on the table as well, but Scorpius hadn't accepted that or the Quidditch position. They didn't feel right, and lately he had other prospects to focus on. Thinking about how terrified he was in both respects, Scorpius found himself saying, "I know, and thank you, but I'm not sure if it's right yet. It sort of seems implausible to me."

Rolling her eyes discreetly, Hermione said, "That's exactly what Ron used to say before he became an Auror. Now, he's running the department."

When Scorpius was staring right at her, Hermione added, "Nothing's implausible when you have someone who believes in you by your side, especially when that person is even more stubborn than you are. And, Scorpius, I know for a fact that you have her."

Scorpius knew that too, but there was still one person standing in the way of this other prospect, this idea of spending forever with Rose. Thinking of him, Scorpius said, "If you don't mind my asking, what was Ron thinking of doing before he decided to become an Auror?"

For half a minute or so, Scorpius thought that Hermione wasn't going to answer him. She looked lost in thought, her chin resting on her hand and her eyes wandering to the windowsill where Ally was sleeping with her body stretched out to capture the sun. Then Hermione glanced back at the living room where the coffee table sat and explained, "After the war, Ron was in a lot of pain, perhaps even more than the rest of us. He took his brother's death rather hard, and just like Rose, he tried to deny his grief. On the one hand, he didn't think he deserved to be as sad as George was, and on the other, he didn't think he deserved to be happy in a world without Fred. The only thing that gave him any peace was playing chess, and I think it was seeing the pieces dueling each other that convinced him to become an Auror. He liked the control, and I think he liked how much thought both chess and being an Auror required of him, because it meant that he didn't have time or, frankly, the room in his head, to think of anything else while he was dueling."

When in doubt, fight or flight. Ron, like Rose and Hermione, would choose fight every time, but Scorpius was fairly certain that his choice would be the opposite. That was why he wasn't meant to be an Auror, and maybe it also explained why he didn't know what he was meant to be: because he'd rather run from an opportunity then actually take the time to consider it.

But as Ron sauntered into the kitchen with more readiness than he showed most of the week, Scorpius thought yet again of the one thing, or one person, who was worth fighting for. Staring at him the whole time, Scorpius waited for Ron to pour over half a box of blueberries down his throat and scarf back the remainder of Hermione's muffin and eggs, then perked up with excitement as Ron announced, "I have to head to the Burrow this morning. Mum wants me to clean out Dad's old shed; she says it's time."

A solemn air swept across the room at that, but Scorpius surprised the Weasleys when he offered to help Ron, and the twinkle in Hermione's eyes told Scorpius that she understood what was going on when she said, "Well, good luck... to both of you."

The boys were half-way to the front door by the time they said in unison, "Tell Rose I'll be back later!"

The Burrow was only a few houses down, in the opposite direction of town and the same direction of the Lovegood house. Ron didn't say anything on the whole walk there, but he kept glancing at Scorpius as if inspecting him for any suspicious behavior. Scorpius gave him no such satisfaction, but simply walked alongside and then followed Ron into the shed when they arrived.

It was the size of Ron's garage and just as decrepit, with the ceiling caving in and bats flying out the doors the moment they'd been opened. Inside, though, was like an oasis, for the shed was filled with shelves upon shelves of Muggle artifacts that Scorpius had never seen in his life. He gaped at all of it – the oddly-shaped piece of firewood Ron called a guitar, those colorful cubes he had written to Rose about once but could never remember the name of, even the familiar telephones that were similar to the one Hermione had given him – while Ron magically piled everything into a couple of large boxes until only a few objects were left.

One of them was an old, sturdier box with large slits in is center and bright blue lights near the top. Ron approached the thing hesitantly, almost as if he was scared of what he knew it could do, and turned a small knob on its side so that it emitted a static sound. "What is it?" Scorpius asked as Ron kept turning the knob and as the sound of music and voices became clearer. He remembered seeing something similar with Lily once before, but he wasn't sure if this was the same thing.

"It's a radio," Ron confirmed before he placed it in the only empty space left in the final box. "I used to listen to the news on it during the war. Sometimes I'd even get to hear Fred's voice, only a couple of months before he was gone."

Scorpius nodded and then pointed to the final object left in the shed, which consisted of a tube-like structure attached to a box that looked a bit like wizarding cameras, only it had no giant light attached and was equipped with a digital screen on its back. When Ron explained that it was in fact a camera, but that it could only take still photographs, Scorpius thought about himself not being able to see moving pictures anymore, and then about the wall in Rose's cubicle that didn't have any real photos of him, and suddenly he was asking, "Would it be okay if I kept this?"

Ron shrugged, so Scorpius took that as permission and slid the camera strap around his neck. Then he tried to silently convince himself that asking Ron for things wasn't all that hard after all, slowly building up the confidence to say in a shaky, half-whisper, "Actually, there was something else I wanted to ask you about – something else I was hoping you'd let me have."

Ron had just picked up the largest box and was about to carry it out of the shed when Scorpius's words stopped him dead in his tracks. Since Scorpius was behind him, Ron had to gently place the box back on the ground before he could turn around to face Scorpius, cross his arms and puff his chest in defiance, and ask, "Have what?"

He knew exactly what Scorpius was going to say, but that didn't make it any less nerve-wracking for Scorpius to answer, "Rose."

Ron's intimidating stance didn't falter, so as Scorpius clutched onto his new camera, he explained further, "I want to ask your permission to marry her."

The lack of surprise in Ron's eyes was almost insulting to Scorpius, because it made him feel as though both Ron and Hermione had known what was coming before he had. In truth, he'd thought long and hard about this decision, and he had built up so much certainty that he'd feel thwarted if he didn't end up needing to use it.

He no longer felt thwarted when Ron burst out laughing and turned back to the box, saying with his back to Scorpius, "Good one, Malfoy. Well done, really."

"I'm serious!" yelled Scorpius to make Ron stop once more. "I know we're young, but we're in love and she's all I want. She's all I've _ever_ wanted."

This time Ron's turn-around was quick, and his stance wasn't so overpowering as it was vulnerable, weak, even scared. He was only a few feet from Scorpius when his ears went red and he said, "You're right. You _are_ young. _Too_ young. How can you be so sure that you want to spend every day for the rest of your life with her or that she will want the same with you? Your lives have barely even started."

Scorpius was about to argue, for he had prepared a speech for this exact question, but right when he was about to start his soliloquy he realized that Ron wasn't angry, and that none of his concerns were about Scorpius. Sure, he wasn't convinced that an eighteen year-old was ready to get married, but he hadn't mentioned anything about Scorpius's lineage or legacy. That meant a lot.

So, Scorpius decided to play along with Ron rather than just argue, replying after a long pause full of thought, "Because my certainty is like armor. It does not bend. It does not melt. It does not falter. Because I'm a knight."

"I used to think the same about myself," Ron smirked, his arms uncrossed and at his sides now. "But things change. _Feelings_ change. Futures change, as you very well know."

He did. He knew that a few years ago, he'd had a true mother in Astoria and some days a father in Draco. He knew that a few months ago, he'd had a competitor and a friend and a brother in James. He knew that a few weeks ago, he'd had a girlfriend and a partner in Rose. They had all disappeared now, yet had they really? Because, at least from Scorpius's perspective, he still had a mother and some days a father, only now his mother was Hermione and his father was Ron. He still had a competitor and a friend, only now she was his sister, because now it was Ilana. And he still had a partner, but now she was his lover too, and he was determined that soon she'd be his wife.

Trying to make Ron understand all of this, Scorpius asked him, "Did your feelings for Hermione ever dwindle?"

"No, not in the least," said Ron without a moment's hesitation. The thought came when he added, "But how can I test this certainty of yours? How can I tell that you're as sure as I was when I was your age? How can I be sure that you're just as good a knight as I am?"

He wasn't talking about Hermione anymore, because Ron had always been a knight for Rose. He had protected her from the moment she'd been born, and just like Astoria had once told Scorpius the true purpose of a knight, Ron had always brought Rose home. Being a husband and a father was what Ron had been born to do, and Scorpius had a feeling that the same might be said for him, so he was going to prove it to Ron with the help of something else that they happened to be mutually talented at.

"I'll play you for it," Scorpius said. "If I win, I gain your permission. If you win, it'll be like I never asked you."

"Win what? What game are you playing at?"

Scorpius's hand instinctively reached toward his pant pocket, where he pulled out both Narcissa's ring and his cracked white knight, and then he looked up at Ron and said, "Chess, of course."

* * *

Later that afternoon, a chess board had been set up at the coffee table in the living room of the Bird's Nest. Scorpius was sitting on the side of the empty fireplace in a love seat occupied by both him and Rose, and opposite them was Ron in a larger sofa with Hermione on one side and Hugo on the other. As far as Rose and Hugo knew, Ron and Scorpius were simply sitting down to a friendly game of chess, but for the other three the air was dense with tension and seriousness.

That air took control of the game fairly quickly. Scorpius got off to a rocky start as Ron's red pawns lined up perfectly and allowed him to make a move known as castling, where he switched positions of his rook and king to give the king utmost protection against Scorpius's army of white.

Rose groaned when this happened, since she'd been whispering for Scorpius to perform the same move for rounds beforehand. He'd purposefully ignored her for two reasons, neither of which were looking all that legitimate now: first, he wanted to win on his own and without any outside help from the brightest witch of her age, and second, because Ron had played against Rose before but never Scorpius, so Scorpius didn't want to give up his element of surprise so easily.

Still, not listening to Rose was proving to place him in a highly precarious position, evident when the first piece he lost was one of his two bishops. Both Ron and Hugo reacted to this with giant grins plastered across their faces, but Scorpius wasn't so pleased with himself. Ron was proving to uphold his famous legacy, and Scorpius was beginning to wonder if he was only good enough to beat Al.

It took over an hour for Scorpius to finally feel in his element. Rose had quieted down by then, and Hermione's attention had strayed to an extremely thick book that had supposedly been calling out her name. Ron didn't need her help anyway, at least not with this. He had just moved his king for the first time since castling, and Scorpius had spent a long while staring at the white bishop, rook, and two pawns smashed into a pile of dust resting just off the board. He kept looking at that dust and retreating to a memory in his head, one about Rose and books and gathering dust.

He hadn't been sleeping much toward the end of his fifth year at Hogwarts, and Rose had noticed around exam time in the spring. The simple action of offering to carry her books up to the Gryffindor common room had worried her, but he'd argued that they'd gather dust on the floor if the stayed where they were. They'd had a whole conversation about it, and somehow it had ended with him asking her to be his forever, which was exactly what he was hoping to be able to ask her now. He had always seen himself as dust next to her – dust and dirt and nothing compared to her everything – but he had to start believing that he was enough. He had to start believing that his mother would be okay even if he didn't wake up, and that he was as good for Rose as she was for him. He had to fight for her, but he also had to fight for himself, just as he had in this war, because the casualties had nothing to do with him and all he could do was keep going.

His focus shifted then, and for the first time since playing Quidditch he could see a path laid out before his eyes. Ron's knight was protected by a horde of pawns, but because it was protected it was also trapped, which meant that Scorpius could come at it with both of his knights and jump right on top of it. A few turns later, he had successfully accomplished this task, and Rose was hugging and kissing him as if this was the most important thing he'd ever done, and little did she know, it was.

Guffawing over this unforeseen reversal of power, Hugo practically leapt out of his seat in excitement, and it was relieving to see him up and moving. He had stayed out on the porch waiting for Nigel for three straight days after the latter had left for Bulgaria, and it had been Ron who had finally carried him inside the house to avoid a dangerous thunderstorm. Hugo had been cooped up ever since, but he still liked to spend his evenings waiting on the porch and he hadn't retreated into the deep depression he'd experienced following Arthur's death. He had his difficult moments, as everyone in this family seemed to have on occasion, but he also had moments of pure joy. That was the way the Weasleys worked – they cared about everything that they immersed themselves in, so when things went wrong their hearts shattered rather than tore, but when things went right they didn't leap so much as soar. Scorpius wanted to be a part of that. He didn't want Rose to be a Malfoy; _he_ wanted to be a Weasley.

"Whose side are you on, Hugh?" Ron asked in a wave of fake pain following Hugo's excitement.

"The winner's, obviously!" the smaller redhead replied, making everyone laugh.

By this time it was getting late, but Hermione scrambled some food together and Scorpius used the extra energy to take down three of Ron's pawns and his last remaining knight, so that all he really had left was his king and kings-guard. Scorpius was about to go for another one of Ron's pawns when a red bishop came out of nowhere and took down one of Scorpius's knights.

"Bloody hell, that was completely uncalled for!" Scorpius said with a noticeable raise in his voice. Ron and Hugo took it rather lightly, but Rose was immediately concerned.

She had a hand on his shaking knee when she told him, "You don't _have_ to beat him, Scorp. I'm already plenty impressed with you; you have nothing to prove here."

"I'm just being competitive, Rose," Scorpius lied. He _did_ have something to prove.

She chuckled at him and said, "I get that, believe me. And I believe in you. I just want to make sure that this isn't about anything bigger than the game."

It was always pointless trying to hide anything from her, but this time Scorpius had promised Ron that he would. When he met Rose's pleading eyes, he saw that she was even more tired than he was thanks to all of her long days and nights of training, and he understood instantly that she just wanted to make sure that he slept, preferably at the same time she did. Unfortunately, he couldn't supply that courtesy tonight.

"It's okay, Rose," he told her. "I'll be okay. Just get some sleep and I'll fill you in on my winning tactics in the morning."

"As if!" Ron commented with his signature harrumph. Rose, on the other hand, smirked at Scorpius in the best possible way. She was competitive when she was confident, and it was only when people acted competitively even after losing that she stopped being empathetic.

Leaning forward to kiss him on the lips, all the while ignoring protests from her male relatives, Rose whispered in Scorpius's ear, "Come back to me when you can."

He responded with, "I'll find you. I'll rescue you. I promise."

Then Rose left for her bedroom, and in the midst of Scorpius's distraction, Ron had put him in check with that same annoyingly fast bishop. Scorpius had a clear way out of it, but it involved sacrificing yet another important piece. When he said goodbye to his second rook, Hugo switched cheering sides back to his father's and chanted, "And that's why Gryffindors all sing, WEASLEY IS OUR KING!"

Scorpius glared at him for that, to which Hugo hunched over and whispered, "Sorry," before inching off the couch and making his nightly journey out to the porch to wait for the boy who wasn't coming back any time soon.

Scorpius proved not to be so skilled at comebacks himself, with one check turning into two and then three, up to the point when Ron was so bored of seeing Scorpius's pieces smashed into dust that he would stop his pieces from battling and just pick up the whites and take them off the board himself.

"If you'd like to surrender, I'd be happy to accommodate," Ron generously offered after the third check.

Scorpius simply looked up and ordered, "Knight to E-Two." His piece did exactly as it was told.

"Look, all I'm suggesting is that you give it a few more years. You can still be together; you just don't have to be married yet." Ron didn't even look at the board before adding, "Rook to D-Three."

"You don't understand," said Scorpius, still feeling alert even as Ron started to yawn continuously. "This isn't about being married. This isn't really even about now. It's about the future, and I can't imagine a future without her. I want her to know that, I – I want to promise her that, and I want her to promise the same to me. Queen to D-Two."

"I don't doubt that, even though I'd like to," admitted Ron. "What I'm worried about is what happens in that future. I'm not just talking about big decisions you'll have to make, because I've never been much of a planner myself. What I'm talking about is when Rosie goes out on an Auror mission and can't send word all night. When she ends up at St. Mungo's with the entire left side of her body splinched from Apparating too quickly and you seeing her and realizing that there's nothing you can do. I'm worried about the day one of Astoria's old recruits decides to go after you and you can't protect yourself. I'm not worried about the two of you being together; I'm worried about you being torn apart. Rook to H-Three."

It was an odd experience to hear these words spoken from Ron Weasley's lips, the same lips that had once called Scorpius a purist and an arse. It was odd to hear him speak of Scorpius as equally important to his own daughter, and to be worried for both of their safeties. It was odd to hear him say things about his daughter being splinched, as though he knew that he couldn't protect her from the harshness of the wizarding world now, just as Scorpius had learned after Astoria's torturing.

"I'll stay awake all night if I haven't heard from her, and I'll hold her good hand in the hospital until she heals, and I won't be stupid enough to put myself in a dangerous situation without saying her name so that she can rescue me with that deluminator you gave her. I won't let us be torn apart. Queen to D-Three."

The head of Ron's rook was went bouncing off the body when the queen pulled out her knife and slit its throat without showing any sign of mercy. Ron didn't flinch in response, for he had knowingly sacrificed the piece, and said in the steadiest voice, "When Hermione was being tortured by Bellatrix Lestrange, I was imprisoned with Harry a floor below. I could hear every scream and every struggling movement. It didn't matter how much I called out for her, because there was nothing I could do. I started to imagine what would happen if she died, where Harry and I would go next, and how we could possibly finish the journey without her. And then I thought of all the things I would never be able to tell her, like how beautiful she'd looked in her blue dress at the Yule Ball and that I never wanted us to stop dancing at my brother's wedding and that I'd loved her for seven years without a day of exception, and a few minutes later she was limping in my arms and we were Apparating to Shell Cottage. It wasn't me who saved her, and the elf who did ended up dead. Rook to H-Two. Check."

Scorpius released a heavy sigh at that, not only because he was back to losing, but also because he was back to being blamed. Just when he thought he and Ron had gotten past that, Ron had finally told him the story of Hermione being tortured inside the same house Scorpius had grown up in. It was a story Harry had told him and that he'd never wanted to hear again, especially at a time like this.

"Let's take a break," said Scorpius exasperatedly. "I need some air."

He didn't wait for Ron's acknowledgement of the time-out before he walked down the hallway and stepped outside onto the front porch, pacing back and forth in front of the patient Hugo until his frustration had boiled over and he'd grown tired enough to sit down. Hugo, who was busy gazing at the starry sky and squinting his eyes at constellations he'd never understood, sensed Scorpius's tension and responded with a type of calmness Scorpius had never seen from him before.

"You're going to propose, aren't you?" asked Hugo. "To Rosie."

Scorpius looked at him, but didn't say anything in response. He couldn't read what Hugo was thinking, nor could he see the positioning of his upper body through the coat he was wearing that used to belong to Nigel. Scorpius was thankful when Hugo replied for him, "It's okay. I get it. Lately, after the war I mean, all I can think about is how much I want Nigel to be my forever."

"You don't need to hope for that, Hugo," said Scorpius, because he had had enough conversations with Nigel to know how the young Creevey felt, irrespective of what had recently happened to his parents. "He already is."

A single tear poured from Hugo's right eye at the exact moment Scorpius had finished speaking, almost as if it had been waiting there this whole time, waiting for his fear to turn to hope and his hope to turn to truth. He didn't bother wiping the water off, instead changing the subject and saying with determination, "So, I guess you have to win, then?"

Scorpius had to remind himself that Hugo was back to the subject of Rose in order to respond, "Yeah, if it's even possible at this point. Your dad doesn't exactly want me to win, I'm afraid, and when it comes to chess, he's quite good at getting what he wants."

"True," Hugo laughed, "But he's not as good as you think he is. Where are you at now?"

"Ron has half his board and I've only got two pawns, a knight, and the queen."

Hugo thought through tactics for a while before suggesting, "Just keep fleeing from him. Blimey, let him check you a couple more times if you can manage to escape. Eventually, Dad will get bored enough to do something stupid, and hopefully by then you'll have some ideas in your head and will be ready to make your move. It's what Nigel would do, and it's what my grandfather would do. Dad always did used to say that Granddad was the only person who could beat him at chess, until I came along, of course."

It was the perfect plan. Scorpius had been too impatient before, but if he could find his patience now he'd be able to evade Ron for as long as he wanted to, because flight was what he was good at. Thanking Hugo, Scorpius ran back inside and called Ron in from the kitchen to get the game going again.

They picked up right where they left off, only this time there was no discussion alongside the plays. Ron attempted to make small talk as Scorpius ran from him round after round, but Scorpius never gave in, which made Ron all the more frustrated. By the time Scorpius could sense Ron's attention span fading, He had set up his knight and queen in the perfect positions for the takedown. Ron had neglected his king while chasing Scorpius's, so now it was cornered and only the queen was vulnerable. When Scorpius put Ron in check, Ron had no option but to kill the queen, though Scorpius only had to move his knight one jump over to say, "Check mate."

Ron wasn't angry or furious that he'd lost, but he did seem confused as he looked at Scorpius with furrowed eyebrows and pursed lips.

"I'm not my father," Scorpius told him with newfound self-respect. "I'm not my great aunt. I'm sorry that my family did that to Hermione, but I would never hurt someone like that. I'm _not_ an evil queen, and I don't use my powers to go in every direction I want until I gain ultimate control. I'm a jumper. I run, because running is the only way I know how to protect myself."

It wasn't the duels in chess that Scorpius loved. It was the chase. It was the protection. It was the sacrifice. He liked having pawns stand guard from the front and letting the rooks come in from the sides. He liked building a refuge for his team until that refuge was knocked down, and then he liked to fly away because the sky was better than magic. With magic he could kill, but in the sky no one could catch him.

Still stunned, Ron tried to wrap his head around what Scorpius was saying so that he could understand how Scorpius had misconstrued his recent speech. Then he said, "I didn't mean to associate you with Bellatrix just because you're technically related to her or because the torture took place in Malfoy Manor. What I meant was that your determination, and even your love – that hero complex that convinces you that you can protect yourself and Rose no matter what comes your way – is never enough. My screams weren't enough."

Scorpius gaped at Ron, because this time Ron was the one who didn't understand. "Yes, they were!" Scorpius practically yelled at him, gesticulating so furiously that the dust from the chess pieces went flying all over the room. "Your screams _were_ enough, because without them Hermione wouldn't have felt loved enough, she wouldn't have been _strong_ enough, to fight back against Bellatrix. She wouldn't have survived that long if she hadn't heard your voice calling out for her, because that sound was all she had to hold on to in her darkest moments. I wasn't there to save Rose when she was being tortured either, but I know that every time I said her name that deluminator would light up and she'd see the blue of my eyes. That's what made her keep fighting, keep trying to escape, even after she thought I'd been killed. Determination and love _is_ enough. That hero complex _is_ enough, because you _are _a hero. You're _her_ hero."

Slowly but surely, a smile spread across Ron's cheeks, his ears turned red in a good way, and his hand extended over the cleared chess board for Scorpius to shake. When Scorpius took it, Ron said, "Since the day Rose was born, I've been convinced that no one would ever be good enough for her. She's the best thing that ever happened to me, but Scorpius, you're the best thing that ever happened to her. Take care of our girl."

In that moment, Scorpius understood that the promise of marriage wasn't only about trusting and believing in one's partner; it was about trusting and believing in oneself. He knew that as he stood up and bid Ron goodnight, and he especially knew that when he saw the tears of joys on Hermione's cheeks from her spying spot at the top of the stairs. She'd agreed with everything he'd just said, and she was thankful someone had finally said it.

Sweetly, almost affectionately, she asked Scorpius, "Do you have a ring yet?"

Scorpius nodded and climbed up the stairs so that he could extract Narcissa's ring from his pocket and hand it to Hermione. She looked at adoringly, though he was still nervous about it as he said, "I thought it would suit her, but I don't actually know what kind of gem it is."

"It isn't a gem at all," Hermione informed him, because of course she would know. "It's ice. That's why it's so cold. It has a charm on it to keep it from melting, but it's a special sort of charm that I've only encountered a few times before. It derives its power from people, so it will melt if, for any reason or at any time, your heart starts to break."

"Her heart or mine?" asked Scorpius.

Hermione handed the ring back to him, and he could feel that the ice was more solid than ever. Her brown eyes went from the ice of the ring to the ice in him so that she could say, "Is there any difference?"

No. There wasn't. Of that Scorpius was certain, and his certainty was armor. Upon leaning down to give Hermione a kiss on the forehead, Scorpius pounded up the rest of the stairs until he reached the top floor and joined Rose in bed. She wasn't snoring yet, and she even stirred awake as his arms wrapped around her.

"Did you win?" she asked in a sleepy slur, pulling him even closer to her.

"Yeah," said Scorpius. Rose tried to turn around then so that she could get the full story, but he changed the subject before she could ask by saying, "Oh, and I've been thinking about these job offers. I'm not going to take any of them."

"You're not?" she asked, her eyes now facing his and their noses millimeters away from touching.

"No." He was thinking again about the chess pieces and how he'd built his refuge and then chosen flight over fight. He'd chosen to run from the danger rather than face it, but that had always worked for him, and it had been the only way for him to gain enough time to learn how to deal with his pain. It had taught him how to become an Animagus, and his Animagus had helped him to run even faster. He wanted other witches and wizards to be able to escape too. He wanted to offer students a refuge from the magical world. He wanted to bring them home.

Explaining what little he knew about this career plan, Scorpius said, "I think I'm going to start my own summer school. I can open it at Malfoy Manor, and I can invite Hogwarts students to stay there and teach them how to turn their pain into freedom. I'll teach them all how to transform into Animagi, and I'll know how to coach them through the process because I've gone through it myself."

Rose was wide awake now, and all she could think to say was, "That sounds amazing!"

"I want to practice tomorrow. I want to transform fully again. Will you go flying with me?"

"Only if we can make it into a race." There was the competitive spirit Scorpius knew and loved.

He kissed her and said, "Deal." Then they both fell asleep and they both snored and they both dreamed of forever.

* * *

The next morning, Scorpius had everything set up before the sun had risen. Rose awoke with the rays, and after providing her with a beautiful breakfast, Scorpius successfully transformed into a falcon that he couldn't see and took off from the same spot Rose did on James's Firebolt. It took him some time to get used to flying without being able to feel his wings, but eventually Scorpius got the hang of it and took the lead, swerving their direction slightly so that they ended up in the woods behind Godric's Hollow.

Scorpius was the first to touch the ground, but when Rose landed she proceeded to argue that he hadn't technically won yet because they'd already agreed on the finish line being back at the Bird's Nest. He ignored her as he transfigured back into a human, since he knew that she'd shut up when she took the time to look away from her broom and take in the sight of the field of rose petals he'd spread across his old campsite.

Sure enough, she went speechless when she turned around and saw him standing in the middle of the pool of red, and like all of the surprises he'd planned for her before, she knew that he was going to ask her something important as she took a few slow, heavy steps in his direction.

Running a hand through his hair, Scorpius grasped the ring tightly in his other and waited for the rain to fall before he said, "I don't just want to protect the future generations of witches and wizards. I want to protect you, Rose, just like you've been protecting me all this time. That's why I brought you here, to this place that holds some of our worst memories – because it's a place that offered me no protection, but that made me learn how to protect myself. It made me go numb when I left you and then it made me push through the numbness to become an Animagus and to get you back. I don't ever want to feel numb or unprotected again, Rose, and I don't want you to feel that either."

He was opening up his hand so that she could see the ring, and as Rose came closer she realized exactly what was going on and suddenly took two steps back. Her hands jumped up in the air and Scorpius went frozen, listening nervously to her say with a furiously shaking head, "You can't do this. We-we can't do this, Scorpius. I watched you die once already, and I can't do it again. I-I can't promise you forever only to sit there and look at your frozen eyes and just _wish _that I could be taken too, because I couldn't have done any of this without you."

"Then don't promise me forever," Scorpius said with a shrug, walking over to her and taking her hands in his, no longer caring if she felt the ring there in his palm. "Just promise me tomorrow. Promise me tomorrow, because we'll never be ready if we keep waiting for the perfect time to come. Promise me tomorrow, because all the yesterdays are terrifying and because there's violence in this silence. Promise me more than that. Promise me an anchor. Promise me time. Just promise me one day. Promise me tomorrow."

She was crying and he was leaning down on one knee. She was letting go of his hand and he was presenting her with the ring that was much farther from melting than either of them realized. She was being photographed by a hidden Muggle camera and he was looking forward to filling her office wall with a lifetime of their pictures. She was starting to believe him and he was finally believing in himself.

"Check, check mate. You are my fate. Now, Rose Weasley, will you marry me?"

Steady as she'd ever been, she pushed through the numbness and stretched her fingers so that he could place the ring on her fourth one the moment she said, "I will. You know I will."

* * *

_**Note: **What did you think? Are you excited about the big news, and do you think Scorpius had the right approach in his proposal? I'm very curious to hear from all of you!_

_The next chapter is the FINAL chapter. It will be told via Al's POV, and there will be plenty of surprises as well as bowtie endings for just about character you can imagine. I can't believe I'm actually going to be writing the final chapter, and because of that shock I have no idea when I'll be uploading it, but just be patient with me and I'll have it finished eventually. Thanks again to all of you readers who have gotten this far, and I eagerly await your lovely reviews!_

_-Hailey_


	45. The Boy Who Hid

_**Note:**It's actually here everyone: the final chapter of 'Blood of the Birds'. I know both the story as a whole and this last update have taken me forever, so thank you all so much for your patience. I'd also like to thank you guys for the wonderful reviews I've received over the course of writing this story, and please do continue to review if you ever re-read any of the chapters; I'll respond to every one that I can. _

_For those of you who have stuck with this story from the very beginning, this chapter is for you. I couldn't have done it alone, so thank you._

_-Hailey_

* * *

**45 – The Boy Who Hid**

Albus took after his hidden name. His entire life had been fueled by impossible standards, and he had set himself up for unavoidable disappointment time and time again, because although the people around him expected him to be as brilliant as Albus Dumbledore or as brave as Harry Potter, really he was as cowardly and mysterious as Severus Snape. And then there was the potion-making, which was what now gave Al his only source of comfort on these rainy, dark days in late September. He liked being able to make something powerful out of little things that, by themselves, held no power at all. He liked the precision and the timing of brewing a pot, because it was something that, if done correctly, would produce the same results every time. Most of all, though, he liked the fact that making a potion didn't require a wand. Al would never have claimed that being wandless meant that he knew how Scorpius felt after losing his magic or how Ilana felt in a family of Muggles, but because his current wand had originally belonged to James, going without it was a way of hiding his pain. Maybe that was what made him so similar to Snape: the pain. Maybe it was the pain that kept him in hiding.

His guilt over James's death hadn't been so much of an exploding time bomb as it had been a pot of forever-boiling water. His grief hadn't come in waves so much as it had sunk him to the bottom of the sea. Yes, he had run away, but he could still see the shadows passing above him in their search for The Boy Who Killed. He could feel the weight of everyone he'd left behind rolling over him, and it was every time he stirred a potion that he was able to surface for air.

The potion he was brewing now was a medicine – an antibiotic concoction for Hogan, Al's youngest dragon who had grown sick over the summer. Al didn't exactly know what the illness was or where it had come from, though Charlie continued to claim that it was homesickness coupled with fatherlessness, for Hogan had been an orphan since the day he'd been bound. Al was unconvinced, yet here he was anyway, making an anti-depressant for a dragon.

Powdered horns were the last ingredients in the recipe, and Al sighed upon discovering that there were no jars left in the overcrowded kitchen. For a moment, he considered using his wand to summon a new jar, but upon looking at the pliable piece of rosewood that immediately reminded him of how broken James had been before his death, Al decided he'd rather just get the jar himself.

He was reaching for the top shelf in the (literally) nippy office he had finally gotten used to when he recognized a piece of penmanship and nearly let the jar shatter across the floor. Barely catching it, Al turned to stare at the scripted envelope that sat unabashedly on his uncle's desk and whispered to himself, "She _is_ looking for me." The perfect cursive that made up Charlie Weasley's name and address belonged to Rose, so of course Al would have known it anywhere.

At that exact moment, the front door creaked open and Al heard Charlie shout at him, "Oy! Your bloody beast has fled the coop… _AGAIN!_"

Al rolled his eyes, but otherwise didn't react much; he was used to this by now. Running back into the kitchen so that he could pour the powdered horn into his cauldron, Al grabbed his wand and personalized staff jacket and was halfway out the door when he passed Charlie and stopped to ask, "That letter on your desk – what was it about?"

"The invitation, of course," Charlie said without hesitance. He was normally the most secretive Weasley by a landslide, so his willingness to answer made Al slightly suspicious.

Still, Al was happy to take advantage of it, pressing Charlie more by asking, "What invitation?"

"You don't know?" Charlie's surprise was also cause for suspicion.

"No," said Al. "I suppose I don't." And he didn't pry any further.

The yellow door shut behind him, and Al sighed again because he dreaded this part of his day. Then he took a few steps onto the main road and prayed that he might avoid the Balaur locals just this one night, but of course he had no such luck. He had only made it to the next house over by the time one of the town elders, a brittle old woman with a stick-thin figure and wrinkles to match her wrinkling walking stick, approached Al and asked while pointing at his knee, "_Cine ești tu__? __În cazul în care__ai venit__?_"

Al, who despite his best efforts hadn't learned a word of Romanian in the near nine months he'd been here, ignored the woman and carried on. He would have Apparated by now, but the town and sanctuary were under non-Apparition security bubbles ever since Astoria had paid her visit last year. He couldn't ignore it forever, though, because the old woman was shortly followed by a young girl, and then her parents chimed in, and then came a handsome bachelor.

"_Cine ești tu__?" _Half of them asked.

"_În cazul în care__ai venit__?_" asked the rest of them.

By the time Al made it to the end of the street he was happy to be caught up and spun around in an invisible wormhole. The bigger problem was that he never knew exactly where to go, for though Zephorien had been escaping his enclosure nearly every day since May, the dragon was getting much smarter and going much farther the more Al "rescued" him. Today, it took Al sixteen Apparitions to finally find Zephyr torching a farm field outside Budapest.

Al had been careful not to let Zephyr carry around all of his guilt like he had once before, so it was frustrating to know that the gesture wasn't making a difference. Sure, the dragon would return to Belaur without protest every night, but he was still putting Al through unnessecary stress. Sometimes it reminded him of Lily's werewolf transformations and how he would have to go find her the morning after every full moon, but that only happened once a month. Zephyr's torturing, like James's, was constant.

The wind from Al's wand put the flames out instantaneously, and he walked through the burnt field like a tumbleweed bouncing across a desert. In front of him, Zephyr was panting sulfurous dragon breath into the air so that even the miraculous sprouts that had survived his fire were being killed by the sheer potency of his nose. Al approached him without fury or fear, and once he was only feet away, looked directly into the piercing red eyes he never thought he'd love so much and scratched his scraggly beard while smirking beneath it. Zephyr imitated Al by twitching his nose, then used his impressive wing to scratch the back of his neck. Al imitated him by untangling his long black hair, which he hadn't cut since before the battle. Once both the boys were laughing, Al mounted Zephyr and together they flew to the sanctuary, where Zephyr dropped Al off and then climbed up the protruding cliff he had been chained to not so long ago to avoid the obnoxious snarls coming from his cousin Hebridean Blacks.

On his way back to Charlie's, Al couldn't help but wonder if he had done the right thing coming here. He'd left the Hogwarts Quidditch pitch only a few days after the battle had been won, and with five dragons to care for he'd had no choice but to knock on Charlie's door. For nearly nine months, Charlie had been keeping Al's secret by not informing his worried family members and friends of his whereabouts. Al had explained that he needed time, and had even told Charlie why through heaps of salty tears. And for the most part, the time away had in fact helped Al, because he enjoyed being a staff member here, but he still questioned how Charlie could spend his whole life in such strong human solitude. Perhaps Al was almost ready to admit that he was lonely.

No one was left on the streets to lecture him this time, but Al could feel the eyes of dragons penetrating his skin like the trail of a spell, as if they were the Romanians and he was the foreigner. By the time Al stepped through Charlie's door, the former was sitting on the couch doing paperwork for some incoming Ironbellies from Ukraine and the latter had an announcement to make.

"I think it's time for me to get on my way," stated Al, his hands in his uniform pockets.

He was going to express his gratitude for all that Charlie had done for him when his uncle put down the papers and said before Al had another chance to speak, "So you _do_ know what the invitation was for?"

"What? No," Al said. He'd been leaning against the fireplace but now pushed himself up so that he could stand shakily and rub his overheated eyelids. "No, all I know is that I don't belong here, in this place where people accost me on the streets for absolutely no reason, because this is the one place where I've done nothing wrong!"

He hadn't been expecting those words to come out of his mouth, but he did believe they were true. He believed that he'd been a hard worker without a single day off, and that he knew the names and stats of every dragon at the sanctuary, and that he could brew chicken blood broth and "homesick" medicine faster than any local here, and that even though he hadn't exactly gone out of his way to connect with people didn't mean that he deserved to be met with a wall whenever he walked outside. He expected that from the people he'd hurt back in England, but not here, not here in the one place he'd ever tried to save.

He was still fuming and so wasn't paying enough attention to see Charlie stand up from the couch until he felt coarse, labor-filled hands on his sunken shoulders. "Hey, hey, you're right. You haven't done anything wrong here, which is precisely why I haven't sent you straight back to my sister. You're a smart kid, Al, maybe _too_ smart, so I'm surprised you haven't yet realized that those people aren't _accosting_ you."

Al wouldn't dare interrupt, but he was now looking into the blue eyes that reminded him of Rose as Charlie continued to explain, "_Cine ești tu__? __În cazul în care__ai venit__? _It means _who are you? Where do you come from_? They think that just because you don't reply, you must not know the answer. They don't realize it's just because you don't speak the language."

"No," said Al instinctively. "No, I think they do understand. I think they're the only ones who do." He wouldn't know the answers to those questions even if they had been voiced in English.

Backing away from Charlie, Al unbuttoned the jacket and attempted to give it back to his uncle but Charlie insisted he keep it. In return, Al pulled Charlie in for a grand hug and whispered in his ear, "You have no idea how much you've done for me. Take care of Hogan, okay?"

"You're not bringing him?" Charlie asked as they broke apart

Al shook his head. There was only one dragon who didn't belong here as much as Al didn't, and so Zephyr was all he needed. Once Charlie nodded his approval to this, Al told him, "I'll come back someday."

"Don't worry about it," Charlie laughed, his many earrings jingling with a kind of sincerity that matched the bounce in his voice. Al believed him when he added, "I'll be seeing you sooner than you think."

Zephyr was waiting for Al at the town border, because of course he'd known that Al had needed to run for months now. Al didn't use any invisibility spells as he and Zephyr took off for where he didn't know, because for once in his life he didn't want to be hidden. He liked the idea of finally being seen.

* * *

He didn't wake up until he could smell the water of the English Channel. It wasn't just saltiness that flooded his nose, but a sharpness so intense that for a moment Al was convinced he was only now having his first breath. He used to love autumn because it meant the beginning of a new year at Hogwarts, but it was also the chill in the air: the reminder that spring couldn't exist without winter, and that happiness only felt real when it was juxtaposed with pain.

"Where are we going, Oreo?" Al asked Zephyr as the dragon flew directly west, away from the bursting sunrise.

Zephyr grunted and flicked his head back lightly as if to tell Al to shut it. Al didn't want to take the lead on this trip, because he was fully aware that Zephyr knew him better than he knew himself. He was simply going to let Zephyr land wherever he wanted, whether that was in a forest full of fresh meat or on the back porch of the Potter house in Godric's Hollow.

It was neither. At first, Al didn't recognize the strangely deserted cobblestone road onto which Zephyr descended, but the attention he'd been paying over the last few hours of flying meant that he knew approximately where they _should_ be. He had recognized the cityscape of London and the familiar Muggle neighborhoods in Surrey, even the castle colleges of Berkshire. That would place them somewhere in Wiltshire, where the rolling hills went on for eternities and where Zephyr wouldn't find much more than burrowing mice in the clipped grass behind the hedges.

Hopping off Zephyr's back and looking around in confusion, Al still didn't know why they were here until he spotted the inordinately large iron gate Zephyr was currently banging on to open. Al ran after him and pointed his wand at the gate while thinking silently, _Alohamora_. The gate swung open willingly, causing the determined Zephyr to practically fall straight into the front yard of an immense mansion that looked lonelier than any home ever should.

The building was perfectly symmetrical but for the one steeple that looked as if it had been blasted off and was then replaced with a loose white covering while under construction. Most of the windows were dark and dirty, but the ones closest to the double front doors had been cleaned recently. Al's vision still wasn't the best, so he had to walk rather close to the door in order to make out the silver-painted, S-shaped serpent crest engraved in its middle. Above the ancient Malfoy sigil was a carving that must have been quite fresh judging by the wood shavings still falling from it. This one was the silhouette of a white falcon flanked by a small cardinal on one side and a darker hawk on the other.

Turning back to Zephyr for some sign of support for what Al was about to do, the latter found his unruly pet chasing an albino peacock across the front yard, at one point even attempting to torch the bird with his fiery breath. "Zephorien, _NO!"_ Al yelled, his hand already latched onto the talon-shaped knocker.

Zephyr looked to him pleadingly, but Al insisted by widening his eyes. Eventually, Zephyr complied and let the peacock run off before settling down to rest in the field, but by this time anyone who was inside the establishment had overheard Zephyr's stomping and Al's scorns, so the door was opened before Al had the chance to knock.

Scorpius Malfoy was standing a foot in front of Albus Potter. He looked about as great as Al looked terrible: his white hair was carefully groomed but still voluminous enough to have some shape, flowing across his forehead in a way that would have made Scorpius's father proud; his face was practically aglow, every battle wound now merely a speck on porcelain skin and eyes both well rested and excited; his clothes were just as classy as one would expect from a Malfoy, collared ice blue shirt buckled into fitted brown pants.

"Who are you and where did you come from?" asked Scorpius as if he couldn't recognize the friend standing before him – the boy with a long bed of black on his head and shaggy facial hair running down his chin and neck – and initially Al took his questions quite seriously.

He had his mouth open to defend himself and hopefully provide a viable answer when Scorpius cracked, shaking Al's shoulder to show he wanted to hug him but also respecting Al's space, and saying, "I'm only joking, mate! All that matters is that you're here, and that you're just in time." He seemed genuine with his giant pearly smile, but about what Al had no idea.

Deciding not to ask because questions had never gotten him very far in life, Al set Scorpius straight by saying, "Er, actually, I really just had nowhere else to go."

"Well, it means a lot, Al. It means a lot that you made it."

Al's confusion had reached a high enough point that he was considering asking Scorpius what was going on, but was distracted when he heard a female voice he had never stopped thinking about coming from deeper inside the house. Scorpius was still holding the door and thus blocking Al's entrance, but that wasn't enough of a barrier to stop Al at this point.

"Is that-" Al started to ask while pointing inside.

"Yeah, it is," Scorpius answered with understanding, opening the door wider to make room for Al. "Come on in. I'm sure she'd love to see you." His last sentence sounded mildly unsure and strongly protective, but Al was no longer listening.

His hawk instincts had taken over and so Al didn't need permission as he made a bee-line for the drawing room of a house he'd never been inside, but he stopped and waited to hear the voice again when he saw too many closed doors around him. That was when Scorpius caught up and yelled at the door to Al's right, "Ilana! Lizzie! Why don't you come out for a minute?"

"Uh-huh, and why don't you stop bothering us, Mister Paranoid!" yelled a voice from behind the door that Al didn't recognize. It must have belonged to Lizzie, though for the moment Al didn't remember that the name was one he'd heard before. "We only have so much time left and you need it to be perfect, remember?"

Al would have been extremely curious about this conversation if he wasn't so anxious to see Ilana, his feet tapping the black varnished floor of the echoing room in anticipation as Scorpius knocked on the door and answered, "Look, this is important. If you two don't come out now, I'm going to let myself in."

Apparently, that was something the girls absolutely could not let happen. Scorpius was smirking from the victory and Lizzie was opening the door a crack and wriggling herself through within seconds of Scorpius's threat. Once she was fully outside, Al craned his neck in search of a follower and Lizzie babbled on to Scorpius, "That wasn't funny. You could have ruined your entire future, you know…"

Scorpius cleared his throat and gestured backward toward Al, which made the girl, whose tight skirt and flowery blouse that perfectly matched her purple eye make-up and contrasted her straight black hair, ask with a hint of disgust, "Oh, who's this?"

It was this question that made Ilana show herself. She also shimmied out of the door and then closed it shut, wiping a few white feathers off her bejeweled sweater before laying eyes on Albus. Once she did, everyone in the room when silent upon hearing Ilana's hitched breath, and Al just stared at her. He stared at her thick hair that hugged her face like snow around a tree, fragile flakes of magic around firmly rooted truth. He stared at her scar-less arm that crossed her chest like bars on a submerged berm, a barrier he'd never been able to see. He stared at her green eyes that shone like abandoned things do, a neon sign of his residue.

Lizzie kept looking back and forth between Al and Ilana, so Al appreciated Scorpius trying to pry her eyes away when he asked, "How's it going in there?"

"Ugh, it's a slow process," said Lizzie, clearly caring enough about the subject to ignore the guest. "We may have to pull a very early morning tomorrow to get it done. Of course, if _someone_ would just use her magic to patch the thing together we could finish a hell of a lot sooner."

She was now back to looking at Ilana as if the words she spoke had something to do with the girl whose attention was still on Al, so Scorpius lost Lizzie once again and just sighed to hear her say, "But bonkers, Scorpius, don't be rude! Who is this gentleman before us in dire need of a makeover?"

Ilana was the one to break their mutual gaze, introducing Al and Lizzie by explaining, "This is Potter, er, Albus Potter. Potter, this is my sister, Lizzie."

Suddenly, Al remembered the letter Ilana had thrown in the fire the night before their last day together in Grimmauld Place – the one with Lizzie's name on it. Of course this was Ilana's sister, being that they looked almost exactly alike, Lizzie only slightly taller and substantially more perky.

Scorpius took over from there, announcing to the room, "He just now arrived, so I figured I'd pull you out to see him." Lizzie still seemed confused about Al's importance, but the more she looked at Ilana the more she realized who he was to her sister.

"You're the one who broke her heart," said Lizzie confidently, her stance more intimidating than it had been a minute ago.

"He didn't-" Ilana attempted to defend Al, but he stopped her before she went too far.

"I did," he admitted, looking to Scorpius when he said, "I also ran away… multiple times."

The silence wasn't too awkward and was broken before long, Scorpius asking, "Speaking of which, where have you been? Nobody's heard from you since that day on the Quidditch pitch." Scorpius didn't look all that personally slighted by this, though he still bore the pain of many others Al had surely hurt. Ilana was one of them, which must have been why she was currently facing the floor rather than look at him again.

"I was in Romania with Uncle Charlie," answered Al. "I needed to escape, but I think I always knew it wouldn't be permanent, so I've come back."

Sensing that the others were too emotionally involved to react civilly, Lizzie was the one to loosen up once more and say, "Good for you. A wedding is the perfect time to reconnect with family."

Al nodded absentmindedly, still concerned for Ilana, but then found himself blinking profusely and asking, "Wait, what? What _wedding?"_

Like any responsible and respectful adult, Scorpius didn't notice Lizzie's guilt stricken face and instead took the blame upon himself as he said, "I thought you knew; we sent you an invitation."

Al shrugged. He hadn't received a scrap of mail all summer.

Understanding this even without any words exchanged, Scorpius cleared things up for Al by saying quite proudly, "I proposed to Rose last May and we're getting married at Hogwarts tomorrow." Tomorrow marked Rose's eighteenth birthday, something both Scorpius and Al were aware of.

"Yeah!" Lizzie said, back to being excited. "Lanny's the best man, and we're making the wedding dress together."

That was what Charlie's letter had been about, and why it had been written with Rose's penmanship. That was why Scorpius wasn't at all angry to see Al, because nothing could break his happiness. Al was happy, too. Of course he was – his two best friends were getting married! But where had he been while they'd been planning the nuptials? What had he been doing that was more important than what Ilana and Lizzie were doing now? And the question that terrified Al the most was what would happen in the future. Would he be there for his friends as they moved into a house together, as their honeymoon period faded, as they started having kids? Would he ever learn how to be an adult friend when he'd never fully grasped the concept in childhood?

It took him a long time to respond to no one in particular, "That's terrific. Congratulations, mate! Really. I suppose it was only a matter of time, but I'm sorry about all the people who won't be there to see it." Al wanted to say James's name, he wanted to apologize for causing the loss of one of Rose's favorite people, but his mouth was only able to speak cryptically and so he hoped Scorpius would read between his lines.

"Yeah," Scorpius said. "Me, too." There was more than just James. There was Draco, Arthur, Narcissa, even Astoria. Still, the list in Al's head didn't make him feel any less guilty, because he blamed himself for over half of the deaths he could think of.

Ilana was the one to break this silence, nudging her sister and announcing, "We should get back to the dress. I have to take it to The Bird's Nest in a couple hours for Rose's fitting, and at this rate there's no way we'll be ready in time."

Scorpius nodded okay but it was Al Ilana looked to guiltily as she and Lizzie disappeared behind the side door. As soon as it was shut, Al could hear Lizzie whispering to Ilana about him, but he tried to focus on anything else. Unfortunately, there weren't many options, seeing as the room – however large it was physically – was practically barren, with only a few pieces of furniture and a spot on the ceiling where a chandelier should have been.

Noticing Al's gaze, Scorpius explained, "I know it's not exactly the coziest place, but it's what I know. I'm in the process of renovating it, though. I want to build a school here. The property's big enough and I could convert some of these rooms into classrooms, leave the drawing area open for indoor practice. I want to teach people how to become Animagi, but in a proper way."

Scorpius had Al's full attention now, but Al was still overwhelmed with the news of the wedding, let alone Scorpius's ambitious goal. In fact, Scorpius had never actually told Al that he was an Animagus, though Al had always had his suspicions. It was too bad Scorpius wouldn't be able to transform anymore, thanks to having lost his magic. Al partially blamed himself for that too.

The thought must have been written all over his face, because Scorpius said then as if he was answering Al's direct question, "I didn't lose it. It took Rose and me a while to figure it out, but I can still transfigure. Turns out it was always a part of _me_; it was never really a part of my magic."

"That's amazing," Al said with the first smile he'd had since stepping foot inside the manor. Looking around once more while also attempting to hide his emergent shock, Al added, "It all is. Look at you – you're growing up. You've got this house and a job and a wife. You're all grown up." His voice was cracking and he could feel tears welling in his eyes, but he refused to let them fall. This was Scorpius's day, and even though Al didn't know exactly who he wanted to be yet, he knew he wanted to be less selfish than he'd been these past three years.

Scorpius ran a hand through his hair and Al's tears faded away so that he could chuckle at the tic he'd so missed. Not noticing the laugh, Scorpius spoke over it, "I would never have gotten this far without you. You know that, right? You know that not a day has gone by that Rose hasn't used one of her special Auror trackers to look for you?"

"I thought about you, too. Both of you, every day. I just wasn't ready yet. I can't explain it."

"I know." There was a reason Rose had been looking for Al but Scorpius hadn't. Rose worried, but Scorpius always had an unspoken sense of faith.

Having calmed down by now, Al changed the subject and asked, "So, Rose became an Auror, eh?" He had always hoped she would.

"Yeah," Scorpius answered, standing a little taller now to show the immense pride he had for his fiancée. "She's still in training, but I think she's actually ready to take the exam now; it's only Ron who doesn't want to lose his protégé. She loves it, too. She didn't even take these past few days off to prepare for tomorrow, so she's working now and letting her mum and Hugo and the girls do all the busy work. I should stop talking about her, though, or else I'll give in and break the rule by flying through her window tonight."

"Is that why you're staying here? Because you can't see the bride the day before the wedding?"

"Her or the dress." It was clear from Scorpius's frustrated tone that he wasn't so keen on these superstitions, and Al suspected Rose wasn't either, but she also deserved to spend some time with her family and it was all in good fun. "You'll stay here tonight as well, I presume?"

That caught Al off guard. Then again, like he'd said earlier, he had nowhere else to go. So he said, "Yes, if that's okay."

Scorpius laughed at the ridiculous question and then gave Al the run-down on the sleeping arrangements. Ilana and Lizzie were sharing Narcissa's bedroom, so the only available place for Al to go was Draco and Astoria's old room, but Al said that was fine. He'd slept around plenty of unfriendly ghosts before. Then, before Scorpius could invite Al to do something with him for the rest of the day, Al made some excuse about needing to take Zephyr hunting before he ate any more peacocks. This was partially true, but Al also just needed the day to himself to clear his head.

He returned after dark that night. The sisters were still locked away in the side room and Scorpius was asleep upstairs, so Al tiptoed into the room that had once belonged to his mentor – the mentor he had killed by stabbing the Sword of Gryffindor straight through her back. It wasn't as if he could smell her there; Astoria hadn't even stepped into the room for years, let alone slept in it. Even so, there were parts of the rather large and spacious bedroom that reminded Al of her. There was a painting over the black-sheeted bed of Malfoy Manor, and on the steeple that was currently under construction was a nearly imperceptible speck of a bird, its color the purest gold. There was a necklace lying on the bedside table that Draco would most probably have never questioned, but that Al knew right away was one of Charlie's dragon tooth creations. There was a bookshelf filled with more dust than paper, but the one book whose spine was actually cracking and whose title was fading from old age was _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_.

All of Astoria's secrets were sitting out in the open, just like they always had. One of her most dangerous qualities in life had been her mystery, because she wore the truth so close to her that it was always overlooked. Knowing this better than anyone, Al found himself mindlessly searching for something that might appear _too_ obvious to the naked eye. He knew there was no point inspecting the floorboards, even the ones that were creaking, and of course there wouldn't be a thing hidden under the bed. His eyes turned finally to the desk in the corner, which had most likely been shared between Astoria and her husband, and on one side was a drawer with three very different, but all highly intimidating, locks.

One was in the middle and in need of a key; another was on the right and had a hinge; the last was on the left and was a hanging padlock. Upon first inspection, the drawer seemed impossible to be opened even with magic, for if these locks had been made by a witch then surely they couldn't be opened by a wizard. Smirking because Al knew what Astoria had been up to, he left his wand in his pocket and merely placed his hand on the drawer handle, not bothering to attempt at any of the locks, and pulled. The drawer opened smoothly. Of course Astoria understood the power that came with no magic at all; that was why she was so afraid of the people who didn't have it.

Inside the drawer was a stack of memorabilia: letters from Tonks and more from Charlie chronicling the summers the trio had spent apart, ancient newspaper clippings with any mention of the Resurrection Stone, and moving photographs of Scorpius's childhood. It was the photos Al was most drawn to, pulling out the stack of them and smiling at the sight of that familiar blond boy concentrating on a game of chess as a three year-old or being held in loving arms as a newborn. There were two pictures of Astoria and her baby at St. Mungo's, one with Scorpius looking rather sickly and Astoria peering at him with a kind of sadness she had always denied in front of Al, and another of her happily cooing at a baby with his hands outstretched toward his mother's cheeks. In the right-hand corner of the first photograph, the date April 29th, 2006 was written. That was Scorpius's birthday. The second had been taken on the same day, despite the fact that the child in this photo was larger and far healthier than the first.

He stared at this date for longer than he should have, and by the time he realized that he was scared to take a second glance at the photo itself, he was already doing so. His fear was justified when he saw a tuft of black hair on the excited infant's head. Scorpius couldn't have been born with any hair, especially black. Al had known for a while now that Astoria hadn't been far from Ginny's room when he'd been born, since complications following Scorpius's birth had kept her there for months after April. He also knew that Ginny had been unconscious and Harry had been absent during his birth and that his grandfather, Arthur, had been the first person to hold him. But had he really? Was Albus really the highly crazed son of Harry and Ginny Potter? Did he really come from two loving parents, when he knew deep down that he had always felt more like an abandoned orphan? Had he really been born without the Trace or had a powerful witch taken it off of him? Was it possible that Al hadn't been born on July 1st at all, but rather had been born months earlier, only to be unhappily pried away from his true mother's arms? Was Astoria his blood mother and Scorpius his blood brother? Was he even more hidden than he had ever known himself? And, more curiously, was there any way he could ever discover the whole truth when the only one who would have known he'd already killed?

Al's head was spinning and his eyes were darting back and forth between the sick baby that had Scorpius's snowflake birthmark and a cold, bald head, and the healthy one with clear skin and a blackened skull. He wouldn't have been torn away for anything but the voice he heard almost an hour later, when both his mind and eyes were tired enough to give in and when his heart had never been more in need of hers.

"You didn't write me. Not once," said Ilana from the doorway that Al had his back to. It had been dark outside for many hours now, so he was uncertain how late it was, but he could hear the slurring sleepiness in her accusatory voice.

He stuffed both of the photographs into his pocket as he said, "I've never exactly known what to say." He hadn't received any letters from her either, but he chose to keep the blame on himself because he knew that it would be unfair to do otherwise.

"True. We never really talked." They had always preferred other activities, and really, who could blame them? Talking led to disagreements, realizations that perhaps the differences were stronger than the similarities, but sex led to love, admiration of the differences that somehow made them appear more similar.

Still, loneliness was more than just a feeling. Sometimes it had a voice, too, which was why Al turned around then to face Ilana so that he could say, "That doesn't mean I wasn't always wishing I could talk to you."

What she did next surprised him, and he loved that he could still be surprised by her. Ilana didn't chuckle or smile in reaction to what Al said, but she did look down at the floor, as if she needed to look at her feet in order to make them move. She didn't look up again until she was close enough to touch Al, but even then she didn't reach for him. Instead, her green met his and she said, "Want to talk now?"

He could never deny her, but he also didn't want to. They talked all night. They talked about Ilana's Muggle university and Al's time in Romania, they talked about how insane it was that Rose and Scorpius were getting married so young, they talked about the bizarre connections in the world that had brought her brother Felix and his cousin Violet together. They talked while standing by the desk, they talked while sitting on the creaking floor, they talked while lying on the haunted bed. They never stopped talking, because pauses were dangerous for them, yet still somehow everything Ilana said sounded seductive, intimate, _close _to him. "Hello" sounded like "come here." "Potter" sounded like "I love you." "Not once" sounded like "forever." For the first time, Al didn't give in to the overactive imagination he had for Ilana Higgs, because for the first time he knew that what he heard was truer than what he felt. What he was given was truer than what he wanted. What he hid from was truer than what he sought.

* * *

Both Al and Ilana must have fallen asleep at some point, and when Al woke early the next morning Ilana had already disappeared. Al didn't miss this part of their relationship; he had never liked the way they were magnets: always either too close or too far apart. He tried to give her the benefit of the doubt this time, knowing that she was most likely downstairs finishing Rose's wedding dress.

Al was going to head downstairs to see if he could offer some magical help when he walked into the second floor hallway and heard pacing a few doors down. Scorpius's bedroom door was open, and Al absentmindedly held onto the photographs that could prove his connection to his best mate as he changed directions and walked toward the sound of Scorpius's nerves.

He found Scorpius marching rhythmically around the queen-sized bed that sat lonely in the center of his room. Scorpius sensed Al's presence before the latter had the chance to knock, though he continued to fret with his nest of hair even as his body stilled and he said, "Rose just sent me a Patronus – she's going mad! Apparently, Ron's gone missing and not even Hermione can figure out where he might be."

This was bad. This was _very _bad. Al had plenty of his own problems to sort through right now, but he knew just as well as Scorpius did that Rose would never walk down the aisle without her father's hand to hold, and Scorpius wouldn't want her to. What Al didn't understand was where Ron could possibly have gone, considering Ilana had explained to him last night that Scorpius had in fact earned Ron's permission before proposing to Rose in the spring. Ron had no right to go back on his word the day of the wedding.

Deciding that there was nothing he could do to solve this issue himself, Al tried to focus on Scorpius's own anxiety by providing his friend with a distraction. Out of nowhere, he asked Scorpius with an unexpected sense of seriousness, "D'you think you could teach me how to shave? Without magic, I mean. You look like you have quite a clean cut."

Scorpius laughed, because of course this was one of the most ridiculous things he had ever heard. But when Al refused to break, Scorpius's laughs turned into a smile and his eyes squinted as if thankful before he turned toward the adjacent bathroom. Al followed him closely, and once inside, Scorpius handed him something called a razor and pretended to hold it to his face and pull lightly against his skin. Al copied the gesture, and though he cut himself a few times, he rather appreciated the act of revealing himself with his own two hands. There was something cathartic about peeling off his mask, something liberating, something real.

It seemed to calm Scorpius down, too. Soon, the bridegroom was staring out the open window in his brand new suit and taking deep breaths of air from the misty morning as he waited for Al to finish grooming. Once all the black on his face had gone and he'd healed his Muggle wounds, Al approached Scorpius, standing behind him and the window and trying to gain a sense of what Scorpius might be thinking of.

The only thing that intrigued Al about the scene outside, where Zephyr was snoring on the freshly wet grass and where the sun had yet to shine through the overcast clouds, was that same smell he had encountered when flying here. Without thinking to add context, he asked Scorpius, "What is that?"

Somehow, Scorpius knew exactly what Al was referring to, answering, "Petrichor: the scent of rain on dry earth."

Al was looking at Scorpius, fascinated by the smile that reeked with contentedness plastered on Scorpius's face. That was a smile Al had never worn himself; that was a smile that meant Scorpius could be happy forever. Curious, Al said, "I know Rose's story, but what is it that _you_ love so much about the rain, Scorp?"

"I suppose I like the way the rain shatters open the clouds," he replied, still looking out the window and not at Al. "You know, the way it reminds me that I'm not alone, because skies break too."

Cost was comforting. _Pain_ was comforting. Even people were comforting. "I'm sorry I haven't been here, mate," said Al. "I can't imagine what it must be like for you, going through everything that's happened. And I don't just mean after the battle." He meant all of it. He meant everything he'd missed, from the summer Scorpius had spent all on his own, to the deaths and loss Scorpius had dealt with along the way, to the decision he'd made all on his own to piece his life back together.

"I know," said Scorpius, and this time he looked at Al. "And I like this conversation. It finally seems real, because this time it has two sides."

Al laughed in an appreciative way, because he needed his pride leveled and because Scorpius had always been good at it. Thinking this and also missing the final point of their trio, Al told him, "You're going to be an amazing husband, Scorpius. I've never known two people who were more made for each other than you and Rose." He was going to add some sort of threat concerning the potential for Scorpius to break Rose's heart again, but he decided against it because he didn't want to speak so blatantly for James.

"Thank you," Scorpius said. "You know, I'd really like you to be in the wedding today, but I'm not sure I want to fight with Rose over which one of us gets our best man back." For now, Ilana was acting as Scorpius's best man while Hugo was Rose's.

"You mean, because she'd win?" Al joked.

"Basically," admitted Scorpius. Back on task, though, he added, "But actually, there might be something else we could use you for. How would you feel about getting ordained?"

Al didn't expect to cry, but as soon as he blinked the rain was shattering his own clouds. Al had always been in the middle of his two best friends, so it seemed only fitting that he stand between them on their most important day. "I'd feel honored."

They stared at each other for a minute or two before Scorpius pulled Al into a grand hug, and in that moment Al wondered what it would have been like to have grown up as Scorpius's brother, as Scorpius's twin. He pictured them chasing each other through this mansion like Al followed Scorpius now, bothering their fighting parents in Draco and Astoria's bedroom where they were headed now, trying on Draco's too-big black suits that now fit Al more perfectly than Harry's ever had. In that moment, he wondered if this was the life he was supposed to have lived. He wondered if he hadn't actually been running _from_ the wrong life, but rather _to _the right one.

They descended the stairs just in time for Ilana and Lizzie to come bursting out of the side room with a bundle of covered fabric in the former's beautiful bare arms. Ilana was leading the way to the door, and after smiling subtly at the sight of a dapper Al, passed by Scorpius while barking at him, "You're going to be late!" She wasn't in her dress yet, but Al didn't care; he still couldn't take his eyes off her.

"She's right, actually," Scorpius said upon checking the watch Ron had given him on this day last year. Then he and Al shuffled out of the hall and through the front doors until Scorpius was transfiguring into a falcon in the middle of the front yard and taking off for the long flight to Hogwarts.

Meanwhile, Ilana was checking Rose's dress one last time as she prepared to Apparate, but when Lizzie saw Zephorien waking up she suddenly became too excited to continue her walk home. Ilana gave her sister a look of concern and Al found himself saying, "You want to ride on him? I was going to Apparate there, but I'm sure Zephyr could use the exercise."

"Really?" Lizzie looked to Al with wider eyes than he'd ever seen.

Ilana jumped in before Al could respond, telling her sister, "Lizzie, you told me you didn't even want to go when I asked you to be my plus-one. And don't act like this dragon is the same as the ones in those cartoons we used to watch, you hear? Magic isn't all brilliance. It nearly destroyed our family."

Al had his shoulders hunched and his hands stuffed in his pockets, trying not to interrupt because really magic hadn't almost destroyed the Higgs family. _He_ had.

His cowardice was even more apparent to him when Lizzie fired back at Ilana the way Ilana always fired back at Al, "Yeah, Lanny, it _nearly_ destroyed us. And anyway, you've been sulking without it for a year; don't even try to tell me you haven't been carrying your wand with you everywhere because I've seen you with it every day. And please, Ilana, don't pretend with me." She glanced at Al then, though Al didn't understand why until she added to her sister, "You were your absolute best when you were at Hogwarts and when you were with this boy. All _I_ want is to experience just a piece of what makes you happier than I've ever been."

Begrudgingly, almost imperceptibly, Ilana nodded. She still had to Apparate to make sure she got the dress to Rose on time, but she told Al to meet her at Hagrid's Hut, and before long he was lifting an exhilarated Lizzie onto Zephyr's back and teaching her how it felt to fly. And when she wasn't looking, he transfigured Lizzie's clothes into an emerald green dress, based off of the one Ilana had worn at her graduation with a spell Scorpius had taught him years ago.

They landed in a clearing in the Forbidden Forest so none of the guests or current students would spot Zephyr, and together Al and Lizzie walked along the burnt path Al hadn't journeyed since the battle. He could see the castle spires rising through the mist when the neared the forest's edge, and Al was just as hypnotized by the sight of Hogwarts as Lizzie was, not because it looked different than he remembered, but because it looked exactly the same. There was Gryffindor Tower at the tallest peak, with its new bricks shimmering gold of the lion and its roof pointing sharp like talons.

"What's it like up there?" asked Lizzie, catching Al in his reverie.

Al used to ask that same question. He used to wonder what it was like in the Gryffindor common room, where students could watch the birds and Quidditch matches from their bedroom window. "I wouldn't know," he said then. Now, he wondered if he ever would.

The only thing that broke Al's concentration was the familiar bark that was growing ever closer to him. Saber, the giant slobbering idiot of a bloodhound whom Hagrid called his best friend came bulldozing into Al like an _Oppugno _jinx. The dog's paws, which were each about the same size as Lizzie's head, pounded onto Al's shoulders and threatened to bring him down, but Lizzie's laugh caught Saber's attention before Al gave in, just after he'd received a welcoming lick on his face. Al was wiping away the spit that smelled of freshly killed ferret when he heard Hagrid's deep voice echoing through the trees.

"Oy, Saber! Now's not the time ter be runnin' away, boy!" called the half-giant, and by the look of Lizzie's furrowed eyebrows she could already tell that this particular shout belonged to someone quite special in the magical world.

Smiling to himself, Al called back, "It's okay, Hagrid! I've got him!"

"_ALBUS POTTER?" _Hagrid exclaimed as he appeared from within the trees, immediately suffocating Al with his furry arms locked around Al's back, the ends of his combed bear pressing into Al's fluttering eyelids. "Blimey, i's abou' time yeh showed up! Yeh're nearly nine months late."

"I know," said Al once he broke free. "Sorry about that."

Hagrid never listened to apologies; he didn't have to when to him there wasn't ever anyone worth blaming. "No matter," he shrugged Al's words aside and banged him harder than he meant to on the shoulder to add, "But fer Pete's sake, stop standing 'ere! Rose is almost ready ter walk down the aisle!"

"All right, all right, I'm going," Al complied, his hands surrendering in the air. He was about to take off when he glanced back at Lizzie and was struck yet again by her spring-filled eyes, which were wider than Saber's as she took in the sight of Hagrid standing only a few feet in front of her.

"Why, 'ello there! I'm 'Agrid! Who are yeh?" Hagrid waved at her from above.

Lizzie gulped in fear, but when she looked at Al he reassured her by saying, "Don't worry. He's even friendlier than he looks." Then he ran off, Saber leaping gallantly behind him.

Hagrid's Hut had also been perfectly rebuilt, and seemed to have even received a new addition on its western side – an oversized patio that overlooked the currently flowering pumpkin path. Al didn't let himself stop to take anything much in before he walked through the door unannounced, hoping that if he didn't have any time to think of what he'd say to Rose then perhaps he wouldn't have to say anything at all.

Of course, things didn't work out quite as he'd expected. The one-roomed home that usually seemed so packed with just Hagrid was surprisingly empty when Al stepped inside, and at first he feared that he may in fact have been too late and that Rose had already left. But then he saw the back door opening, and in came Hugo, ducking beneath the door because he was nearly as tall as Hagrid now and wearing his hand-me-down white dress robes like they had been tailored especially for him.

The first ginger stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of Al, causing Hermione to bump into the back of her only son and Rose to screech from behind her, "What's going on? Is he here?" The second question sounded like a mixture of anger and hope, and though Al deserved both, he suspected neither was meant for him.

"No," answered Hugo, "But someone is." Then he moved aside, and Hermione slowly pulled herself and Rose into the room, careful to handle her own ruffled dress and Rose's slip delicately.

Al didn't know why Rose wasn't dressed yet when surely she only had a few minutes left of prep time, but he didn't get the chance to ask before Rose was running toward him and embracing him just like Hagrid had done not long ago. He had to admit, as much as Albus loved Hagrid, this hug was far superior to the last.

The relief he had been waiting for since deciding to leave Romania finally washed over him when he felt Rose's smooth hands around his neck and heard her panicked breathing start to steady in his ear. He knew it was killing her to not know where her father was, and surely it was killing Scorpius to keep from comforting her, and Al appreciated the fact that for today, he could be their glue. She was just as relieved as he was.

"Are you all right?" Rose asked, pulling away from Al if only so that she could inspect his body for any scars or breaks. He was just as physically whole as she was, though he had to give her a bit more credit for the beautiful braided knot of fiery hair she had done up, for his was never anything but messy.

Taking her face in both of his hands to make sure that she stopped surveying him and looked him straight in the eyes, Al told Rose, "I'm all right. I'm sorry it took me so long to get here, but I'm here now. I'm here for whatever you need, whether that's an officiant or someone to announce a cancellation."

Rose's eyes were watering, but she tried to hold back her tears so that she wouldn't ruin her makeup. Al knew upon seeing this that she hadn't been letting herself be at all vulnerable until he walked in, either because she was more comfortable with him over anyone else or because no one else had given her any sort of choice. "I do want to marry him," she said, "I – I want to be with him for the rest of my life. I just… My dad, he's-"

"I know," Al nodded, his hands now steadying Rose's shoulders, but he spoke more to himself than to Rose when he finished her sentence with, "I know you need your dad." After he'd said it, Al wondered why he hadn't thought of Draco considering his recent discovery, and why it felt like Harry was still the one he truly needed.

Al was too lost in thought to hear heavy footsteps pound through the front door behind him, but he could see Rose's focus change, could see the tear she'd been holding back break free and pour quickly down her blushed cheek, could hear Ron's hitched voice as his uncle said rather cheerfully, "What are you all doing? We've got a wedding to start?"

Turning around in synchrony with Rose, Al saw Ron standing in the dress robes that matched Hugo's with his arms wide open as if ready to receive a hug from his only daughter. Unfortunately for Ron, Rose's rage took after Hermione's, and as if Hermione's crossed arms and cold glare weren't enough, Rose punished her father by marching toward him and hitting his chest repeatedly with the bag that Al presumed held her wedding gown inside.

"YOU _ARSE_, RONALD WEASLEY! Where have you been?" Rose yelled.

"Calm down!" said Ron in surrender as he tried to hold on to Rose's flying arms. "I know I'm late; the trip took a little longer than I expected. But believe me, it was _worth it_." Al wasn't sure, but he thought he saw Ron glance at Hugo for the second half of his sentence.

Rose didn't have much of a choice but to forgive him, since forgiveness was in her nature and she really did want to marry Scorpius today. So, faster than Al had anticipated, Rose snapped into Auror mode and ordered everyone in the hut to various tasks, telling Hermione to help her with the dress, Hugo to make sure they followed Lizzie's detailed instructions on how to get it on, Ron to wait outside and give the signal to the string players when they were ready, and Al to run to his post.

There wasn't any questioning of Rose's direction, so Al was completely silent as he walked out of the hut and started running down to the shore of the Black Lake, where a magically laid path of rose petals formed a bridge across the water and all the way to the oasis island where rows of guests were sitting and where an ice blue Scorpius stood facing the castle. Al suspected that it was one of the longest wedding aisles of all time, but the walk was worth it when he passed all of the staring family members and strangers who gaped at the sight of him and walked straight for Scorpius and his beautiful bridesmaid, who was wearing a chiffon dress to match Scorpius's suit and whose black hair had been adorned with tens of yellow gems that glowed like fireflies.

Ilana winked at Al as he took his post behind Scorpius, centered in between two colorful trees and facing the sea of guests, almost all of whom he recognized and absolutely all of whom recognized him. On Rose's side were an empty few seats for her parents beside Al's grandmother Molly and the aging Mr. and Mrs. Granger. Behind them were Percy, Audrey, the young Molly, and a very ghostly Lucy, with Charlie on the edge and looking directly at Al with a proud smile to counteract everyone else's. George was right behind him and was passing the time by stuffing all sorts of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes products in his older brother's ear and watching Charlie's reactions. Next to him were Angelina and the kids, Fred with a newly healed Lila Jordan and her father, Lee. The last few rows were filled with old students and professors from Hogwarts, including Seamus Finnigan, Dean Thomas, and their newly connected family, a very pregnant Cassidy nuzzling her husband Sam's neck beside Caitlin and Aaron. Flitwick, whom Ilana had told Al was the interim Headmaster of Hogwarts until they found a replacement, was there too, though Neville was seated on Scorpius's side with Luna, Holly, Colin, and Lysander. Hagrid took up the entire back row, though it appeared that Lizzie had been sweet enough to squeeze in beside him, and in front of them sat what was left of Al's old Slytherin Quidditch team: Mercy Golding, Salem Keyes, Lindsay Doyle, and Madison Bulstrode. Scorpius's front rows were the ones Al's eyes had been avoiding, however, since that was where Bill, Fleur, Teddy, Victoire, Dominique, Remy, and a newly born nephew Al had yet to meet sat, as did Harry, Ginny, and Lily.

Al's mother looked understandably angry upon seeing her son, and Ginny's fury was getting the best of her as she tried to leap from her seat to approach Al, but Harry held her back. He was the calmest of the three, surely knowing by now that there was nothing he or Ginny could do to either punish Al for killing James or to somehow get Al back; Al was punishing himself enough already, and clearly where he went with his life was his decision and had been for years now. Lily's expression cut Al the deepest, though, because his little sister wasn't at all little anymore. She was sixteen and stunning, her curves filled with the precocious personality her scars now hid, and the brown of her eyes that were so like their mother's were searing holes past her blackened werewolf bruises and into Al's hands, because it was his hands that had disappeared from her life so suddenly after the battle: his hands that had brewed her wolfsbane potions, his hands that had picked her up from Astoria's floor, his hands that had tried so desperately to stop their brother from bleeding out, his hands that had buried their brother in the ground.

"Is she coming? Did Ron show up?" asked Scorpius anxiously from Al's side.

He had to ask a few times to snap Al out of his trance, but eventually Al looked to his friend and nodded, gesturing toward the castle where Hugo and Hermione were walking along the rose petals to say, "Look, there they are."

From then on, Scorpius didn't take his eyes off of the place where he knew Rose would soon be, and most of the guests turned around as well, so Al managed to relax a bit as the focus was taken from him and as he too watched the Weasley family walk the radius of the lake to join their newest member.

Hugo was leading his mother onto the island and Al had a close enough view to see his disappointed eyes scanning the guests and only pausing momentarily on Colin Creevey. It was exactly when Al realized that Nigel must have left the Weasleys' at some point during his own time away that the red-eared boy stepped out from the trees flanking Al, taking a spot at the altar next to Ilana as Scorpius's groomsman just as Hermione sat down and Hugo stood at the end of the aisle.

Scorpius and Ilana were both smiling to see Nigel there, though by their lack of surprise it seemed as though they had been in on the rescue plan, which Al suspected was what Ron had been so busy with last night and this morning. Nigel was smiling, too, and Hugo had his mouth open and was crying as he made his way to his spot on the other side of Al, never taking his eyes off of Nigel's and silently communicating all that they couldn't yet say. There was something different about Nigel, much like what Al had noticed in Lily: war had made him age far too quickly, and not only had he beefed up since last year, but his skin looked tired and worn, like the pages of a well-loved book.

The wedding party was nearly complete now. Even though it seemed uneven for two to stand on Scorpius's side and only one on Rose's, everyone understood that the empty space on Rose's side was in fact filled, because of course that was where James was meant to be.

Al's eyes flickered from the empty space back to the aisle, where the distant image of Rose was growing clearer with every step. All eyes were on the bride now, whose dress was skin-tight satin at the chest, a stream of pure falcon feathers pinned to the bodice and growing down the length until they exploded into the incredible winged skirt and train. She was a bird, and she didn't so much walk down the aisle as fly.

The rain started pouring just as Ron gave her away willingly, shaking Scorpius's hand before transferring Rose's hand to her groom's, and Rose was beaming with happiness as Ron sat down and performed a silent spell on the wedding party to make sure no clothes were soaked. Al waited to start the ceremony until Rose saw Nigel and whispered to Scorpius, "Did you?"

"No," Scorpius shook his head. "It was all Ron."

Then Rose turned around to share in Hugo's joy and together they mouthed the words "Thank you" to their father before Rose faced Scorpius once more and gave him the chance to tell her how beautiful she looked.

Rose's eyes closed when she heard Scorpius's words and it was then that Scorpius gestured at Al to begin. Clearing his throat, Al watched Rose open her eyes and bore into Scorpius as he said above the rain, "Ladies and gentlemen, witches, wizards, Squibs, Muggles, and Floes, family and friends, welcome. We are gathered here today to witness and celebrate in the love of Rose Weasley and Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy. This is not their union; they have been united since the day they met; I should know, because I was there. This is their promise, not of forever, but of tomorrow. This is their promise to live each new day that they are given together, as best friends, and as husband and wife. This is their promise to move forward from the losses they and we have all faced in order to learn what they may gain in the future. This is their love."

There was no reading. Al didn't think one was necessary, so instead he asked to proceed straight to the vows. Scorpius went first, taking both of Rose's hands in his so that they formed a four-folded fist and saying, "Rose – my finder, my rescuer, my promise – you are tolerant and you're caring and you don't give yourself credit for anything. I thought about giving you that credit now, but I knew you wouldn't want it. What you'd want is to thank everybody here today for getting you, me, us to this day, to this altar, to this moment."

Scorpius turned away from Rose then, facing various members of their audience one at a time. Rose continued to look at only him, though, even as he looked first to Lucy and said, "So, thank you, Lucy, for convincing us that love lasts a whole lot longer than a single lifetime.

"Thank you, Lysander and Lily, for testing us in ways we never should have let you.

"Thank you, Nigel, for showing us that everything's more powerful in pairs, even people.

"Thank you, Ilana, for reminding us of the importance of family even when ours weren't around.

"Thank you, Hermione, for making everything easier.

"Thank you, Hugo, for making _nothing_ easy.

"Thank you, Ron, for holding on to her when I couldn't, and for finally letting her go.

"Thank you, Al, for giving us not just something to live for, but something to fight for." Al wasn't expecting to be on Scorpius's list of acknowledgements, and he wasn't sure how he felt about it now. He wasn't sure if he wanted it, even though for the past three years it had been the only thing he'd ever wanted.

Lastly, Scorpius turned to the empty space at the altar and then back at Rose to say, "Thank you, James, wherever you are, for loving her just as much as I did. And finally, thank you, Rose, for knowing everything and being everywhere, but loving in spite of it. Thank you for being strong enough to bring my mother's kingdom to its knees, and to lift my feathers back into the sky. You deserve all the credit in the world for that. Thank you for letting me love you, because I do. You know I do."

Al had to stop Rose from leaning in to kiss Scorpius, causing the guests' tears to turn to laughs as she tried to shake off the praise so that she could voice her own vows. Once she was calm enough, Rose sighed peacefully and said, "Scorpius – my finder, my rescuer, my promise – you say I know everything, but really the only thing I ever knew was that I was supposed to be with you. That's what I've based most of my decisions on, from the worst of them to the absolute best. You are my ice. I am made of water that flows rather than resists, that caresses and surrounds but never stops or solidifies. I am patient as well as strong, and I find my way around every obstacle… except you. You're solid. You're a wall. You're my ice. I flow straight into you, head-first, feet-first, _everything_-first. You make me stop. You make me steady. You make me loved. I love you, Scorpius. You know I do."

On Rose's side came a silver wedding band from Hugo, and on Scorpius's side an identical one from Ilana. Together, Rose and Scorpius slid the rings onto each other's fingers and they looked up at each other and kissed like petrichor: a kiss to shatter open the clouds and remind everyone on the island that they weren't alone, because love healed, too.

* * *

A floating tent with strings of raindrop-shaped lights had transformed the island into a dining and dance hall for the reception. Albus ate a hefty portion of supper during his time at the wedding party table, though Ron and Hugo still outweighed his plate and Ilana laughed at the silly competition they were all having. The table had too many seats to house a single flowing conversation, so Rose and Scorpius had really just been talking to each other with the occasional snog, while Ron looked on in worry and Hermione tried and failed to distract him. Hugo and Nigel were also seated together, though they left soon after eating to have a private conversation on the beach. That left Al and Ilana, and while the two had plenty to discuss, the latter was busy checking in on Lizzie every five minutes and the former was preoccupied with what was going on at the adjacent table.

The Potters and Longbottoms were seated there, and while Harry was attempting to enjoy his conversation with Neville, both Ginny and Luna looked rather numb, picking at their food but not eating very much of it. With all of the parents distracted, Lily's state of invisibility had allowed her to go slightly off the rails; Lysander had offered her a sip of liquor from his flask a half hour ago and she had yet to give it back.

After dessert had been served and when Lily was so tipsy that she nearly let her plate shatter on the floor, Al excused himself, walked up to Lily from behind, grabbed his sister hard on the shoulder, and started to drag her into the trees as he sneered, "This is out of hand. I mean, blimey, don't you have class in the morning?"

Lily didn't say anything. She just stood there with her arms crossed, staring at the wet ground with contempt and loneliness. She had always hated being treated like the little sister, but she had it coming when she played the part so brilliantly. If Al hadn't seen the glistening tears staining her bruises as she took another swig of firewhiskey he would have sent the flask shooting out of her hand and into the lake without even his wand's help. Instead, he just looked at her pitifully and said, "You have to stop this, Hillbilly Lily." He knew that hearing that name was the only thing that would make her listen; James used to call her that.

"It isn't her fault!" called Lysander as he stumbled toward them, just as drunk as Lily was because he'd been drinking plenty before he'd handed over the loot. "I gave her the flask."

Al broke eye contact with Lily, who was now heaving through her tears and trembling lips, to squint his eyes at Lysander and say, "Yeah, thanks for that, by the way."

"And thank _you_ for killing my best mate! _And_ my brother!" Lysander slurred at him.

Al considered going into attack mode to defend himself from the comment, especially since half of it wasn't even true, but he decided against it when he saw that Lysander's very dry expression wasn't at all hardened. The last of the Scamanders didn't want to hit Al, or even blame him for something neither of them could fix; he just wanted to stop blaming himself, and Al understood that.

Ignoring Lysander and turning back to his sister, Al said to Lily, "Look, I know you're hurting, and I'm sure my absence hasn't helped in that matter. Your pain is warranted, Lil, but you shouldn't be humiliating yourself as well."

"Why not?" she asked, still crying and flailing the flask around in her floppy right hand. "I've done plenty of it this year as it is. Anyway, my _face_ is humiliating!"

Just hearing the words made Al's heart break a little, his chest physically throbbing as if he'd been stabbed, and so for a while he couldn't manage to say anything. That gave Lysander the chance to interrupt, scoffing and saying to Lily, "Are you joking!? Look at you, you're gorgeous!" He was gesturing to her face now, though he didn't dare wipe away a single one of her tears. "And that face you complain so much about – the face that holds all of your secrets plain to see – is a gift. Don't you get that? At least with your face you have no trouble crying in front of people, which is all I've wanted to do but haven't been able to for the past nine months."

Slowly, Lily's arms steadied and her red dress stilled and her tears halted. "Funny," she said to Lysander. "All I've wanted is someone who can make me stop."

Al left them then, figuring that Lily and Lysander could probably help each other more than he could help either of them. Of course, this meant that Al had nowhere left to go but back to the reception, only when he heard Ilana giving her "best man" toast, he considered everywhere else he could possibly go. Obviously there was nothing going on between Ilana and Scorpius, but for some reason just hearing her talk about any other guy made Al's stomach crawl. He supposed he'd always been the jealous type.

He ended up on the beach next to the rose petal aisle, where he could hear Ilana's faint voice from afar but couldn't make out her words, obscured by the winded waves and the familiar footsteps of Harry Potter walking toward him. It had only been a matter of time until Harry tried to pull Al aside, and surely he'd seen Al walk off with Lily and used the opportunity to his advantage.

Al wasn't expecting Harry to yell or scream or pounce like Ginny wanted to, but he didn't expect Harry to act like everything was somehow okay either. That was why Al was rather surprised when Harry stood beside him, his hands stuffed in his pockets and his glasses pointed crookedly at the red sun setting over the water, and said, "It isn't just about James – why Lily's upset, I mean. She killed someone, too, and she doesn't know how to deal with it."

"What, and you do?" asked Al. He preferred this conversation to the one he expected, which included endless questions about where he'd been and why he'd needed to be there for so long, but it still felt condescending. Did Harry really think that Al didn't know his sister had killed Calder Anhinga and Ryder Rookwood? Then again, maybe Harry was simply choosing to believe that Al didn't know because, for the first time, it wasn't his fault. But it was. Everything was.

By the time Harry responded, Al had forgotten his question, but he figured it out when Harry repeated for him, "No, I don't know how to cope with murder, because no, I haven't ever killed anyone. Even Voldemort, I didn't really kill, because it was his own spell that rebounded on him. But I know plenty of people who did kill, and some of them I had quite a lot of respect for."

Al was finally listening now, because Harry had never liked to talk about his past, and because the stories he told tended to twist even the most flawed characters into heroes. "Albus Dumbledore killed someone, and so did Severus Snape," said Harry. Turning away from the water so that he could look at the boy he'd named after both of these brave wizards, he added, "You remind me of Dumbledore, actually. I know you probably think you're more like Snape, but Dumbledore – he made a lot of mistakes. He killed his very own sister when she was young and defenseless, a Squib in fact."

Ariana. Al remembered the girl from the portrait he'd used to get in and out of the castle last fall, and to sneak the Forbidden Flock in before the battle. He had always known her name, but for some reason he'd never suspected that she'd died as young as she was displayed in the painting, or by whom she was killed. Art was like that, though – it lasted forever, making it difficult to remember that the same couldn't be said for its subjects.

"It wasn't on purpose," Harry continued. "But he did it. Years later, he became the greatest wizard of all time, and do you know how he did that?"

Al shook his head no.

"It wasn't because everyone around him forgave him. His own brother never did, even after Albus died. It was because he forgave himself. He forgave himself and he believed that Ariana forgave him, and he didn't just become the greatest_ wizard_ of all time. He became the greatest _man_, too."

Had Harry ever questioned Dumbledore's intentions? Had Dumbledore willingly conceded this truth to a young Harry as if nothing was wrong, or had Harry discovered it after Dumbledore's death? And if the latter, how had Harry ever forgiven him? Just because Harry hadn't personally known Ariana didn't mean that the act had any less of an impact on him, or at least on his view of the bearded wizard. And what Al had done was so much worse, because Harry _did_ know James, because Harry _was_ personally connected to the victim… because he was personally connected to the culprit.

Al hadn't said anything, and apparently Harry had taken that as a sign for him to leave, so he was half way to the tent when Al turned around and asked loud enough for him to hear, "And how did he do it? How did Dumbledore forgive himself?"

Without completely turning around, Harry answered, "I suspect he chose to."

At first, Al felt slighted for the lack of advice Harry had just given him, but then he realized how much lighter he felt just having asked the question in the first place. He had long since accepted the fact that his brother's death would haunt him for the rest of his life, but tonight was the first time Al had considered that perhaps the murder didn't have to haunt him too.

He wasn't sure what time it was at this point, but the ever disappearing sun made Al think that it was about time he returned the reception to announce the first dance. Sure enough, everyone was looking antsy as they stood from their seats and absentmindedly walked around the floor. "Ahem," Al coughed to gain their attention. Once the guests were looking to him, he moved all the tables aside with a flick of his wand and revealed the hidden grand piano in the very middle of the floor, announcing, "I do believe it is time for the real fun to begin! Rose, Scorpius, if you wouldn't mind…"

The newlyweds happily took to the floor, and Al was so enthralled by the way their hands never broke apart even as they had to turn around or walk through people, and the way none of Rose's feathers fell from her dress even as the train caught on multiple chairs, that he didn't notice who was playing the piano until the music started. It was a song he'd heard numerous times throughout his summer in Grimmauld Place, and it sounded exactly the same now as he remembered because the same girl was playing it.

Even as other couples – Ron and Hermione, Harry and Ginny, Neville and Luna, Teddy and Victoire, Hugo and Nigel, and a very courteous Lysander and grateful Lily – joined Rose and Scorpius in their dance, Al continued to dart his eyes around them so that he could watch Ilana play. Her fingers were faster than the dancers' feet, and her eyes never even needed to look at the keys she was pressing, almost as if she knew them better than she knew herself. He used to be able to press her the way she was pressing that piano; he used to know which parts of her skin that, when kissed, would glow; he knew which parts that, when touched, would make another part of her body move in response to the her lines of neurons; he had learned how to love her long before he'd ever learned to love himself.

Behind Ilana, on the far side of the dance floor, sat all those who didn't have anyone to dance with, and though Lizzie seemed to be enjoying her time alone, the same couldn't be said for Al's cousin, Lucy. Her eyes were hollow and her mouth was taut as she looked on at the couples, and because Al was curious about how the grieving process could differ so much for different people, he found himself walking toward Lucy once Ilana paused in between songs. Unfortunately, though, he didn't quite make it all the way before another grieving female caught his attention.

Mercy was sitting alone at a table that Al would have walked straight by if she hadn't said to the surrounding air right as he was close enough to hear, "I really did love him, you know – your brother."

Al knew that he didn't deserve her defense. He had never believed in her even when she'd been honest and sincere with James from the beginning. He tried to make up for that now by telling the beautiful blonde, who, lucky for all mankind hadn't laid back on her hair or makeup even in her grief, "I know." He had already passed her when he added in retrospect, "You should go back to work, Mercy. You and I both know you're the best Auror the Ministry has." Al honestly and sincerely hoped that she would listen.

Finally, he made it to Lucy and took a seat beside the girl who was wearing nothing but black. The darkness matched her hair, but Al thought she was oblivious to the way it made her engagement ring shine like a literal diamond in the rough. His sincerity with Mercy had prepared Al for what he said then to Lucy. "I'm sorry about Lorcan. I wasn't with him when it happened, but if I had been, I would have tried to save him. I hope you know that."

Having Lucy's attention was like having the attention of Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Al was glad to know that this time he'd actually earned it because this time he was actually speaking the truth. Lucy looked at him, nodded with all the energy she had left, and said, "Thank you."

Because Lucy had yet to look away from him, Al had the feeling that she actually enjoyed having someone to talk to for once. People had no doubt been tip-toeing around her for months, and she didn't deserve that. Just because her face was perpetually stoic now didn't mean that the same could be said about her heart. That thought was what made Al look back at Ilana while he asked Lucy, "Do you ever think about what your life would have been like had you ended up together?"

A minute passed and Lucy didn't say anything, so a scared Al turned back to her and quickly apologized upon seeing her eyes welling with tears. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked something like that," he said, thinking his assumption had been wrong after all. "We should talk about something else-"

"No," Lucy interrupted him, and this time her parted lips told him that he had in fact been right. The tears were a side effect of memory, not of loss. "You know, my family doesn't ever mention him around me, but our future, it's actually, well it's one of my favorite things to imagine. It has to be, because even now, he's all I have. He wasn't just a chapter in my life…" she stopped, not able to come up with the right words.

Al felt obliged to finish for her, because he knew exactly how she felt. "He was the whole bloody book."

They were still looking at each other, still swimming in each other's pain, when an exhausted Nigel collapsed in the chair beside Al and said as soon as he saw the solemn pair, "Oh, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to intrude."

"No, it's okay," Al shrugged off Nigel's concern. As soon as he spoke, Lucy had returned to her pensive state, her eyes locked on the middle-distance and her hand forever twirling the ring she would never let go.

Nigel sighed, still shamefaced, and Al suddenly saw the beads of sweat running down his forehead from his strawberry-blonde hair and the heavy rise and fall of his chest through his collared shirt and matching blazer. He and Hugo had been dancing for a while now, and it appeared as though this was Nigel's first break. Laughing at the idea, Al commented, "Looks like he's forgiven you, then."

"As much as he can, anyway," Nigel chuckled. "I think my running away will always hurt him, but he knows that I'm here now."

Al nodded, but he didn't exactly understand. Why was it that people could forgive each other so easily for running away, yet they could never bring it upon themselves to ever let them go? Curious, and because ever since their conversation about the Elder Wand Al believed Nigel to be one of the wisest wizards he'd ever met, Al asked, "This is where you tell me all you need is love, right?"

"Actually, that's a lie," Nigel said without a second thought. When he saw Al's raised eyebrows, he explained, "I had love and I still said goodbye."

"Why?" asked Albus.

By this point, Nigel knew that they were no longer talking about Hugo, but he continued to use his own insight nonetheless. "I needed to find something more, on my own. I didn't want to lose myself just because I'd found somebody else."

Al was looking at Ilana, who'd stopped playing piano and was now talking with Scorpius by the bar, when Nigel intuitively added, "But you should ask her to dance anyway."

Patting Nigel's shoulder in thanks, Al stood up and walked across the floor, confidently interrupting Scorpius to offer his hand for Ilana to take. She looked both pleased and fearful as she followed him onto the nearly empty floor to sway to pre-recorded slow songs, and he felt the same. He didn't know where they were going to go next because he didn't have the best idea of what she was thinking lately, so of course he was scared. He was scared he might never see her again even if he finally decided to stay.

For a while, they remained silent, Al breathing in the scent of her flowery hair, Ilana tracing his spine with her talented fingers. They were daring the other to speak first, and Al was the first to give in when he said, "Tell me what to do, Higgs. Tell me how to brew the potion that will pick up all the pieces. Tell me what ingredient I'm missing."

She thought for a moment, eventually furrowing her eyebrows and saying, "In the Muggle world, we have to read these Greek myths: epic poems, they're called. Some of them focus on _kléos_, the quest for glory, while others focus on _nostos_, homecoming. You, Potter, have always wanted to find glory for yourself, even when everyone else around you – Scorpius, your father, me, for that matter – have only ever wanted to come home. I'm not going to stand here and tell you that _nostos_ is more important than _kléos_, but I do think you should consider the fact that one of them hasn't exactly been working out for you."

Al understood what she was telling him to do, but he still didn't particularly like the idea. He didn't want to go home without her, which he tried to explain by saying, "But that's not fair. The home I would be coming back to isn't the same as yours." They lived in separate worlds, no matter how much they denied it, and Al had learned long ago that neither of them was willing to make a move.

Her fingers had stopped trailing his spine, her hands moving from the back of his neck to the front of his chest as if she wanted to push herself away from him. Normally, he wouldn't have let her, but he was trying to be better. He was trying to be worth the choice she had to make.

"I get it," he said. "I know that you don't love me. You never did." After all, she'd never said it.

They had stopped dancing at this point, but instead of pushing his chest away, Ilana's hands were now clinging ferociously at Al's shirt and her eyes were glaring at him and her jaw was tensed. "You think that I don't love you?" she asked as if offended. "You have _no _idea."

Around them, families were beginning to Apparate home for the night, and there wasn't a single couple left dancing. It didn't faze them, though, because Ilana was angry and Al was hypnotized. He hung on to every word she said, and each one seemed more incredible than the last.

"I love you more than I've ever loved any_thing_ or any_one_ in my life. I love you so much that it terrifies me, because I would choose you over anything, because I had to convince myself to choose my family over you and I still came back to you in the end. I love you so much that I _hate_ you, because everything I do wrong is your fault, because everything I do is for you."

She had brewed the pot of Veritaserum in his fifth year because he'd asked her to. She had helped him brew the potion that scarred her own skin because he he'd asked her to. She had stayed at Grimmauld Place even after he had found out about her blood status because he'd asked her to. She had never told him that she loved him, but he had never asked.

The control he had over her was the kind of control he'd aspired to have for years, but it felt wrong over her when he'd only ever wanted it over himself. Everything she'd done for him had hurt her, and it had all been his fault. "How can you still feel that way after everything that I've done?" he asked.

Her answer was instantaneous. "Because _despite _everything that you've done, you are never passive. You may have chosen wrong every _bloody_ time, but at least you chose! At least you did _something_. Most people don't do much of anything, especially me."

He was going to argue with her, because claiming that she never did anything was an insult to him. Ilana had done everything for Al, or at least everything worthwhile. Still, he didn't get the chance before she was rambling, "Lizzie's right: I can't escape you, just like I can't escape magic. It's in my blood as much as my family is, and one day, if I have kids, it'll be in their blood too, and I won't be able to keep them from discovering it just as I haven't been able to keep myself from it. And if I can somehow use my magic for good, if–if I can cure Muggle cancer with some sort of magical medicine like phoenix tears, then maybe it'll all be worth it. Maybe then it will have been for something."

Al was so in love with her. He was so in love with her muddy blood. He was so in love with her wacky yet wise sister. He was so in love with the image of her children. He was so in love with her ambition, with her certainty, with her conviction and the fight she had with herself every day between magic rush and Muggle release. He was so in love with all the things she loved.

Dancing again even though there was no longer any music playing, Al told her, "I will never get used to you."

"You say that like it's a good thing," Ilana laughed.

"It is. You're unpredictable. You're… an _imperfectionist_. You're not perfect, but I think you might be perfect for me."

He wanted her to know that, but he also now understood what was going to happen to them next. He understood that they couldn't just go back to being together, because they both had bigger things to do. They weren't like Rose and Scorpius – they couldn't just support each other as they each followed their dreams, waiting at home every night for the other to finally come to bed. They consumed far too much of each other to be able to focus on anything else, and so for now Al had to find his home and Ilana had to fuse her worlds together, and they had to do these things alone. They weren't ready to be one person together because they didn't yet know who they were supposed to be on their own.

Ilana knew all of this as well. That was why her head was leaning on his chest and his chin on her head. That was why she said, "Maybe, in a few years, you'll be walking down Diagon Alley as a free man, alongside all the free Muggle-borns."

"You had better be walking toward me," Al held her as close as he possibly could.

"I'll be running," she said.

A few minutes later, Ilana and Lizzie walked back down the rose petal aisle and flew Zephyr all the way to Surrey with Al's permission. They had parted, for how long Al didn't know, but beforehand she had kissed him like forgiveness and he had held her like hope, perfectly imperfect at being exactly what the other needed but never what they needed themselves.

Once she was gone, all Al had left to do was wait. Hardly anyone was still on the island, all of the guests but Ron and Hermione having Apparated a while ago now and Hugo, Lily, and Roxanne having walked back up the hill to their dormitories. Hagrid was still there, though barely, considering the fact that he was sitting unconscious under a maple tree. Hermione was busy cleaning everything up, and Ron had just pulled Scorpius aside for a "man talk," leaving a patient Rose with no one left to talk to but Al.

They were sitting on the piano bench, each of them attempting to play and then grimacing at the horrific chords they made. When they'd had enough of the juvenile game, Rose leaned tiredly on the closed piano and Al covered her back with his suit jacket. Remembering Scorpius telling him something about the honeymoon he and Rose had planned, Al kept Rose awake by asking her, "So, headed to Australia, eh? What's that about?"

Rose sat up so that she could respond, "The Granger grandparents wouldn't stop talking about how wonderful it is. They bought us plane tickets and everything, so I figured there was no harm in taking them up on it." Al knew that neither Rose or Scorpius cared much about where they spent the next few weeks so long as they were together, but it was still a nice gesture and, of course, tradition.

"What about you?" Rose nudged Al in the side as he too started to lean on instrument. "Are you going back to Romania?" Scorpius must have filled her in on where Al had been all this time.

"I dunno'," said Al, though he doubted he would be back at the dragon sanctuary any time soon. "I might go back to Malfoy Manor, actually, so long as Scorpius doesn't mind." He didn't want to impose on what would soon be Rose and Scorpius's permanent home, especially while it was under construction for Scorpius's school, but they'd gone for a while and Al still had answers to search for that he was fairly certain were all located there.

Rose looked confused, but still said, "I'm sure he wouldn't mind at all." Her real concern came through when she asked, "But _why_ would you want to be there?"

Al hadn't been planning to show anyone just yet, but if there was one person he wanted to confide in it was Rose, so he soon found himself pulling Astoria's photograph from his pocket, handing it to his best friend, and saying, "I found this. It was taken on Scorpius's birthday, but look at the baby's hair."

He didn't need to say any more for Rose to understand his suspicions. Still, he tried to emphasize the importance of this possibility by telling her as well as himself, "What if Astoria was my mother, Rose? What if I'm not a Potter at all? What if I've just been running away this whole time because I've been looking for my true past?"

Rose didn't like this idea. She didn't like this idea at all. Al could tell from the way she handed back the photo forcefully and asked, "Why would you ever want that? Why would you ever want to consider the idea that Harry and Ginny aren't your real parents, or that Teddy and James and Lily aren't your real siblings?"

"Because it would be easier that way!" Al answered without thinking. He hadn't actually considered why he might _want_ his suspicions to be true, and now that he was voicing the reason he wasn't so sure that it was apt. "It would be easier to know where my hate came from. It would be easier to know that, in the end, I didn't actually kill my own brother. It would be easier to hide."

"It might be an explanation, yes, but it wouldn't _excuse_ any of the things you've done, Al," Rose said, seeing right through him. "Nothing ever will. And yes, it would be _easier_ to hide, but it wouldn't be _right_. What you're hiding from is truer than what you seek. The family you have _always_ had is more real than the one you suspect you may have lost." He couldn't hide forever. He had to go home.

He was nodding in approval of Rose's words when Scorpius rejoined them, his face slightly flushed from the undoubtedly intense conversation he'd just had with Ron. Before pushing Rose into the bench more to make room, though, he gave them a warning by saying, "Excuse me, but the newest Mr. Weasley would like to request a seat, please." He wasn't actually going to take Rose's name, but Al knew that Scorpius truly liked the idea of it.

Moving over to the point that he was nearly falling off the edge due to Rose's overflowing skirt, Al asked jokingly, "Since when do _you_ announce yourself to anybody?"

"That's just it, mate. Rose isn't just _anybody_," said Scorpius, leaning around Rose to face Al. "She's my wife."

Rose like that word very much. Biting her lip upon hearing Scorpius speak of her with such extreme confidence, she couldn't help but kiss him, courteous to stop quickly so as not to make Al _too_ uncomfortable. A few yards away, Ron and Hermione were yelling something about wanting to get on their way and needing a goodbye hug, and Rose and Scorpius were about ready to leave when Al told them, "I'm going to miss you two."

"Yeah," Scorpius agreed. "Well, we've missed you."

Then Scorpius lifted his bride in the air and carried her over to her parents, to whom they said goodbye before flying off together, Rose in a fresh set of clothes so that she could ride James's old Firebolt, and Scorpius carrying the dress in his own falcon feathers. Al watched them until he couldn't see them anymore, and then he woke Hagrid, delivered the giant back to his hut, and made for the Forbidden Forest where Zephyr had recently returned from Surrey, ready to take Al back to that iris field he loved so much, which just so happened to be a couple kilometers behind Godric's Hollow.

* * *

Albus walked through the back door without knocking, because this was his home. The lights in the living room were off, but instinctively Al's hands searched through the dark to find the hooks reserved for James's broomstick beside the fireplace. His hands ran over it softly, just as they ran over the pot of Flu Powder James had once puked in, and the sofa he'd fallen asleep on countless times while Harry read him his favorite stories, and the kitchen counter he'd sat on more than eaten on. Everything in this house belonged to James, but touching them made Al realize that they belonged to him too.

Ginny and Lily must have been asleep by now, but Harry was sitting at the small breakfast table sipping a glass of pumpkin juice. He didn't budge even as Al sat down across from him, almost as if he had been expecting his son to join him here tonight.

"Tell me something, Al," said Harry.

"What?" Al asked.

"Something you shouldn't."

Al didn't know where to begin. There was so much he hadn't told his father, so much he had purposefully _not_ told him, so really he could start anywhere. Still, it was the one thing Harry already knew that Al most want to tell him, so he said to his father – his real father, his only father, "I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to be a hero like the characters in your stories. I wanted to be a hero like you. And when I didn't feel like I could be that for the Order, I suppose I hoped I might be able to for the Forbidden Flock."

"But no hero _wants_ to be what they are, Al," Harry told him. He wasn't patronizing this time, and perhaps he never had been. Perhaps Al had always just been hearing things he shouldn't have. "Heroism, it's not something you should strive for, not really. It's a thing that's thrust upon you, like any other responsibility, and one that I never wanted you to have to bear."

Al believed him. He believed his father because even though he hadn't earned the same types of responsibilities Harry once had, Al_ had_ been thrust burdens from the Flock that he had become responsible for, and none of them had been ones he'd wanted to bear. The real difference between his responsibilities and Harry's was that Al had never been able to adapt well to his, but Harry had borne them like a true hero.

Thinking this, Al found himself saying to his father, "You should be the next Headmaster of Hogwarts."

"What are you saying?" Harry asked, shocked to hear these words at all, let alone from his rebel son. "They'd never want me to do that. I was the Chosen One before, but I wasn't in this war. I didn't save anyone this time around."

"That's exactly why you'd now be perfect for the job," said Al. He could barely see Harry in this little light, but he could have sworn that there was something shimmering behind his spectacles. "Hogwarts doesn't need a savior anymore. What it needs is change, and you're one of the only people I know who is fully open to that idea. I think that's why I've always resented you so much. Change always terrified me, you see."

"Oh, really? Why are you here, then?" There wasn't a house more changed than this one, where James had once lived.

That didn't matter, though. The house itself didn't matter; it was the people in it, including James, who did. So, Al told Harry, "This is who I am. This is where I come from." Then he picked up Harry's glass and took a sip of his juice without asking permission, stood up, turned the corner, and walked up the stairs to his bedroom like it was any normal night at the Potters'.

Al was quiet as he ascended to the second floor, where Lily's room was attached to his via nothing but a small bathroom. Shutting his door carefully so as not to wake her or their mother, whom Al would surely need to have many conversations with before getting back to their normal routine, Al shut his eyes momentarily and opened them to the private oasis he had so sorely missed.

His potions were all still sitting in disorganized stacks on his bookshelf, an only slightly clean cauldron starting to crack by the window next to Witherwings, the grey owl who was very pleased to see his master once more. Everything was exactly the same as he'd left it, except for the oddly shaped pile of unidentified objects scattered across his unmade bed. Stepping closer and whispering, _"Lumos_," Al inspected what turned out to be a heap of unopened letters with the light of James's wand. Apparently people really had written him this summer; it was just that all the owls knew before Al had that this was where was he supposed to be.

Al cleared most of the letters off so that he could lie down, but one he kept in his hands and opened as his head touched the pillow. It was the wedding invitation, which he'd recognized from Charlie's envelope as well as Rose's penmanship. The piece of paper inside wasn't anything too special, at least not until Al noticed the handwritten note on its back that read:

_We might be starting a new life together, but we still won't value that life without you in it. Please come home to us, Al._

–_Rose and Scorpius_

And that was how, on one rainy, dark night in late September, Albus Severus Potter fell asleep to the sound of a cardinal singing, a falcon diving, and a hawk squealing. It had been over a year since he had been home, even longer since he'd heard all three of the birds at once as they flew through the skies of Godric's Hollow, a town haunted with memories of late yet loved witches and wizards. He smiled at the familiar sound, slowly drifting into a comfort that would ready him for all his unhidden years ahead.

* * *

**Eighteen Years Later**

One beautiful, sunny morning in late August, Avis Malfoy woke to the sound of birds chirping – well, one bird, to be specific, and it was more of a call than a chirp. Smiling at the regal sound that only grew stronger with age, Avis jumped out of her bed and ran across the driftwood floorboards to her open window. Leaning over the sill and letting her strawberry blonde locks blow in the morning breeze, she spotted a gorgeous white falcon eyeing her from the branch of the front yard maple tree.

"Morning, Dad!" she sang to the bird, laughing feebly through raspberry lips.

Her father, Scorpius, used the tip of one of his wings to point to the tip of the other, as if gesturing to where a person may wear a watch. Rolling her big blue eyes and playing with the Malfoy family crest that hung low on her chest, Avis yelled, "I know, I know! If you're not five minutes early, you're _late!"_ Then she shut the window tight and struggled to pull the overflowing rucksack from under her bed.

The thumping of the trunk as Avis pulled it down the stairs echoed all across the high ceilings and down to the giant practice room on the first floor of the Minerva McGonagall Memorial School for Animagi. Avis was fairly used to making as much noise as she wanted in her house, considering all summer there had been over a dozen other loud-mouthed kids staying there as they trained to magically transform themselves into animals, a task Avis had mastered since the day she'd been born. This summer, she had been particularly proud of her canary-self, and had boasted her flying skills multiple times by showing off to her older cousin, Leo Scamander. She was looking forward to showing off in the classroom this year, though, as tomorrow marked her first day as a student of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Avis's mother appeared at the bottom of the stairs with her arms crossed and a defiant look on her face. Shrugging as if she hadn't just peeled off a couple layers of paint with her suitcase, Avis said, "What? I needed to bring it down so that you could figure out what I still have to buy today."

"Uh-huh," Rose said, annoyed but still leaning down to search through the trunk. "You'd better go eat your breakfast quickly, Little Bird. Your father is very eager to start flying there."

"Great!" said Avis as she bolted for the front doors, skipping her breakfast entirely and transfiguring over the threshold so that she soared into the sky without even waiting to shut the door behind her.

Unfazed by her daughter's usual behavior, Rose remained seated by the trunk and only whispered to herself, "What a piece of work. Only eleven and she already rules the roost." And it was true. Avis was a wild one, but Rose had to admit that she loved that about her only child. She and Scorpius had tried for years to have kids before Avis came along, and that one little bird had more than made up for the five children they had lost along the way.

* * *

Dog slobber was the only thing that could ever wake Addy up. She'd picked out the mutt from the Muggle pound herself only a few years ago, and now Firefly had become an integral part of the Potter family. This morning was no exception and, unlike her best friend who was always unfathomably early to _everything _because her excitement so outweighed her laziness, Addy was already running late.

"Sister, we're going to leave without you!" came a familiar yell from downstairs as Addy slowly rose from bed, greeted Firefly with a kiss, and stumbled over to her wardrobe.

"Shut it, PJ!" Addy retorted with a slam of her dresser drawer. Her little brother, Phoenix James, had always been a nuisance, especially when it came to her prep time in the closet.

See, Addy's process was very complicated and therefore required a great deal of time: first, she had to pick out the perfect outfit, usually consisting of a good deal of purple and of course green to match her eyes, then she had to brush out her thick black hair that was luckily much tamer than her sister's, and finally put on jewelry and shoes. Her aunt Lizzie had supplied her with myriad choices in each of these departments, and today she settled for a sequined green sundress with sandals and bangles, choosing the latter simply because she liked the way the bracelets clanked together when the wind blew.

Once she was dressed and had led Firefly downstairs, Addy joined the rest of her family in the kitchen, where both pots and cauldrons sat on the stove, where there was a dishwasher as well as some dishes floating in the air and being cleaned by magic, and where one of her parents was drinking a glass of pumpkin juice and the other a goblet of coffee.

"Good morning, Princess," said Al as his daughter took a seat on the table beside him.

"Daddy, I'm not a princess," Addy corrected her father. "You're an Auror, not a king!"

Across the table and behind a propped-open copy of the Journal of Medicine, her mother laughed and said, "Ah, but you're still very important. Your very own grandfather is the Headmaster of Hogwarts."

"Yeah, and it's not fair that _she_ gets to see Grandpa Harry every day starting tomorrow," complained PJ. He wasn't sitting at the table, far too antsy to stop pacing around the room.

"Relax!" Al tried to calm him down. "You only have one year left, and then you'll be at Hogwarts too."

A coy breath was heard then from beside Ilana, and suddenly a very small, bug-eyed girl sat up in her chair and said innocently to her brother, "You don't see me complaining, and I've still got three whole years to wait until I'll be at Hogwarts."

Al and Ilana smiled at Iris even though PJ ignored her, but their attention was redrawn to their eldest daughter when Addy mumbled, "Headmaster of Hogwarts is _nothing_. Avis's grandfather is the Head Auror, and her grand_mother_ is the Minister for Magic!"

Ilana barely heard Addy's whining, but Al was all ears and asked his daughter with the utmost concern, "I thought Avis was your best friend. Why are you so worried about being at school with her?"

"I'm not worried about being there with her. I'm worried about not being as good as her."

Both Al and Ilana looked to Addy then with very serious expressions, and it was Al who put a hand on each of Addy's shoulders and told her, "Aderyn Rose Potter, don't you ever think that you aren't good enough, for any_thing_ or any_one_. You are going to be a brilliant witch and a beautiful person, no matter how talented or untalented you are at that rubbish they call Transfiguration. You hear?"

Addy nodded. After thinking for a moment, she even managed to say, "That's true. Plus, Avis doesn't have her own dragon, but I do." Zephorien had been a member of the family far longer than Firefly had, longer even than Addy herself, and today she and her family would be flying to Diagon Alley in royal style.

* * *

"Mum! You will not _believe_ who I just saw snogging at the ice cream stand!" Talen's voice boomed through the shop, obscuring the shouts of his rascal brothers who were currently flying miniature brooms past his untarnished face.

"Who?" asked his mother with the utmost curiosity; Lily had always been one to enjoy a piece of gossip, which was probably why Talen was so clearly the favorite of her five sons. The ten year-old had her fire, and he also fired back whenever any customers asked her about the scars on her face.

Walking up to the cash register so that he could hop on the stool and handle some payments, Talen gave his mother a minute to corral the young and rambunctious Miles and Gram off their brooms and order them back upstairs where they had a playroom full of magical toys that Lily wouldn't need to pay damage fees for. Once she had returned, she asked Talen again who'd been snogging, and he told her, "Remy, with Will Thomas, no less!"

"No!" Lily exclaimed, waving goodbye to the family that had just bought their son a new Firebolt as they exited the shop.

Talen nodded and said, "Hard to believe, right? Werewolf and Dream Boy together at last."

"Can't say it hasn't happened before, though, can you?" came the voice of Talen's father as the door chimed open. Lysander still liked to think of himself as a sort of dream boy, just as tall and handsome as the stars he wished on every night.

Lily smirked at her husband as he approached her and planted a sloppy kiss straight on her lips, all the while ignoring the boy who was currently dangling from Lysander's shoulders and complaining about how disgusting it was that his parents were still so in love.

When they broke apart, Lysander released Xavier from his hold and Lily said, "I see you found him, then."

"Aye. He was hiding in the far reaches of a book shelf at Flourish and Blott's, claiming that he was supposed to be meeting Artie there. Artie, however, was nowhere in sight, so I figured I'd haul him back before Hugo caught him."

"Good thinking," said Lily. Hugo Weasley owned most of Diagon Alley at this point, including Flourish and Blott's, Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, and his husband's wand shop. He had only let other members of the old Gryff Group buy properties adjacent to his, which was how Lily had landed the James Potter Quidditch Supply Shop, and how Roxanne had turned the competing joke shop into a sea glass store.

"Hey, where's Leo?" asked Lysander suddenly. "He needs new robes, no matter how unnecessary he believes them to be."

Lily chuckled and informed Lysander that their eldest son was counting inventory in the back. Leo had been the child they'd never intended to have, back when Lily had still been a teenager and when she and Lysander were nowhere near ready for marriage. Still, he had turned out to be quite the young leader of the family, always putting extra hours into the business and claiming the same robes he'd worn for four years of school still fit him fine just so that he could keep his parents from spending any more money on him. Lily was just happy that, even with the surprise pregnancy, her sister-in-law Ilana had been able to stop the werewolf gene from being carried over to Leo and the rest of her boys. This way, they could tell all of their secrets on their own terms and revel in uncovering others'.

* * *

Artie's dads were the talk of the town. Hugo had just published his sixth book, and there were posters with his face plastered on them in every shop window. Meanwhile, Nigel had recently been named the best wandmaker in the country. Arthur Dennis, their adopted son, had a lot to live up to.

His parents had never cared that he'd originally come from Muggles, but after spending nine years watching wands choose one young witch or wizard after the next, Artie was starting to feel like he'd be missing out on a world that he'd very much like to explore. That was why he'd decided to spend this morning picking up every wand in Nigel's shop to see if anything – anything at all – might happen with them.

He had tried over two dozen wooden sticks when Nigel asked from his workshop, "Aren't you supposed to meet Xavier at Papa's shop?" Ever since Artie had been taught to speak, Nigel had been called Dad and Hugo had been called Papa.

"Yeah, but I have to wait for Papa to take me," Artie replied, focused on another wand now. He had always been a very diligent child, quiet and observant but also quick and smart. His freckles and oversized glasses made him look a little dorky, but he had never cared too much about any of that. Neither of his fathers had ever gotten by on looks alone; they got by on pure talent, and Artie was planning to do the same.

The wand he held in his hands now was quite short, perhaps only eight inches or so, and it had been made with willow wood and unicorn hair. Artie was fascinated by the snowflake pattern carved into its grip, and it was the first wand he'd held that made him feel both delicate and powerful. He wasn't exactly sure what he was supposed to do with it, but he'd seen hundreds of magical kids pick up a wand and flick it at something, so he decided to point it at the staircase in the store corner.

Closing his eyes and thinking about the wood of the stairs splitting and sinking into the floor, Artie flicked and swished his right hand. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the stairs hadn't changed a bit, and he was about to lower his hand in defeat when he heard Hugo's voice cry out, "_What in the name of merlin's beard is going on?"_

He must have been trying to descend the staircase when he'd run into the range of Artie's wand, for now Hugo was floating in the middle of the shop, flailing one arm around as if that would help to steady him while the other arm reached for the wand he'd dropped. "Papa!" Artie exclaimed. "I-I'm sorry!" Then he dropped the wand he'd been holding and Hugo instantly fell straight to the floor.

Racing to his side, Artie was about ready to cry for fear that he had broken his own father when Hugo sat up and rubbed the back of his swollen head. Seeing him alive would have been enough to make Artie feel slightly better, but Hugo wasn't just alive; he was sheepishly grinning from cheek to freckled cheek.

"What's all this raucous about?" asked Nigel as he came out from his workshop and into the main room to see what was going on. When he saw the two loves of his life huddled awkwardly on the floor and noticed Hugo's radiating joy, Nigel couldn't help but smile too.

That smile only grew when Hugo said to him, "Guess what, Squirmsnail? Our son's a wizard."

* * *

Somehow, all three of them had made it this far. Rose, Scorpius, and Albus were all sitting at a table drinking butter beers at the Leaky Cauldron while their children wandered about Diagon Alley. Time passed quickly for them now, conversations stretching into hours in which they would gush about Avis's chess skills or Iris's piano playing, and even talking about work was fascinating for them. Scorpius was famous now that Hugo had finished writing his biography, and he was also happy to have helped his nephew complete his Animagus form just the other morning, Leo now as true a lion as there ever was. Rose and Al were similarly proud of their work in the defense field, where just last week they had arrested a couple of snatchers Knox had tipped off to Al.

Their current conversation had flowed through these usual topics before it landed on them questioning which houses their respective daughters would be sorted in at Hogwarts tomorrow evening. Rose and Scorpius both had a feeling that Avis couldn't possibly be anywhere but Gryffindor or Slytherin, and Al told them that it wouldn't matter either way. Slytherin's pure-blood reputation had been lost years ago, and now the house was both well respected and well loved.

Thinking about how far they'd come in their mutual quest to end Muggle-born discrimination, Scorpius found himself staring at the red brick wall that separated Diagon Alley from Charing Cross Road and said, "Who knows? Maybe one day there won't be any more brick walls separating the magical world from the Muggle one. Maybe soon we'll all finally live together in peace."

Suddenly concerned, Rose asked her husband, "Do you feel that we're not whole?"

It was Al who answered for Scorpius, "Well, we may not be whole, but we're not empty." And he had a funny feeling that they never would be again.

* * *

_**Note: **__Please tell me what you thought of any/all of this; I desperately want to know! I hope the presence of an epilogue surprised some of you, because I was careful to never mention it as being part of my master plan even though it always was. Also, if you have questions about what was written in the eighteen years later (or what wasn't written, for that matter, since I know a lot of integral characters were left out - Knox and Dominique, for example), let me know! I have futures planned for every character, so I can tell you anything you'd like to know. If you'd rather imagine their futures for yourself, though, I understand that, too.  
_

_Also, if you're a big music fan, you should check out my tumblr page, because I am about to blog some playlists that inspired the various BotB couples (there is one for Rose/Scorpius, Al/Ilana, Hugo/Nigel, Lily/Lysander, and Knox/Dom)._

_Again, THANK YOU._

_**Announcement:** Unfortunately, I also come with some sad news. This chapter has taken a lot out of me, and schoolwork is getting pretty intense at my college, so I've decided to stop writing fan fiction so that I can focus on my original work. Of course, I may return sporadically when I feel nostalgic, but I don't think I'll be writing any long fics again. If you are still interested in reading my work outside of the fanfic genre, please subscribe to my fictionpress account and I'll try to upload stuff there._

_For those of you who are curious, I did have a few BotB spin-off ideas that now won't be written - one was the obvious sequel story following the kids you were just introduced to where they would unite the Muggle and wizard worlds once and for all, another was a lead-up to the epilogue chronicling the relationship between Lily and Lysander, another was Astoria's backstory with her years at Hogwarts alongside Charlie and Tonks. I'm sorry these won't be coming to fruition after all, but again, ask me about them if you're curious._

_UPDATE: Slytherin Kingship, a reader of BotB, has graciously decided to write his/her version of the sequel story I presented all here. Check it out: u/4533624/ First chapter will be up by December._

_Finally, I just want to say that writing fanfic, especially this one, has been an absolute blast. All of you readers are wonderful people and have each individually upped my game in the writing world. Whether or not I ever write fan fiction again, I will always cherish it, I will always read your reviews and messages, and I will definitely never stop writing in general._

_Goodbye for now,_

_-Hailey_


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